These rules are all they have to show for their title, and yet not one
of them can tell whether those they had them from came honestly by them.
Virgil's description of fame, that reaches from earth to the stars, _tam
ficti pravique tenax_, to carry lies and knavery, will serve astrologers
without any sensible variation. He is a fortune-seller, a retailer of
destiny, and petty chapman to the planets. He casts nativities as
gamesters do false dice, and by slurring and palming sextile, quartile,
and trine, like _six, quatre, trois_, can throw what chance he pleases.
He sets a figure as cheats do a main at hazard, and gulls throw away
their money at it. He fetches the grounds of his art so far off, as well
from reason as the stars, that, like a traveller, he is allowed to lie
by authority; and as beggars that have no money themselves believe all
others have, and beg of those that have as little as themselves, so the
ignorant rabble believe in him though he has no more reason for what he
professes than they.
A LAWYER
Is a retailer of justice that uses false lights, false weights, and
false measures. He measures right and wrong by his retaining fee, and,
like a French duellist, engages on that side that first bespeaks him,
though it be against his own brother; not because it is right, but
merely upon a punctilio of profit, which is better than honour to him,
because riches will buy nobility, and nobility nothing, as having no
intrinsic value. He sells his opinion, and engages to maintain the title
against all that claim under him, but no further.
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