es with the same inflammation, and when the
heat is over is cool alike to friends and enemies. His friendship is
seldom so steadfast, but that lust, drink, or anger may overturn it. He
offers you his blood to-day in kindness, and is ready to take yours
to-morrow. He does seldom any thing which he wishes not to do again, and
is only wise after a misfortune. He suffers much for his knowledge, and
a great deal of folly it is makes him a wise man. He is free from many
vices, by being not grown to the performance, and is only more virtuous
out of weakness. Every action is his danger, and every man his ambush.
He is a ship without pilot or tackling, and only good fortune may steer
him. If he scape this age, he has scaped a tempest, and may live to be
a man.

AN OLD COLLEGE BUTLER

Is none of the worst students in the house, for he keeps the set hours
at his book more duly than any. His authority is great over men's good
names, which he charges many times with shrewd aspersions, which they
hardly wipe off without payment. [His box and counters prove him to be a
man of reckoning, yet] he is stricter in his accounts than a usurer, and
delivers not a farthing without writing. He doubles the pains of
Gallobelgicus[32], for his books go out once a quarter, and they are
much in the same nature, brief notes and sums of affairs, and are out of
request as soon. His comings in are like a taylor's, from the shreds of
bread, [the] chippings and remnants of a broken crust; excepting his
vails from the barrel, which poor folks buy for their hogs but drink
themselves. He divides an halfpenny loaf with more subtlety than
Keckerman[33], and sub-divides the _a prima ortum_ so nicely, that a
stomach of great capacity can hardly apprehend it. He is a very sober
man, considering his manifold temptations of drink and strangers; and if
he be overseen, 'tis within his own liberties, and no man ought to take
exception. He is never so well pleased with his place as when a
gentleman is beholden to him for showing him the buttery, whom he greets
with a cup of single beer and sliced manchet[34], and tells him it is
the fashion of the college. He domineers over freshmen when they first
come to the hatch, and puzzles them with strange language of cues and
cees, and some broken Latin which he has learned at his bin. His
faculties extraordinary are the warming of a pair of cards, and telling
out a dozen of counters for post and pair, and no man is more metho