She sends religion
afore to sixty, where she never overtakes it, or drives it before her
again. Her most necessary instruments are a waiting gentlewoman and a
chambermaid; she wears her gentlewoman still, but most often leaves the
other in her chamber window. She hath a little kennel in her lap, and
she smells the sweeter for it. The utmost reach of her providence is the
fatness of a capon, and her greatest envy is the next gentlewoman's
better gown. Her most commendable skill is to make her husband's fustian
bear her velvet. This she doth many times over, and then is delivered to
old age and a chair, where everybody leaves her.
A DISSEMBLER
Is an essence needing a double definition, for he is not that he
appears. Unto the eye he is pleasing, unto the ear he is harsh, but unto
the understanding intricate and full of windings; he is the _prima
materia_, and his intents give him form; he dyeth his means and his
meaning into two colours; he baits craft with humility, and his
countenance is the picture of the present disposition. He wins not by
battery but undermining, and his rack is smoothing. He allures, is not
allured by his affections, for they are the breakers of his observation.
He knows passion only by sufferance, and resisteth by obeying. He makes
his time an accountant to his memory, and of the humours of men weaves a
net for occasion; the inquisitor must look through his judgment, for to
the eye only he is not visible.
A COURTIER,
To all men's thinking, is a man, and to most men the finest; all things
else are defined by the understanding, but this by the senses; but his
surest mark is, that he is to be found only about princes.
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