A TOO IDLY RESERVED MAN
Is one that is a fool with discretion, or a strange piece of politician,
that manages the state of himself. His actions are his privy-council,
wherein no man must partake beside. He speaks under rule and
prescription, and dare not show his teeth without Machiavel. He
converses with his neighbours as he would in Spain, and fears an
inquisitive man as much as the inquisition. He suspects all questions
for examinations, and thinks you would pick something out of him, and
avoids you. His breast is like a gentlewoman's closet, which locks up
every toy or trifle, or some bragging mountebank that makes every
stinking thing a secret. He delivers you common matters with great
conjuration of silence, and whispers you in the ear acts of parliament.
You may as soon wrest a tooth from him as a paper, and whatsoever he
reads is letters. He dares not talk of great men for fear of bad
comments, and _he knows not how his words may be misapplied_. Ask his
opinion, and he tells you his doubt; and he never hears any thing more
astonishedly than what he knows before. His words are like the cards at
primivist,[23] where 6 is 18, and 7, 21; for they never signify what
they sound; but if he tell you he will do a thing, it is as much as if
he swore he would not. He is one, indeed, that takes all men to be
craftier than they are, and puts himself to a great deal of affliction
to hinder their plots and designs, where they mean freely. He has been
long a riddle himself, but at last finds OEdipuses; for his over-acted
dissimulation discovers him, and men do with him as they would with
Hebrew letters, spell him backwards and read him.
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