an your under-opinion, because it is easier
to make that false, than this true. He is one that sneaks from a good
action, as one that had pilfered, and dare not justify it; and is more
blushingly reprehended in this, than others in sin: that counts all
publick declarings of himself, but so many penances before the people;
and the more you applaud him the more you abash him, and he recovers not
his face a month after. One that is easy to like any thing of another
man's, and thinks all he knows not of him better than that he knows. He
excuses that to you, which another would impute; and if you pardon him,
is satisfied. One that stands in no opinion because it is his own, but
suspects it rather, because it is his own, and is confuted and thanks
you. He sees nothing more willingly than his errors, and it is his error
sometimes to be too soon persuaded. He is content to be auditor where he
only can speak, and content to go away and think himself instructed. No
man is so weak that he is ashamed to learn of, and is less ashamed to
confess it; and he finds many times even in the dust, what others
overlook and lose. Every man's presence is a kind of bridle to him, to
stop the roving of his tongue and passions: and even impudent men look
for this reverence from him, and distaste that in him which they suffer
in themselves, as one in whom vice is ill-favoured and shews more
scurvily than another. An unclean jest shall shame him more than a
bastard another man, and he that got it shall censure him among the
rest. He is coward to nothing more than an ill tongue, and whosoever
dare lie on him hath power over him; and if you take him by his look, he
is guilty. The main ambition of his life is not to be discredited; and
for other things, his desires are more limited than his fortunes, which
he thinks preferment though never so mean, and that he is to do
something to deserve this. He is too tender to venture on great places,
and would not hurt a dignity to help himself: If he do, it was the
violence of his friends constrained him, how hardly soever he obtain it
he was harder persuaded to seek it.

A MERE EMPTY WIT

Is like one that spends on the stock without any revenues coming in, and
will shortly be no wit at all; for learning is the fuel to the fire of
wit, which, if it wants this feeding, eats out itself. A good conceit or
two bates of such a man, and makes a sensible weakening in him; and his
brain recovers it not a year afte