is companions
that flouted him before, now envy him, when they see him come ready for
scarlet, whilst themselves lie musty in their old clothes and colleges.

A BAKER.

No man verifies the proverb more, that it is an alms-deed to punish him;
for his penalty is a dole,[69] and does the beggars as much good as
their dinner. He abhors, therefore, works of charity, and thinks his
bread cast away when it is given to the poor. He loves not justice
neither, for the weigh-scale's sake, and hates the clerk of the market
as his executioner; yet he finds mercy in his offences, and his basket
only is sent to prison.[70] Marry, a pillory is his deadly enemy, and he
never hears well after.

A PRETENDER TO LEARNING

Is one that would make all others more fools than himself, for though he
knew nothing, he would not have the world know so much. He conceits
nothing in learning but the opinion, which he seeks to purchase without
it, though he might with less labour cure his ignorance than hide it. He
is indeed a kind of scholar-mountebank, and his art our delusion. He is
tricked out in all the accoutrements of learning, and at the first
encounter none passes better. He is oftener in his study than at his
book, and you cannot pleasure him better than to deprehend him: yet he
hears you not till the third knock, and then comes out very angry as
interrupted. You find him in his _slippers_[71] and a pen in his ear, in
which formality he was asleep. His table is spread wide with some
classick folio, which is as constant to it as the carpet, and hath laid
open in the same page this half year. His candle is always a longer
sitter up than himself, and the _boast_[72] of his window at midnight.
He walks much alone in the posture of meditation, and has a book still
before his face in the fields. His pocket is seldom without a Greek
testament or Hebrew Bible, which he opens only in the church, and that
when some stander-by looks over. He has sentences for company, some
scatterings of Seneca and Tacitus, which are good upon all occasions. If
he reads any thing in the morning, it comes up all at dinner; and as
long as that lasts, the discourse is his. He is a great plagiary of
tavern wit, and comes to sermons only that he may talk of Austin. His
parcels are the mere scrapings from company, yet he complains at parting
what time he has lost. He is wondrously capricious to seem a judgment,
and listens with a sour attention to what he understan