Resolve when you first stretch
yourself in the stirrups, you are put as it were upon some usurer that
will never bear with you past his day. He were good to make one that had
the colic alight often, and, if example will cause him, make urine; let
him only for that say, Grammercy horse. For his sale of horses, he hath
false covers for all manner of diseases, only comes short of one thing
(which he despairs not utterly to bring to perfection), to make a horse
go on a wooden leg and two crutches. For powdering his ears with
quicksilver, and giving him suppositories of live eels, he is expert.
All the while you are cheapening, he fears you will not bite; but he
laughs in his sleeve when he hath cozened you in earnest. Frenchmen are
his best chapmen; he keeps amblers for them on purpose, and knows he can
deceive them very easily. He is so constant to his trade that, while he
is awake, he tries any man he talks with, and when he is asleep he
dreams very fearfully of the paving of Smithfield, for he knows it would
founder his occupation.
A ROARING BOY.
His life is a mere counterfeit patent, which, nevertheless, makes many a
country justice tremble. Don Quixote's water-mills are still Scotch
bagpipes to him. He sends challenges by word of mouth, for he protests
(as he is a gentleman and a brother of the sword) he can neither write
nor read. He hath run through divers parcels of land, and great houses,
beside both the counters. If any private quarrel happen among our great
courtiers, he proclaims the business--that's the word, the business--as
if the united force of the Romish Catholics were making up for Germany.
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