a bull-necked Presbyter since the army hath got him off his
jurisdiction, who, Presbyter like, sweeps his breast with a reverend
beard, full of native moss-troopers; not such a squirting scribe as this
that's troubled with the rickets, and makes pennyworths of history. The
college-treasury that never had in bank above a Harry-groat, shut up
there in a melancholy solitude, like one that is kept to keep
possession, had as good evidence to show for his title as he for an
historian; so, if he will needs be an historian, he is not cited in the
sterling acceptation, but after the rate of bluecaps' reckoning, an
historian Scot. Now a Scotchman's tongue runs high fullams. There is a
cheat in his idiom, for the sense ebbs from the bold expression, like
the citizen's gallon, which the drawer interprets but half a pint. In
sum, a diurnal-maker is the anti-mark of an historian, he differs from
him as a drill from a man, or (if you had rather have it in the saints'
gibberish) as a hinter doth from a holder-forth.

THE CHARACTER OF A LONDON DIURNAL.

A diurnal is a puny chronicle, scarce pin-feathered with the wings of
time. It is a history in sippets: the English Iliads in a nutshell: the
apocryphal Parliament's book of Maccabees in single sheets. It would
tire a Welshman to reckon up how many aps 'tis removed from an annal;
for it is of that extract, only of the younger house, like a shrimp to a
lobster. The original sinner in this kind was Dutch, Gallo-Belgicus the
protoplast, and the modern Mercuries but Hans-en-kelders. The Countess
of Zealand was brought to bed of an almanac, as many children as days in
the year. It may be the legislative lady is of that lineage, so she
spawns the diurnals, and they at Westminster take them in adoption by
the names of _Scoticus_, _Civicus_, _Britannicus_. In the frontispiece
of the old Beldam diurnal, like the contents of the chapter, sitteth the
House of Commons judging the twelve tribes of Israel. You may call them
the kingdom's anatomy before the weekly calendar; for such is a diurnal,
the day of the month with what weather in the commonwealth. It is taken
for the pulse of the body politic, and the empiric divines of the
assembly, those spiritual dragooners, thumb it accordingly. Indeed it is
a pretty synopsis, and those grave rabbis (though in the point of
Divinity) trade in no larger authors. The country-carrier, when he buys
it for the vicar, miscalls it the urinal; yet properly enou