"He is like fern, that vile unuseful weed,
That springs equivocally, without seed."

He was not made for honour, nor it for him, which makes it sit so
unfavouredly upon him. The fore-part of himself and the hinder-part of
his coach publish his distinction; as French lords, that have _haute
justice_--that is, may hang and draw--distinguish their qualities by the
pillars of their gallows. He got his honour easily, by chance, without
the hard, laborious way of merit, which makes him so prodigally lavish
of it. He brings down the price of honour, as the value of anything
falls in mean hands. He looks upon all men in the state of knighthood
and plain gentility as most deplorable, and wonders how he could endure
himself when he was but of that rank. The greatest part of his honour
consists in his well-sounding title, which he therefore makes choice of,
though he has none to the place, but only a patent to go by the name of
it. This appears at the end of his coach in the shape of a coronet,
which his footmen set their bums against, to the great disparagement of
the wooden representative. The people take him for a general grievance,
a kind of public pressure or innovation, and would willingly give a
subsidy to be redressed of him. He is a strict observer of men's
addresses to him, and takes a mathematical account whether they stoop
and bow in just proportion to the weight of his greatness and allow full
measure to their legs and cringes accordingly. He never uses courtship
but in his own defence, that others may use the same to him, and, like a
true Christian, does as he would be done unto. He is intimate with no
man but his pimp and his surgeon, with whom he keeps no state, but
communicates all the states of his body. He is raised, like the market
or a tax, to the grievance and curse of the people. He that knew the
inventory of him would wonder what slight ingredients go to the making
up of a great person; howsoever, he is turned up trump, and so commands
better cards than himself while the game lasts. He has much of honour
according to the original sense of it, which among the ancients, Gellius
says, signified injury. His prosperity was greater than his brain could
bear, and he is drunk with it; and if he should take a nap as long as
Epimenides or the Seven Sleepers he would never be sober again. He took
his degree and went forth lord by mandamus, without performing exercises
of merit. His honour's but an immunity fr