t they serve God oftest when they are drunk.
Their humanity is a leg to the residencer, their learning a chapter, for
they learn it commonly before they read it; yet the old Hebrew names are
little beholden to them, for they miscall them worse than one another.
Though they never expound the scripture, they handle it much, and
pollute the gospel with two things, their conversation and their thumbs.
Upon worky-days, they behave themselves at prayers as at their pots, for
they swallow them down in an instant. Their gowns are laced commonly
with streamings of ale, superfluities of a cup or throat above measure.
Their skill in melody makes them the better companions abroad, and their
anthems abler to sing catches. Long lived for the most part they are
not, especially the bass, they overflow their bank so oft to drown the
organs. Briefly, if they escape arresting, they die constantly in God's
service; and to take their death with more patience, they have wine and
cakes at their funeral, and now they keep[73] the church a great deal
better and help to fill it with their bones as before with their noise.

A SHOPKEEPER.

His shop is his well stuft book, and himself the title-page of it, or
index. He utters much to all men, though he sells but to a few, and
intreats for his own necessities, by asking others what they lack. No
man speaks more and no more, for his words are like his wares, twenty of
one sort, and he goes over them alike to all comers. He is an arrogant
commender of his own things; for whatsoever he shows you is the best in
the town, though the worst in his shop. His conscience was a thing that
would have laid upon his hands, and he was forced to put it off, and
makes great use of honesty to profess upon. He tells you lies by rote,
and not minding, as the phrase to sell in and the language he spent most
of his years to learn. He never speaks so truly as when he says he would
use you as his brother; for he would abuse his brother, and in his shop
thinks it lawful. His religion is much in the nature of his customer's,
and indeed the pander to it: and by a mis-interpreted sense of scripture
makes a gain of his godliness. He is your slave while you pay him ready
money, but if he once befriend you, your tyrant, and you had better
deserve his hate than his trust.

A BLUNT MAN

Is one whose wit is better pointed than his behaviour, and that coarse
and unpolished, not out of ignorance so much as humour. He is a great