He has much of honour
according to the original sense of it, which among the ancients, Gellius
says, signified injury. His prosperity was greater than his brain could
bear, and he is drunk with it; and if he should take a nap as long as
Epimenides or the Seven Sleepers he would never be sober again. He took
his degree and went forth lord by mandamus, without performing exercises
of merit. His honour's but an immunity from worth, and his nobility a
dispensation for doing things ignoble. He expects that men's hats should
fly off before him like a storm, and not presume to stand in the way of
his prospect, which is always over their heads. All the advantage he has
is but to go before or sit before, in which his nether parts take place
of his upper, that continue still, in comparison, but commoners. He is
like an open summer-house, that has no furniture but bare seats. All he
has to show for his honour is his patent, which will not be in season
until the third or fourth generation, if it lasts so long. His very
creation supposes him nothing before, and as tailors rose by the fall of
Adam, and came in, like thorns and thistles, with the curse, so did he
by the frailty of his master. His very face is his gentleman-usher, that
walks before him in state, and cries "Give way!" He is as stiff as if he
had been dipped in petrifying water and turned into his own statue. He
is always taking the name of his honour in vain, and will rather damn it
like a knighthood of the post than want occasion to pawn it for every
idle trifle, perhaps for more than it is worth, or any man will give to
redeem it; and in this he deals uprightly, though perhaps in
nothing else.
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