A HERALD
Calls himself a king because he has power and authority to hang, draw,
and quarter arms. For assuming a jurisdiction over the distributive
justice of titles of honour, as far as words extend, he gives himself as
great a latitude that way as other magistrates use to do where they have
authority and would enlarge it as far as they can. 'Tis true he can make
no lords nor knights of himself, but as many squires and gentlemen as he
pleases, and adopt them into what family they have a mind. His dominions
abound with all sorts of cattle, fish, and fowl, and all manner of
manufactures, besides whole fields of gold and silver, which he
magnificently bestows upon his followers or sells as cheap as lands in
Jamaica. The language they use is barbarous, as being but a dialect of
pedlar's French or the Egyptian, though of a loftier sound, and in the
propriety affecting brevity, as the other does verbosity. His business
is like that of all the schools, to make plain things hard with
perplexed methods and insignificant terms, and then appear learned in
making them plain again. He professes arms not for use, but ornament
only, and yet makes the basest things in the world, as dogs' turds and
women's spindles, weapons of good and worshipful bearings. He is wiser
than the fellow that sold his ass, but kept the shadow for his own use;
for he sells only the shadow (that is, the picture) and keeps the ass
himself. He makes pedigrees as apothecaries do medicines when they put
in one ingredient for another that they have not by them; by this means
he often makes incestuous matches, and causes the son to many the
mother.
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