He delights most in attempting
things beyond his reach, and the greater distance he shoots at, the
farther he is sure to be off his mark. He shows his parts as drawers do
a room at a tavern, to entertain them at the expense of their time and
patience. He inverts the moral of that fable of him that caressed his
dog for fawning and leaping up upon him and beat his ass for doing the
same thing, for it is all one to him whether he be applauded by an ass
or a wiser creature, so he be but applauded.
AN INTELLIGENCER
Would give a penny for any statesman's thought at any time. He travels
abroad to guess what princes are designing by seeing them at church or
dinner, and will undertake to unriddle a government at first sight, and
tell what plots she goes with, male or female; and discover, like a
mountebank, only by seeing the public face of affairs, what private
marks there are in the most secret parts of the body politic. He is so
ready at reasons of State, that he has them, like a lesson, by rote; but
as charlatans make diseases fit their medicines, and not their medicines
diseases, so he makes all public affairs conform to his own established
reason of State, and not his reason, though the case alter ever so much,
comply with them. He thinks to obtain a great insight into State affairs
by observing only the outside pretences and appearances of things, which
are seldom or never true, and may be resolved several ways, all equally
probable; and therefore his penetrations into these matters are like the
penetrations of cold into natural bodies, without any sense of itself or
the thing it works upon.
Pages:
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427