Whatsoever he takes to he is very full of, and believes every
man else to be so too, as if his own taste were the same in every man's
palate. If he be a virtuoso, he applies himself with so much earnestness
to what he undertakes that he puts his reason out of joint and strains
his judgment; and there is hardly anything in the world so slight or
serious that some one or other has not squandered away his brains and
time and fortune upon to no other purpose but to be ridiculous. He is
exempted from a dark room and a doctor, because there is no danger in
his frenzy; otherwise he has as good a title to fresh straw as another.
Humour is but a crookedness of the mind, a disproportioned swelling of
the brain, that draws the nourishment from the other parts to stuff an
ugly and deformed crup-shoulder. If it have the luck to meet with many
of its own temper, instead of being ridiculous it becomes a church, and
from jest grows to earnest.
A LEADER OF A FACTION
Sets the psalm, and all his party sing after him. He is like a figure in
arithmetic; the more ciphers he stands before the more his value amounts
to. He is a great haranguer, talks himself into authority, and, like a
parrot, climbs with his beak. He appears brave in the head of his party,
but braver in his own; for vainglory leads him, as he does them, and
both, many times out of the King's highway, over hedges and ditches, to
find out by-ways and shorter cuts, which generally prove the farthest
about, but never the nearest home again.
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