When they break loose they are like a public ruin, in which the highest
parts lie undermost, and make the noblest fabrics heaps of rubbish. They
are like the sea, that's stirred into a tumult with every blast of wind
that blows upon it, till it become a watery Apennine, and heap mountain
billows upon one another, as once the giants did in the war with heaven.
A crowd is their proper element, in which they make their way with their
shoulders as pigs creep through hedges. Nothing in the world delights
them so much as the ruin of great persons or any calamity in which they
have no share, though they get nothing by it. They love nothing but
themselves in the likeness of one another, and, like sheep, run all that
way the first goes, especially if it be against their governors, whom
they have a natural disaffection to.
A KNIGHT OF THE POST
Is a retailer of oaths, a deposition-monger, an evidence-maker, that
lives by the labour of his conscience. He takes money to kiss the
Gospel, as Judas did Christ when he betrayed Him. As a good conscience
is a continual feast, so an ill one is with him his daily food. He plies
at a court of justice, as porters do at a market, and his business is to
bear witness, as they do burdens for any man that will pay them for it.
He will swear his ears through an inch-board, and wears them merely by
favour of the Court; for, being _amicus curiae_, they are willing to let
him keep the pillory out of possession, though he has forfeited his
right never so often; for when he is once outed of his ears he is past
his labour, and can do the commonwealth of practisers no more service.
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