bank together; they write in the posture that the
Swedes gave fire in, over one another's heads. It is said there is more
of them go to a suit of clothes than to a _Britannicus;_ in this
polygamy the clothes breed and cannot determine whose issue is
lawfully begotten.

And here I think it were not amiss to take a particular how he is
accoutred, and so do by him as he in his Siquis for the wall-eyed mare,
or the crop flea-bitten, give you the marks of the beast. I begin with
his head, which is ever in clouts, as if the nightcap should make
affidavit that the brain was pregnant. To what purpose doth the _Pia
Mater_ lie in so dully in her white formalities; sure she hath had hard
labour, for the brows have squeezed for it, as you may perceive by his
buttered bon-grace that film of a demicastor; 'tis so thin and unctuous
that the sunbeams mistake it for a vapour, and are like to cap him; so
it is right heliotrope, it creaks in the shine and flaps in the shade;
whatever it be I wish it were able to call in his ears. There's no
proportion between that head and appurtenances; those of all lungs are
no more fit for that small noddle of the circumcision than brass bosses
for a Geneva Bible. In what a puzzling neutrality is the poor soul that
moves betwixt two such ponderous biases? His collar is edged with a
piece of peeping linen, by which he means a band; 'tis the forlorn of
his shirt crawling out of his neck; indeed it were time that his shirt
were jogging, for it has served an apprenticeship, and (as apprentices
use) it hath learned its trade too, to which effect 'tis marching to the
papermill, and the next week sets up for itself in the shape of a
pamphlet. His gloves are the shavings of his hands, for he casts his
skin like a cancelled parchment. The itch represents the broken seals.
His boots are the legacies of two black jacks, and till he pawned the
silver that the jacks were tipped with it was a pretty mode of
boot-hose-tops. For the rest of his habit he is a perfect seaman, a kind
of tarpaulin, he being hanged about with his coarse composition, those
pole-davie papers.

But I must draw to an end, for every character is an anatomy lecture,
and it fares with me in this of the diurnal-maker, as with him that
reads on a begged malefactor, my subject smells before I have gone
through with him; for a parting blow then. The word historian imports a
sage and solemn author, one that curls his brow with a sullen gravity,
like