Methinks the Turk should licence diurnals because he prohibits learning
and books. A library of diurnals is a wardrobe of frippery; 'tis a just
idea of a Limbo of the infants. I saw one once that could write with his
toes, by the same token I could have wished he had worn his copies for
socks; 'tis he without doubt from whom the diurnals derive their
pedigree, and they have a birthright accordingly, being shuffled out at
the bed's feet of history. To what infinite numbers an historian would
multiply should he crumble into elves of this profession? To supply this
smallness they are fain to join forces, so they are not singly but as
the custom is in a croaking committee. They tug at the pen like slaves
at the oar, a whole bank together; they write in the posture that the
Swedes gave fire in, over one another's heads. It is said there is more
of them go to a suit of clothes than to a _Britannicus;_ in this
polygamy the clothes breed and cannot determine whose issue is
lawfully begotten.
And here I think it were not amiss to take a particular how he is
accoutred, and so do by him as he in his Siquis for the wall-eyed mare,
or the crop flea-bitten, give you the marks of the beast. I begin with
his head, which is ever in clouts, as if the nightcap should make
affidavit that the brain was pregnant. To what purpose doth the _Pia
Mater_ lie in so dully in her white formalities; sure she hath had hard
labour, for the brows have squeezed for it, as you may perceive by his
buttered bon-grace that film of a demicastor; 'tis so thin and unctuous
that the sunbeams mistake it for a vapour, and are like to cap him; so
it is right heliotrope, it creaks in the shine and flaps in the shade;
whatever it be I wish it were able to call in his ears.
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