public notary. He is a
great overseer of State affairs, and can judge as well of them before he
understands the reasons as afterwards. He is excellent at preventing
inconveniences and finding out remedies when 'tis too late; for, like
prophecies, they are never heard of till it is to no purpose. He is a
great reformer, always contriving of expedients, and will press them
with as much earnestness as if himself and every man he meets had power
to impose them on the nation. He is always giving aim to State affairs,
and believes by screwing of his body he can make them shoot which way he
pleases. He inquires into every man's history, and makes his own
commentaries upon it as he pleases to fancy it. He wonderfully affects
to seem full of employments, and borrows men's business only to put on
and appear in, and then returns it back again, only a little worse. He
frequents all public places, and, like a pillar in the old Exchange, is
hung with all men's business, both public and private, and his own is
only to expose them. He dreads nothing so much as to be thought at
leisure, though he is never otherwise; for though he be always doing, he
never does anything.

A PEDANT

Is a dwarf scholar, that never outgrows the mode and fashion of the
school where he should have been taught. He wears his little learning,
unmade-up, puts it on before it was half finished, without pressing or
smoothing. He studies and uses words with the greatest respect possible,
merely for their own sakes, like an honest man, without any regard of
interest, as they are useful and serviceable to things, and among those
he is kindest to strangers (like a civil gentleman) that are far from
their own country and most unknown. He collects old sayings and ends of
verses, as antiquaries do old coins, and is as glad to produce them upon
all occasions. He has sentences ready lying by him for all purposes,
though to no one, and talks of authors as familiarly as his
fellow-collegiates. He will challenge acquaintance with those he never
saw before, and pretend to intimate knowledge of those he has only heard
of. He is well stored with terms of art, but does not know how to use
them, like a country-fellow that carries his gloves in his hands, not
his hands in his gloves. He handles arts and sciences like those that
can play a little upon an instrument, but do not know whether it be in
tune or not. He converses by the book, and does not talk, but quote. If
he can b