All his opinions are like wefts and
strays that are apt to straggle from their owners and belong to the lord
of the manor where they are taken up. His soul has no retentive faculty,
but suffers everything to run from him as fast as he receives it. His
whole life is like a preposterous ague in which he has his hot fit
always before his cold one, and is never in a constant temper. His
principles and resolves are but a kind of movables, which he will not
endure to be fastened to any freehold, but left loose to be conveyed
away at pleasure as occasion shall please to dispose of him. His soul
dwells, like a Tartar, in a hoord, without any settled habitation, but
is always removing and dislodging from place to place. He changes his
head oftener than a deer, and when his imaginations are stiff and at
their full growth, he casts them off to breed new ones, only to cast off
again the next season. All his purposes are built on air, the
chamelion's diet, and have the same operation to make him change colour
with every object he comes near. He pulls off his judgment as commonly
as his hat to every one he meets with. His word and his deed are all
one, for when he has given his word he has done, and never goes farther.
His judgment, being unsound, has the same operation upon him that a
disease has upon a sick man, that makes him find some ease in turning
from side to side, and still the last is the most uneasy.
A GLUTTON
Eats his children, as the poets say Saturn did, and carries his felicity
and all his concernments in his paunch.
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