A DIURNAL-MAKER.

A diurnal-maker is the sub-almoner of history, Queen Mab's register, one
whom, by the same figure that a north country pedlar is a merchantman,
you may style an author. It is like overreach of language, when every
thin tinder-cloaked quack must be called a doctor; when a clumsy cobbler
usurps the attribute of our English peers, and is vamped a translator.
List him a writer and you smother Geoffrey in swabber-slops; the very
name of dabbler oversets him; he is swallowed up in the phrase, like Sir
S.L. [Samuel Luke] in a great saddle, nothing to be seen but the giddy
feather in his crown. They call him a Mercury, but he becomes the
epithet like the little negro mounted upon an elephant, just such
another blot rampant. He has not stuffings sufficient for the reproach
of a scribbler, but it hangs about him like an old wife's skin when the
flesh hath forsaken her, lank and loose. He defames a good title as well
as most of our modern noblemen; those wens of greatness, the body
politic's most peccant humours blistered into lords. He hath so
raw-boned a being that however you render him he rubs it out and makes
rags of the expression. The silly countryman who, seeing an ape in a
scarlet coat, blessed his young worship, and gave his landlord joy of
the hopes of his house, did not slander his complement with worse
application than he that names this shred an historian. To call him an
historian is to knight a mandrake; 'tis to view him through a
perspective, and by that gross hyperbole to give the reputation of an
engineer to a maker of mousetraps. Such an historian would hardly pass
muster with a Scotch stationer in a sieveful of ballads and godly books.
He would not serve for the breast-plate of a begging Grecian. The most
cramped compendium that the age hath seen since all learning hath been
almost torn into ends, outstrips him by the head. I have heard of
puppets that could prattle in a play, but never saw of their writings
before. There goes a report of the Holland women that together with
their children they are delivered of a Sooterkin, not unlike to a rat,
which some imagine to be the offspring of the stoves. I know not what
_Ignis fatuus_ adulterates the press, but it seems much after that
fashion, else how could this vermin think to be a twin to a legitimate
writer; when those weekly fragments shall pass for history, let the poor
man's box be entitled the exchequer, and the alms-basket a magazine. Not