He differs from a just historian as a
joiner does from a carpenter; the one does things plainly and
substantially for use, and the other carves and polishes merely for show
and ornament.
A LIBELLER
Is a certain classic author that handles his subject-matter very
ruggedly, and endeavours with his own evil words to corrupt another
man's good manners. All his works treat but of two things, his own
malice and another man's faults, both which he describes in very proper
and pertinent language. He is not much concerned whether what he writes
be true or false; that's nothing to his purpose, which aims only at
filthy and bitter, and therefore his language is, like pictures of the
devil, the fouler the better. He robs a man of his good name, not for
any good it will do him (for he dares not own it), but merely, as a
jackdaw steals money, for his pleasure. His malice has the same success
with other men's charity, to be rewarded in private; for all he gets is
but his own private satisfaction and the testimony of an evil
conscience; for which, if it be discovered, he suffers the worst kind of
martyrdom and is paid with condign punishment, so that at the best he
has but his labour for his pains. He deals with a man as the Spanish
Inquisition does with heretics, clothes him in a coat painted with
hellish shapes of fiends, and so shows him to the rabble to render him
the more odious. He exposes his wit like a bastard, for the next comer
to take up and put out to nurse, which it seldom fails of, so ready is
every man to contribute to the infamy of another.
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