he knows
they never will, and despises those that would not hurt him if they
could. The court is his church, and he believes as that believes, and
cries up and down everything as he finds it pass there. It is a great
comfort to him to think that some who do not know him may perhaps take
him for a lord, and while that thought lasts he looks bigger than usual
and forgets his acquaintance, and that's the reason why he will
sometimes know you and sometimes not. Nothing but want of money or
credit puts him in mind that he is mortal, but then he trusts Providence
that somebody will trust him, and in expectation of that hopes for a
better life, and that his debts will never rise up in judgment against
him. To get in debt is to labour in his vocation, but to pay is to
forfeit his protection, for what's that worth to one that owes nothing?
His employment being only to wear his clothes, the whole account of his
life and actions is recorded in shopkeepers' books, that are his
faithful historiographers to their own posterity; and he believes he
loses so much reputation as he pays off his debts, and that no man wears
his clothes in fashion that pays for them, for nothing is further from
the mode. He believes that he that runs in debt is beforehand with those
that trust him, and only those that pay are behind. His brains are
turned giddy, like one that walks on the top of a house, and that's the
reason it is so troublesome to him to look downwards. He is a kind of
spectrum, and his clothes are the shape he takes to appear and walk in,
and when he puts them off he vanishes. He runs as busily out of one room
into another as a great practiser does in Westminster Hall from one
court to another. When he accosts a lady he puts both ends of his
microcosm in motion, by making legs at one end and combing his peruke at
the other. His garniture is the sauce to his clothes, and he walks in
his portcannons like one that stalks in long grass. Every motion of him
cries "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, quoth the preacher." He rides
himself like a well-managed horse, reins in his neck, and walks
_terra-terra_. He carries his elbows backward, as if he were pinioned
like a trussed-up fowl, and moves as stiff as if he was upon the spit.
His legs are stuck in his great voluminous breeches like the whistles in
a bagpipe, those abundant breeches in which his nether parts are not
clothed but packed up. His hat has been long in a consumption of the
fashion