This eel is bred too out of the mud of a bankrupt, and dies
commonly with his guts ripped up, or else a sudden stab sends him of his
last errand. He will very greedily take a cut with a sword, and suck
more silver out of the wound than his surgeon shall. His beginning is
detestable, his courses desperate, and his end damnable.
A COMMON CRUEL JAILOR
Is a creature mistaken in the making, for he should be a tiger; but the
shape being thought too terrible, it is covered, and he wears the vizor
of a man, yet retains the qualities of his former fierceness,
currishness, and ravening. Of that red earth of which man was fashioned
this piece was the basest, of the rubbish which was left and thrown by
came this jailor; his descent is then more ancient, but more ignoble,
for he comes of the race of those angels that fell with Lucifer from
heaven, whither he never (or very hardly) returns. Of all his bunches of
keys not one hath wards to open that door, for this jailor's soul stands
not upon those two pillars that support heaven (justice and mercy), it
rather sits upon those two footstools of hell, wrong and cruelty. He is
a judge's slave, and a prisoner's his. In this they differ; he is a
voluntary one, the other compelled. He is the hangman of the law with a
lame hand, and if the law gave him all his limbs perfect he would strike
those on whom he is glad to fawn. In fighting against a debtor he is a
creditor's second, but observes not the laws of the _duello_; his play
is foul, and on all base advantages.
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