His clothes were never young in our
memory; you might make long epochas from them, and put them into the
almanack with the dear year[92] and the great frost,[93] and he is known
by them longer than his face. He is one never gave alms in his life, and
yet is as charitable to his neighbour as himself. He will redeem a penny
with his reputation, and lose all his friends to boot; and his reason
is, he will not be undone. He never pays anything but with strictness of
law, for fear of which only he steals not. He loves to pay short a
shilling or two in a great sum, and is glad to gain that when he can no
more. He never sees friend but in a journey to save the charges of an
inn, and then only is not sick; and his friends never see him but to
abuse him. He is a fellow indeed of a kind of frantic thrift, and one of
the strangest things that wealth can work.
A MERE GREAT MAN
Is so much heraldry without honour, himself less real than his title.
His virtue is, that he was his father's son, and all the expectation of
him to beget another. A man that lives merely to preserve another's
memory, and let us know who died so many years ago. One of just as much
use as his images, only he differs in this, that he can speak himself,
and save the fellow of Westminster[94] a labour: and he remembers
nothing better than what was out of his life. His grandfathers and their
acts are his discourse, and he tells them with more glory than they did
them; and it is well they did enough, or else he had wanted matter.
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