e, and to take occasion from his exposition of what he said to
start new cavils on the bye and run quite away from the question; but
when he finds himself pressed home and beaten from all his guards, to
amuse the foe with some senseless distinction, like a falsified blow
that never hits where 'tis aimed, but while it is minded makes way for
some other trick that may pass. But that which renders him invincible is
abundance of confidence and words, which are his offensive and defensive
arms; for a brazen face is a natural helmet or beaver, and he that has
store of words needs not surrender for want of ammunition. No matter for
reason and sense, that go for no more in disputations than the justice
of a cause does in war, which is understood but by few and commonly
regarded by none. For the custom of disputants is not so much to destroy
one another's reason as to cavil at the manner of expressing it, right
or wrong; for they believe _Dolus an virtus_, &c., ought to be allowed
in controversy as war, and he that gets the victory on any terms
whatsoever deserves it and gets it honourably. He and his opponent are
like two false lute-strings that will never stand in tune to one
another, or like two tennis-players whose greatest skill consists in
avoiding one another's strokes.

A PROJECTOR

Is by interpretation a man of forecast. He is an artist of plots,
designs, and expedients to find out money, as others hide it, where
nobody would look for it. He is a great rectifier of the abuses of all
trades and mysteries, yet has but one remedy for all diseases; that is,
by getting a patent to share with them, by virtue of which they become
authorised, and consequently cease to be cheats. He is a great promoter
of the public good, and makes it his care and study to contrive
expedients that the nation may not be ill served with false rags,
arbitrary puppet-plays, and insufficient monsters, of all which he
endeavours to get the superintendency. He will undertake to render
treasonable pedlars, that carry intelligence between rebels and
fanatics, true subjects and well-affected to the Government for
half-a-crown a quarter, which he takes for giving them license to do so
securely and uncontrolled. He gets as much by those projects that
miscarry as by those that hold (as lawyers are paid as well for undoing
as preserving of men); for when he has drawn in adventurers to purchase
shares of the profit, the sooner it is stopped the better it