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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Visions of Dom Francisco de Quevedo
+Villegas, by Dom Francisco de Quevedo, Translated by Roger L'Estrange
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Visions of Dom Francisco de Quevedo Villegas
+
+
+Author: Dom Francisco de Quevedo
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 24, 2013  [eBook #41908]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VISIONS OF DOM FRANCISCO DE
+QUEVEDO VILLEGAS***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1904 Methuen & Co. edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+
+
+
+
+                              THE VISIONS OF
+                         DOM FRANCISCO DE QUEVEDO
+                                 VILLEGAS
+                     KNIGHT OF THE ORDER OF ST. JAMES
+
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                          MADE ENGLISH BY R. L.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                              METHUEN & CO.
+                                  LONDON
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+
+THIS Issue, first published in 1904, is founded on the Third Edition,
+corrected, published by H. Herringman in 1668.
+
+
+
+
+TO THE READERS GENTLE AND SIMPLE
+
+
+THIS Preface is merely for fashion-sake, to fill a space, and please the
+stationer, who says ’tis neither usual nor handsome, to leap immediately
+from the title-page to the matter.  So that, in short, a Preface ye have,
+together with the reason of it, both under one: but as to the ordinary
+mode and pretence of prefaces, the translator desires to be excused.  For
+he makes a conscience of a lie, and it were a damned one, to tell ye,
+that he has published this, either to gratify the importunity of friends,
+or to oblige the public, or for any other reason of a hundred, that are
+commonly given in excuse of scribbling.  Not but that he loves his
+friends, as well as any man, and has taken their opinion along with him.
+Nor, but that he loves the public too (as many a man does a coy mistress
+that has made his heart ache.)  But to pass from what had no effect upon
+him in this publication, to that which overruled him in it.  It was pure
+spite.  For he has had hard measure among the physicians, the lawyers,
+the women, etc.  And Dom Francisco de Quevedo, in English, revenges him
+upon all his enemies.  For it is a satire, that taxes corruption of
+manners, in all sorts and degrees of people, without reflecting upon
+particular states or persons.  It is full of sharpness and morality; and
+has found so good entertainment in the world, that it wanted only English
+of being baptized into all Christian languages.
+
+
+
+
+THE FIRST VISION OF THE ALGOUAZIL (OR CATCHPOLE) POSSESSED
+
+
+GOING t’other day to hear mass at a convent in this town, the door it
+seems was shut, and a world of people pressing and begging to get in.
+Upon enquiry what the matter was; they told me of a demoniac to be
+exorcised; (or dispossessed) which made me put in for one, to see the
+ceremony: though to little purpose; for when I had half smothered myself
+in the throng, I was e’en glad to get out again, and bethink myself of my
+lodging.  Upon my way homeward, at the street’s end, it was my fortune to
+meet a familiar friend of mine of the same convent; who told me over
+again what I had heard before, and taking notice of my curiosity, bade me
+follow him; which I did, till with his _passe-partout_ he brought me
+through a little back-door into the church, and so into the vestry: where
+we saw a wretched kind of a dog-looked fellow with a tippet about his
+neck, as ill ordered as you’d wish; his clothes all in tatters, his hands
+bound behind him, roaring and tearing after a most hideous manner.
+“Bless me,” quoth I, crossing myself, “what spectacle have we here?”
+“This,” said the good Father who was to do the feat, “is a man that’s
+possessed with an evil spirit.”  “That’s a damned lie,” with respect of
+the company, cried the devil that tormented him, “for this is not a man
+possessed with a devil, but a devil possessed with a man; and therefore
+you should do well to have a care what you say, for it is most evident,
+both by the question and answer, that you are but a company of sots.  You
+are to understand that we devils never enter into the body of a
+catchpole, but by force, and in spite of our hearts; and therefore to
+speak properly, you are to say, this is a devil catchpoled, and not a
+catchpole bedevilled.  And, to give you your due, you men can deal better
+with us devils, than with the catchpoles, for we fly from the cross,
+whereas they make use of it, for a cloak for their villainy.
+
+“But though we differ thus in our humours, we hold a very fair
+correspondence in our offices: if we draw men into judgment and
+condemnation, so do the catchpoles; we pray for an increase of wickedness
+in the world, so do they; nay and more zealously than we, for it is their
+livelihood, and we do it only for company: and in this the catchpoles are
+worse than the devils; they prey upon their own kind, and worry one
+another.  For our parts, we are angels still, though black ones, and were
+turned into devils only for aspiring into an equality with our Maker:
+whereas the very corruption of mankind is the generation of a catchpole.
+So that, my good Father, your labour is but lost in plying this wretch
+with relics; for you may as soon redeem a soul from hell, as a prey out
+of his clutches.  In fine, your algouazils (or catchpoles) and your
+devils are both of an order, only your catchpole-devils wear shoes and
+stockings, and we go barefoot after the fashion of this reverend Father;
+and (to deal plainly) have a very hard time on’t.”
+
+I was not a little surprised to find the devil so great a sophister, but
+all this notwithstanding, the holy man went on with his exorcism, and to
+stop the spirit’s mouth, washed his face with a little holy water, which
+made the demoniac ten times madder than before, and set him a yelping so
+horribly, that it deafened the company, and made the very ground under us
+to tremble.  “And now,” says he, “you may, perchance, imagine this
+extravagance to be the effect of your holy water; but let me tell you,
+that mere water itself would have done the same thing; for your catchpole
+hates nothing in this world like water [especially that of a Gray’s Inn
+pump].  But to conclude, they are so reprobated a sort of Christians,
+that they have quitted even the very name of misins, by which they were
+formerly known, for that of algouazils; the latter being of Pagan
+extraction, and more suitable to their manners.”
+
+“Come, come,” says the Father, “there is no ear, nor credit to be given
+to this villain; set but his tongue at liberty, and you shall have him
+fall foul upon the Government, and the ministers of justice, for keeping
+the world in order and suppressing wickedness, because it spoils his
+market.”  “No more chopping of logic good Mr. Conjurer,” says the devil,
+“for there’s more in’t than you are aware of; but if you’ll do a poor
+devil a good office, give me my dispatch out of this accursed algouazil;
+for I am a devil, you must know, of reputation and quality, and shall
+never be able to endure the gibes and affronts will be put upon me at my
+return to hell, for having kept this rascal company.”  “All in good
+time,” said the Father, “thou shalt have thy discharge; that is to say,
+in pity to this miserable creature, and not for thy own sake.  But tell
+me now, what makes thee torment him thus?”  “Nothing in the world,” quoth
+the devil, “but a contest betwixt him and me, which was the greater devil
+of the two.”
+
+The conjurer did not at all relish these wild and malicious replies; but
+to me the dialogue was extreme pleasant, especially being by this time a
+little familiarized with the devil.  “Upon which confidence, my good
+Father,” said I, “here are none but friends; and I may speak to you as my
+confessor, and the confidant of all the secrets of my soul; I have a
+great mind, with your leave, to ask the devil a few questions, and who
+knows but a man may be the better for his answers, though perchance
+contrary to his intention! keep him only in the interim from tormenting
+this poor creature.”  The conjurer granted my request, and the spirit
+went on with his babble.  “Well,” says he smiling, “the devil shall never
+want a friend at court, so long as there’s a poet within the walls.  And
+indeed the poets do us many a good turn, both by pimping and otherwise;
+but if you,” said he, “should not be kind to us,” looking upon me,
+“you’ll be thought very ungrateful, considering the honour of your
+entertainment now in hell.”  I asked him then what store of poets they
+had?  “Whole swarms,” says the devil; “so many, that we have been forced
+to make more room for them: nor is there anything in nature so pleasant
+as a poet in the first year of his probation; he comes ye laden forsooth,
+with letters of recommendation to our superiors, and enquires very
+gravely for Charon, Cerberus, Rhadamanthus, Æacus, Minos.”
+
+“Well,” said I, “but what’s their punishment?” (for I began now to make
+the poets’ case my own).  “Their punishments,” quoth the devil, “are
+many, and suited to the trade they drive.  Some are condemned to hear
+other men’s works: (and this is the plague of the fiddlers too) we have
+others that are in for a thousand year, and yet still poring upon some
+old stanzas they have made of jealousy.  Some again are beating their
+foreheads with the palms of their hands, and even boring their very noses
+with hot irons, in rage that they cannot come to a resolution, whether
+they shall say face or visage; whether they shall write jail or gaol;
+whether cony or cunny, because it comes from _cuniculus_, a rabbit.
+Others are biting their nails to the quick, and at their wits’ end for a
+rime to chimney; and dozing up and down in a brown study, till they drop
+into some hole at last, and give us trouble enough to get them out again.
+But they that suffer the most, and fare the worst, are your comic poets,
+for whoring so many queens and princesses upon the stage, and coupling
+ladies of honour with lackeys, and noblemen with common strumpets, in the
+winding up of their plays; and for giving the bastinado to Alexander and
+Julius Cæsar in their interludes and farces.  Now be it known to you,
+that we do not lodge these with other poets, but with pettifoggers and
+attorneys, as common dealers in the mystery of shifting, shuffling,
+forging, and cheating: and now for the discipline of hell, you are to
+understand we have incomparable harbingers and quartermasters; insomuch
+that let them come in whole caravans, as it happened t’other day, every
+man is in his quarter before you can say what’s this.
+
+“There came to us several tradesmen; the first of them a poor rogue that
+made profession of drawing the long bow; and him we were about to put
+among the armourers, but one of the company moved and carried it, that
+since he was so good at draughts, he might be sent to the clerks and
+scriveners; a sort of people that will fit you with draughts, good and
+bad, of all sorts and sizes, and to all purposes.  Another called himself
+a cutter, we asked him whether in wood or stone?  ‘Neither,’ said he,
+‘but in cloth and stuff’ (_Anglicè_ a tailor); and him we turned over to
+those that were in for detraction and calumny, and for cutting large
+thongs out of other men’s leather.  There was a blind fellow would fain
+have been among the poets, but (for likeness’ sake) we quartered him
+among the lovers.  After him, came a sexton, or (as he styled himself) a
+burier of the dead; and then a cook that was troubled in conscience for
+putting off cats for hares: These were dispatched away to the pastry-men.
+A matter of half a dozen crack-brained fools we disposed of among the
+astrologers and alchymists.  In the number, there was one notorious
+murderer, and him we packed away to the gentlemen of the faculty, the
+physicians.  The broken merchants we kennelled with Judas for making ill
+bargains.  Corrupt ministers and magistrates, with the thief on the left
+hand.  The embroilers of affairs, and the water-bearers take up with the
+vintners; and the brokers with the Jews.  Upon the whole matter, the
+policy of hell is admirable, where every man has his place according to
+his condition.”
+
+“As I remember,” said I, “you were speaking e’en now concerning lovers.
+Pray tell me, have you many of them in your dominions?  I ask, because I
+am myself a little subject to the itch of love, as well as poetry.”
+“Love,” says the devil, “is like a great spot of oil, that diffuses
+itself everywhere, and consequently hell cannot but be sufficiently
+stocked with that sort of vermin.  But let me tell you now, we have
+several sorts of lovers; some dote upon themselves; others upon their
+pelf; these upon their own discourses; those upon their own actions; and
+once in an age perchance, comes a fellow that dotes upon his own wife;
+but this is very rare, for the jades commonly bring their husbands to
+repentance, and then the devil may throw his cap at them.  But above all,
+for sport (if there can be any in hell) commend me to those gaudy
+monsieurs, who by the variety of colours and ribands they wear (favours
+as they call them) one would swear, were only dressed up for a sample, or
+kind of inventory of all the gewgaws that are to be had for love or money
+at the mercers.  Others you shall have so overcharged with perruque, that
+you’ll hardly know the head of a cavalier from the ordinary block of a
+tire-woman: and some again you’d take for carriers, by their packets and
+bundles of love-letters; which being made combustible by the fire and
+flame they treat of, we are so thrifty, as to employ upon the singeing of
+their own tails, for the saving of better fuel.  But, oh! the pleasant
+postures of the maiden-lover, when he is upon the practice of the
+gentle-leer, and embracing the air for his mistress!  Others we have that
+are condemned for feeling and yet never come to the touch: these pass for
+a kind of buffoon pretenders; ever upon the vigil, but never arrive at
+the festival.  Some again have lost themselves with Judas for a kiss.
+
+“One story lower is the abode of contented cuckolds; a nasty poisonous
+place, and strewed all over with the horns of rams and bulls, etc.  Now
+these are so well read in woman, and know their destiny so well
+beforehand, that they never so much as trouble their heads for the
+matter.  Ye come next to the admirers of old women; and these are
+wretches of so depraved an appetite, that if they were not kept tied up,
+and in chains, they’d horse the very devils themselves, and put Barabbas
+to his trumps, to defend his buttocks: for the truth is, whatever you may
+think of a devil, he passes with them for a very Adonis or Narcissus.
+
+“So much for your curiosity; a word now for your instruction.  If you
+would make an interest in hell, you must give over that roguy way ye have
+got of abusing the devils in your shows, pictures, and emblems: one while
+forsooth we are painted with claws, or talons, like eagles, or griffons.
+Another while we are dressed up with tails, like so many hackney-jades
+with their fly-flaps: and now and then ye shall see a devil with a
+coxcomb.  Now I will not deny, but some of us may indeed be very well
+taken for hermits, and philosophers.  If you can help us in this point,
+do; and we shall be ready to do ye one good turn for another.  I was
+asking Michael Angelo here a while ago, why he drew the devils in his
+great piece of the Last Judgment, with so many monkey faces, and
+jack-pudding postures.  His answer was, that he followed his fancy,
+without any malice in the world, for as then, he had never seen any
+devils; nor (indeed) did he believe that there were any; but he has now
+learned the contrary to his cost.  There’s another thing too we take
+extremely ill, which is, that in your ordinary discourses, ye are out
+with your purse presently to every rascal, and calling of him devil.  As
+for example.  Do you see how this devil of a tailor has spoiled my suit?
+how the devil has made me wait? how this devil has cozened me, etc.,
+which is very ill done, and no small disparagement to our quality, to be
+ranked with tailors: a company of slaves, that serve us in hell only for
+brush-wood; and they are fain to beg hard to be admitted at all: though I
+confess they have possession on their sides, and custom, which is another
+law.  Being in possession of theft, and stolen goods; they make much more
+conscience of keeping your stuffs, than your holy days, grumbling and
+domineering at every turn, if they have not the same respect with the
+children of the family.  Ye have another trick, too, of giving everything
+to the devil, that displeases ye, which we cannot but take very unkindly.
+‘The devil take thee,’ says one: a goodly present I warrant ye; but the
+devil has somewhat else to do, than to take and carry away all that’s
+given him; if they’ll come of themselves, let them come and welcome.
+Another gives that whelp of a lackey to the devil; but the devil will
+none of your lackeys, he thanks ye for your love; a pack of rogues that
+are commonly worse than devils, and to say the truth, they are good
+neither roast nor sodden.  ‘I give that Italian to the devil,’ cries a
+third; thank you for nothing: for ye shall have an Italian will choose
+the devil himself, and take him by the nose like mustard.  Some again
+will be giving a Spaniard to the devil; but he has been so cruel
+where-ever he has got footing, that we had rather have his room than his
+company, and make a present to the grand-signior of his nutmegs.”
+
+Here the devil stopped, and in the same instant, there happening a slight
+scuffle, betwixt a couple of conceited coxcombs, which should go
+foremost: I turned to see the matter, and cast my eye upon a certain
+tax-gatherer, that had undone a friend of mine: and in some sort to
+revenge myself of this ass in a lion’s skin, I asked the devil, whether
+they had not of that sort of blood-suckers among the rest, in their
+dominions (an informing, projecting generation of men, and the very bane
+of a kingdom).  “You know little,” says he, “if you do not know these
+vermin to be the right heirs of perdition, and that they claim hell for
+their inheritance: and yet we are now e’en upon the point of discarding
+them, for they are so pragmatical, and ungrateful, there’s no enduring of
+them.  They are at this present in consultation about an impost upon the
+highway to hell; and indeed payments run so high already, and are so
+likely to increase too, that ’tis much feared in the end, we shall quite
+lose our trading and commerce.  But if ever they come to put this in
+execution, we shall be so bold, as to treat them next bout, to the tune
+of ‘Fortune my foe,’ etc. and make them cool their heels on the wrong
+side of the door, which will be worse than hell to them, for it leaves
+them no retreat, being expelled paradise, and purgatory already.”  “This
+race of vipers,” said I, “will never be quiet, till they tax the way to
+heaven itself.”  “Oh,” quoth the devil, “that had been done long since,
+if they had found the play worth the candles: but they have had a factor
+abroad now these half-score years, that’s glad to wipe his nose on his
+sleeve still, for want of a handkerchief.”  “But these new impositions,
+upon what I pray ye do they intend to levy them?”  “For that,” quoth the
+devil, “there’s a gentleman of the trade at your elbow can tell you all;”
+pointing to my old friend the publican.  This drew the eyes of the whole
+company upon him, and put him so damnedly out of countenance, that he
+plucked down his hat over his face, clapped his tail between his legs,
+and went his way; with which we were all of us well enough pleased, and
+then the devil went on.  “Well,” said the devil, and laughed, “my voucher
+is departed ye see; but I think I can say as much to this point as
+himself; the impositions now to be set on foot, are upon bare-necked
+ladies, patches, mole-skins, Spanish-paper, and all the _mundus
+muliebris_ more than what is necessary and decent; upon your _tour à la
+mode_, and spring garden coaches; excess in apparel, collations, rich
+furniture, your cheating, and blaspheming gaming ordinaries, and, in
+general, upon whatsoever serves to advance our empire; so that without a
+friend at court, or some good magistrate to help us out at a dead lift,
+and stick to us, we may e’en put up our pipes, and you’ll find hell a
+very desert.”  “Well,” said I, “and methinks I see nothing in all this,
+but what is very reasonable; for to what end serves it but to corrupt
+good manners, stir up ill appetites, provoke and encourage all sorts of
+debauchery, destroy all that is good and honourable in humane society,
+and chalk out in effect the ready way to the devil.
+
+“But you said something e’en now of magistrates, I hope,” said I, “there
+are no judges in hell.”  “You may as well imagine,” cried the spirit,
+“that there are no devils there; for let me tell you (friend mine) your
+corrupt judges are the great spawners that supply our lake; for what are
+those millions of catchpoles, proctors, attorneys, clerks, barristers,
+that come sailing to us every day in shoals, but the fry of such judges!
+Nay sometimes, in a lucky year, for cheating, forging, and forswearing,
+we can hardly find cask to put them in.”
+
+“From hence now,” quoth I, “would you infer, that there’s no justice upon
+the face of the earth.”  “Very right,” quoth the devil, “for Astræa
+(which is the same thing) is fled long since to heaven.  Do not ye know
+the story?”  “No,” said I.  “Then,” quoth the devil, “mind me and I’ll
+tell ye it.
+
+“Once upon a time Truth and Justice came together to take up their
+quarters upon the earth: but the one being naked, and the other very
+severe and plain-dealing, they could not meet with anybody that would
+receive them.  At last, when they had wandered a long time like vagabonds
+in the open air, Truth was glad to take up her lodging with a mute; and
+Justice, perceiving that though her name was much used for a cloak to
+knavery, yet that she herself was in no esteem, took up a resolution of
+returning to heaven: and in order to her journey, she bade adieu in the
+first place to all courts, palaces, and great cities, and went into the
+country, where she met with some few poor simple cottagers, that gave her
+entertainment; but malice and persecution found her out in the end, and
+she was banished thence too.  She presented herself in many places, and
+people asked her what she was?  She answered them, ‘Justice,’ for she
+would not lie for the matter.  ‘Justice?’ cried they, ‘she is a stranger
+to us; tell her here’s nothing for her,’ and shut the door.  Upon these
+repulses, she took wing, and away she went to heaven, hardly leaving so
+much as the bare print of her footsteps behind her.  Her name however is
+not yet forgotten, and she’s pictured with a sceptre in her hand, and is
+still called Justice; but call her what ye will, she makes as good a fire
+in hell as a tailor; and for sleight of hand, puts down all the gilts,
+cheats, picklocks, and trepanners in the world: to say the truth, avarice
+is grown to that height, that men employ all the faculties of soul and
+body to rob and deceive.  The lecher, does not he steal away the honour
+of his mistress? (though with her consent).  The attorney picks your
+pocket, and shows you a law for’t; the comedian gets your money and your
+time, with reciting other men’s labours; the lover cozens you with his
+eyes; the eloquent, with his tongue; the valiant, with his arm; the
+musician, with his voice and fingers; the astrologer, with his
+calculations; the apothecary, with sickness and health; the surgeon, with
+blood; and the physician, with death itself; and in some sort or other,
+they are all cheats; but the catchpole (in the name of justice) abuses
+you with his whole man; he watches you with his eyes; follows you with
+his feet; seizes with his hands; accuses with his tongue; and in fine,
+put it in your litany, from catchpoles, as well as devils, _libera nos
+domine_.”
+
+“But how comes it,” said I, “that you have not coupled the women with the
+thieves? for they are both of a trade.”  “Not a word of women as ye love
+me,” quoth the devil, “for we are so tired out with their importunities;
+so deafened with the eternal clack of their tongues, that we start at the
+very thought of them.  And to say the truth, hell were no ill winter
+quarter, if it were not so overstocked with that sort of cattle.  Since
+the death of the Witch of Endor, it has been all their business to
+improve themselves in subtlety and malice, and to set us together by the
+ears among ourselves.  Nay some of them are confident enough, to tell us
+to our teeth, that when we have done our worst, they’ll give us a Rowland
+for our Oliver.  Only this comfort we have, that they are a cheaper
+plague to us, than they are to you; for we have no Exchanges, Hyde Parks,
+or Spring Gardens in our territories.”
+
+“You are well stored then with women, I see, but of which have you most?”
+said I, “handsome, or ill-favoured?”  “Oh, of the ill-favoured, six for
+one,” quoth the devil, “for your beauties can never want gallants to lay
+their appetites; and many of them, when they come at last to have their
+bellies full, e’en give over the sport, repent and ’scape.  Whereas
+nobody will touch the ill-favoured without a pair of tongs; and for want
+of water to quench their fire, they come to us such skeletons, that they
+are enough to affright the devil himself.  For they are most commonly,
+old, and accompany their last groans with a curse upon the younger that
+are to survive them.  I carried away one t’other day of threescore and
+ten, that I took just in the nick, as she was upon a certain exercise to
+remove obstructions: and when I came to land her, alas for the poor
+woman! what a terrible fit had she got of the toothache! when upon
+search, the devil a tooth had she left in her head, only she belied her
+chops to save her credit.”
+
+“You have exceedingly satisfied me,” said I, “in all your answers; but
+pray’e once again, what store of beggars have ye in hell?  Poor people I
+mean.”  “Poor,” quoth the devil, “who are they?”  “Those,” said I, “that
+have no possessions in the world.”  “How can that be,” quoth he, “that
+those should be damned, that have nothing in the world? when men are only
+damned for cleaving to’t.  And briefly I find none of their names in our
+books, which is no wonder, for he that has nothing to trust to, shall be
+left by the devil himself in time of need.  To deal plainly with you,
+where have you greater devils than your flatterers, false friends, lewd
+company, envious persons, than a son, a brother, or a relation, that lies
+in wait for your life to get your fortune, that mourns over you in your
+sickness, and wishes you already at the devil.  Now the poor have none of
+this; they are neither flattered, nor envied, nor befriended, nor
+accompanied: there’s no gaping for their possessions; and in short, they
+are a sort of people that live well, and die better; and there are some
+of them, that would not exchange their rags for royalty itself: they are
+at liberty to go and come at pleasure, be it war or peace; free from
+cares, taxes, and public duties.  They fear no judgments or executions,
+but live as inviolable as if their persons were sacred.  Moreover they
+take no thoughts for tomorrow, but setting a just value on their hours,
+they are good husbands of the present; considering that what is past, is
+as good as dead, and what’s to come, uncertain.  But they say, ‘When the
+devil preaches, the world’s near an end.’”
+
+“The Divine Hand is in this,” said the holy man that performed the
+exorcism, “thou art the father of lies, and yet deliverest truths able to
+mollify and convert a heart of stone.”  “But do not you mistake
+yourself,” quoth the devil, “to suppose that your conversion is my
+business; for I speak these truths to aggravate your guilt, and that you
+may not plead ignorance another day, when you shall be called to answer
+for your transgressions.  ’Tis true, most of you shed tears at parting,
+but ’tis the apprehension of death, and no true repentance for your sins
+that works upon you: for ye are all a pack of hypocrites: or if at any
+time you entertain those reflections, your trouble is, that your body
+will not hold out; and then forsooth ye pretend to pick a quarrel with
+the sin itself.”  “Thou art an impostor,” said the religious, “for there
+are many righteous souls, that draw their sorrow from another fountain.
+But I perceive you have a mind to amuse us, and make us lose time, and
+perchance your own hour is not yet come to quit the body of this
+miserable creature; however, I conjure thee in the name of the Most High
+to leave tormenting him, and to hold thy peace.”  The devil obeyed; and
+the good Father applying himself to us, “My masters,” says he, “though I
+am absolutely of opinion that it is the devil that has talked to us all
+this while through the organ of this unhappy wretch, yet he that well
+weighs what has been said, may doubtless reap some benefit by the
+discourse.  Wherefore without considering whence it came; remember, that
+Saul (although a wicked prince) prophesied; and that honey has been drawn
+out of the mouth of a lion.  Withdraw then, and I shall make it my prayer
+(as ’tis my hope) that this sad and prodigious spectacle may lead you to
+a true sight of your errors, and, in the end, to amendment of life.”
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                       THE END OF THE FIRST VISION
+
+
+
+
+THE SECOND VISION OF DEATH AND HER EMPIRE
+
+
+MEAN souls do naturally breed sad thoughts, and in solitude, they gather
+together in troops to assault the unfortunate; which is the trial
+(according to my observation) wherein the coward does most betray
+himself; and yet cannot I for my life, when I am alone, avoid those
+accidents and surprises in myself, which I condemn in others.  I have
+sometime, upon reading the grave and severe Lucretius, been seized with a
+strange damp; whether from the striking of his counsels upon my passions,
+or some tacit reflection of shame upon myself, I know not.  However, to
+render this confession of my weakness the more excusable, I’ll begin my
+discourse with somewhat out of that elegant and excellent poet.
+
+“Put the case,” says he, “that a voice from heaven should speak to any of
+us after this manner; what dost thou ail, O mortal man, or to what
+purpose is it, to spend thy life in groans, and complaints under the
+apprehension of death? where are thy past tears and pleasures?  Are they
+not vanished and lost in the flux of time, as if thou hadst put water
+into a sieve?  Bethink thyself then of a retreat, and leave the world
+with the same content, and satisfaction, as thou wouldst do a plentiful
+table, and a jolly company upon a full stomach.  Poor fool that thou art!
+thus to macerate and torment thyself, when thou may’st enjoy thy heart at
+ease, and possess thy soul with repose and comfort, etc.”
+
+This passage brought into my mind the words of Job, cap. 14, and I was
+carried on from one meditation to another, till at length, I fell fast
+asleep over my book, which I ascribed rather to a favourable providence,
+than to my natural disposition.  So soon as my soul felt herself at
+liberty, she gave me the entertainment of this following comedy, my fancy
+supplying both the stage and the company.
+
+In the first scene, entered a troop of physicians, upon their mules, with
+deep foot-cloths, marching in no very good order, sometime fast, sometime
+slow, and to say the truth, most commonly in a huddle.  They were all
+wrinkled and withered about the eyes; I suppose with casting so many sour
+looks upon the piss-pots and close-stools of their patients, bearded like
+goats; and their faces so over-grown with hair, that their fingers could
+hardly find the way to their mouths.  In the left hand they held their
+reins, and their gloves rolled up together; and in the right, a staff _à
+la mode_, which they carried rather for countenance, than correction;
+(for they understood no other menage than the heel) and all along, head
+and body went too, like a baker upon his panniers.  Divers of them, I
+observed, had huge gold rings upon their fingers, and set with stones of
+so large a size, that they could hardly feel a patient’s pulse, without
+minding him of his monument.  There were more than a good many of them,
+and a world of puny practisers at their heels, that came out graduates,
+by conversing rather with the mules than the doctors: well! said I to
+myself, if there goes no more than this to the making a physician, it is
+no marvel we pay so dear for their experience.
+
+After these, followed a long train of mountebank-apothecaries, laden with
+pestles, and mortars, suppositories, spatulas, glister-pipes and
+syringes, ready charged, and as mortal as gun-shot, and several titled
+boxes with remedies without, and poisons within: ye may observe that when
+a patient comes to die, the apothecary’s mortar rings the passing-bell,
+as the priest’s requiem finishes the business.  An apothecary’s shop is
+(in effect) no other than the physician’s armoury, that supplies him with
+weapons; and (to say the truth) the instruments of the apothecary and the
+soldier are much of a quality: what are their boxes but petards? their
+syringes, pistols; and their pills, but bullets?  And after all,
+considering their purgative medicines, we may properly enough call their
+shops purgatory; and why not their persons hell? their patients the
+damned? and their masters the devils?  These apothecaries were in
+jackets, wrought all over with Rs, struck through like wounded hearts,
+and in the form of the first character of their prescriptions, which (as
+they tell us) signifies _recipe_ (take thou) but we find it to stand for
+_recipio_ (I take.)  Next to this figure, they write ana, ana, which is
+as much as to say an ass, an ass; and after this, march the ounces and
+the scruples; an incomparable cordial to a dying man; the former to
+dispatch the body, and the latter, to put the soul into the highway to
+the devil.  To hear them call over their simples, would make you swear
+they were raising so many devils.  There’s your opopanax, buphthalmus,
+astaphylinos, alectorolophos, ophioscorodon, anemosphorus, etc.
+
+And by all this formidable bombast, is meant nothing in the world but a
+few paltry roots, as carrots, turnips, skirrets, radish and the like.
+But they have the old proverb at their fingers’ end: “he that knows thee
+will never buy thee;” and therefore everything must be made a mystery, to
+hold their patients in ignorance, and keep up the price of the market.
+And were not the very names of their medicines sufficient to fright away
+any distemper, ’tis to be feared the remedy would prove worse than the
+disease.  Can any pain in nature, think ye, have the confidence to look a
+physician in the face, that comes armed with a drug made of man’s grease?
+though disguised under the name of mummy, to take off the horror and
+disgust of it: or to stay for a dressing with Dr. Whachum’s plaster, that
+shall fetch up a man’s leg to the size of a mill-post?  When I saw these
+people herded with the physicians, methought the old sluttish proverb,
+that says, “there is a great distance between the pulse and the arse,”
+was much to blame for making such a difference in their dignities, for I
+find none at all; but the physician skips in a trice from the pulse to
+the stool and urinal, according to the doctrine of Galen, who sends all
+his disciples to those unsavoury oracles, from whose hands the devil
+himself, if he were sick, would not receive so much as a glister.  Oh!
+these cursed and lawless arbitrators and disposers of our lives! that
+without either conscience or religion, divide our souls and bodies, by
+their damned poisonous potions, scarifications, incisions, excessive
+bleedings, etc., which are but the several ways of executing their
+tyranny and injustice upon us.
+
+In the tail of these, came the surgeons, laden with pincers,
+cranes-bills, catheters, desquamatories, dilaters, scissors, saws; and
+with them so horrid an outcry, of cut, tear, open, saw, flay, burn, that
+my bones were ready to creep one into another for fear of an operation.
+
+The next that came in, I should have taken by their mien, for devils
+disguised, if I had not spied their chains of rotten teeth, which put me
+in some hope they might be tooth-drawers, and so they proved; which is
+yet one of the lewdest trades in the world; for they are good for nothing
+but to depopulate our mouths, and make us old before our time.  Let a man
+but yawn, and ye shall have one of these rogues examining his grinders,
+and there’s not a sound tooth in your head, but he had rather see’t at
+his girdle, than in the place of its nativity: nay, rather than fail,
+he’ll pick a quarrel with your gums.  But that which puts me out of all
+patience, is to see these scoundrels ask twice as much for drawing an old
+tooth as would have bought ye a new one.
+
+“Certainly,” said I to myself, “we are now past the worst, unless the
+devil himself come next.”  And in that instant I heard the brushing of
+guitars, and the rattling of citterns, raking over certain _passacailles_
+and sarabands.  These are a kennel of barbers thought I, or I’ll be
+hanged; and any man that had ever seen a barber’s shop might have told
+you as much without a conjurer, both by the music and by the very
+instruments, which are as proper a part of a barber’s furniture as his
+comb-cases and wash-balls.  It was to me a pleasant entertainment, to see
+them lathering of asses’ heads, of all sorts and sizes, and their
+customers all the while winking and sputtering over their basins.
+
+Presently after these, appeared a consort of loud and tedious talkers,
+that tired and deafened the company with their shrill, and restless
+gaggle; but as one told me, these were of several sorts.  Some they
+called swimmers from the motion of their arms in all their discourses,
+which was just as if they had been paddling.  Others they called apes
+(and we mimics); these were perpetually making of mops, and mows, and a
+thousand antic ridiculous gestures, in derision and imitation of others.
+In the third place, were make-bates, and sowers of dissension, and these
+were still rolling their eyes (like a Bartlemey puppet, without so much
+as moving the head) and leering over their shoulders, to surprise people
+at unawares in their familiarities, and privacies, and gather matter for
+calumny and detraction.  The liars followed next; and these seemed to be
+a jolly contented sort of people, well fed, and well clothed; and having
+nothing else to trust to, methought it was a strange trade to live upon.
+I need not tell you, that they are never without a full audience, since
+all fools and impertinents are of their congregation.
+
+After these, came a company of meddlers, a pragmatical insolent
+generation of men that will have an oar in every boat, and are indeed the
+bane of honest conversation, and the troublers of all companies and
+affairs, the most prostitute of all flatterers, and only devoted to their
+own profit.  I thought this had been the last scene, because no more came
+upon the stage for a good while; and indeed I wondered that they came so
+late themselves, but one of the babblers told me (unasked) that this kind
+of serpent carrying his venom in his tail; it seemed reasonable, that
+being the most poisonous of the whole gang, they should bring up the
+rear.
+
+I began then to take into thought, what might be the meaning of this
+oglio of people of several conditions and humours met together; but I was
+quickly diverted from that consideration by the apparition of a creature
+which looked as if ’twere of the feminine gender.  It was a person, of a
+thin and slender make, laden with crowns, garlands, sceptres, scythes,
+sheep-hooks, pattens, hobnailed shoes, tiaras, straw hats, mitres,
+Monmouth caps, embroideries, skins, silk, wool, gold, lead, diamonds,
+shells, pearl, and pebbles.  She was dressed up in all the colours of the
+rainbow; she had one eye shut, the other open; young on the one side, and
+old o’ the other.  I thought at first, she had been a great way off, when
+indeed she was very near me, and when I took her to be at my chamber
+door, she was at my bed’s head.  How to unriddle this mystery I knew not;
+nor was it possible for me to make out the meaning of an equipage so
+extravagant, and so fantastically put together.  It gave me no affright,
+however, but on the contrary I could not forbear laughing, for it came
+just then into my mind that I had formerly seen in Italy a farce, where
+the mimic, pretending to come from the other world, was just thus
+accoutred, and never was anything more nonsensically pleasant.  I held as
+long as I could, and at last, I asked what she was.  She answered me, “I
+am Death.”  Death! (the very word brought my heart into my mouth) “and I
+beseech you, madam,” quoth I (with great humility and respect) “whither
+is your honour a going?”  “No further,” said she, “for now I have found
+you, I am at my journey’s end.”  “Alas, alas! and must I die then,” said
+I.  “No, no,” quoth Death, “but I’ll take thee quick along with me; for
+since so many of the dead have been to visit the living, it is but equal
+for once, that one of the living should return a visit to the dead.  Get
+up then and come along; and never hang an arse for the matter; for what
+you will not do willingly, you shall do in spite of your teeth.”  This
+put me in a cold fit; but without more delay up I started, and desired
+leave only to put on my breeches.  “No, no,” said she, “no matter for
+clothes, nobody wears them upon this road; wherefore come away, naked as
+you are, and you’ll travel the better.”  So up I got, without a word more
+and followed her, in such a terror, and amazement, that I was but in an
+ill condition to take a strict account of my passage; yet I remember,
+that upon the way, I told her: “Madam, under correction, you are no more
+like the Deaths that I have seen, than an apple’s like an oyster.  Our
+Death is pictured with a scythe in her hand; and a carcass of bones, as
+clean as if the crows had picked it.”  “Yes, yes,” said she, turning
+short upon me, “I know that very well; but in the meantime your designers
+and painters are but a company of buzzards.  The bones you talk of are
+the dead, or otherwise the miserable remainders of the living; but let me
+tell you that you yourselves are your own death, and that which you call
+death, is but the period of your life, as the first moment of your birth
+is the beginning of your death; and effectually, ye die living, and your
+bones are no more than what death has left and committed to the grave.
+If this were rightly understood, every man would find a _memento mori_,
+or a death’s head, in his own looking-glass; and consider every house
+with a family in’t but as a sepulchre filled with dead bodies; a truth
+which you little dream of, though within your daily view and experience.
+Can you imagine a death elsewhere, and not in yourselves?  Believe’t
+y’are in a shameful mistake; for you yourselves are skeletons before ye
+are aware.”
+
+“But, madam, under favour, what may all these people be that keep your
+ladyship company? and since you are Death (as you say) how comes it, that
+the babblers, and make-bates, are nearer your person, and more in your
+good graces than the physicians?”  “Why,” says she, “there are more
+people talked to death and dispatched by babblers, than by all the
+pestilential diseases in the world.  And then your make-bates, and
+meddlers kill more than your physicians, though (to give the gentlemen of
+the faculty their due) they labour night and day for the enlargement of
+our empire.  For you must understand, that though distempered humours
+make a man sick, ’tis the physician kills him; and looks to be well paid
+for’t too: (and ’tis fit that every man should live by his trade) so that
+when a man is asked, what such or such a one died of, he is not presently
+to make answer, that he died of a fever, pleurisy, the plague, purples,
+or the like; but that he died of the doctor.  In one point, however, I
+must needs acquit the physician; ye know that the style of right
+honourable, and right worshipful, which was heretofore appropriate only
+to persons of eminent degree and quality, is now in our days used by all
+sorts of little people; nay the very barefoot friars, that live under
+vows of humility and mortification, are stung with this itch of title and
+vainglory.  And your ordinary tradesmen, as vintners, tailors, masons,
+and the like, must be all dressed up forsooth in the right worshipful:
+whereas your physician does not so much court honour of appellation
+(though, if it should rain dignities, he might be persuaded happily to
+venture the wetting) but sits down contentedly with the honour of
+disposing of your lives and moneys, without troubling himself about any
+other sort of reputation.”
+
+The entertainment of these lectures, and discourses made the way seem
+short and pleasant, and we were just now entering into a place, betwixt
+light and dark, and of horror enough, if Death and I had not by this time
+been very well acquainted.  Upon one side of the passage, I saw three
+moving figures, armed, and of human shape, and so alike, that I could not
+say which was which.  Just opposite, on the other side, a hideous
+monster, and these three to one, and one to three, in a fierce, and
+obstinate combat.  Here Death made a stop, and facing about, asked me if
+I knew these people.  “Alas! no,” quoth I, “Heaven be praised, I do not,
+and I shall put it in my litany that I never may.”  “Now to see thy
+ignorance,” cried Death; “these are thy old acquaintance, and thou hast
+hardly kept any other company since thou wert born.  Those three are the
+world, the flesh, and the devil, the capital enemies of thy soul; and
+they are so like one another, as well in quality, as appearance, that
+effectually, whoever has one, has all.  The proud and ambitious man
+thinks he has got the world, but it proves the devil.  The lecher, and
+the epicure, persuade themselves that they have gotten the flesh, and
+that’s the devil too; and in fine, thus it fares with all other kinds of
+extravagants.”  “But what’s he there,” said I, “that appears in so many
+several shapes? and fights against the other three?”  “That,” quoth
+Death, “is the devil of money, who maintains that he himself alone is
+equivalent to them three, and that wherever he comes, there’s no need of
+them.  Against the world, he argues from their own confession and
+experience: for it passes for an oracle, that there’s no world but money;
+he that’s out of money’s out of the world.  Take away a man’s money, and
+take away his life.  Money answers all things.  Against the second enemy,
+he pleads that money is the flesh too: witness the girls and the
+ganymedes it procures, and maintains.  And against the third, he urges
+that there’s nothing to be done without this devil of money.  Love does
+much but money does all; and money will make the pot boil, though the
+devil piss in the fire.”  “So that for ought I see,” quoth I, “the devil
+of money has the better end of the staff.”
+
+After this, advancing a little further, I saw on one hand judgment, and
+hell on the other (for so Death called them).  Upon the sight of hell,
+making a stop, to take a stricter survey of it, Death asked me, what it
+was I looked at.  I told her, it was hell; and I was the more intent upon
+it, because I thought I had seen it somewhere else before.  She
+questioned me, where?  I told her, that I had seen it in the corruption
+and avarice of wicked magistrates; in the pride and haughtiness of
+grandees; in the appetites of the voluptuous; in the lewd designs of ruin
+and revenge; in the souls of oppressors; and in the vanity of divers
+princes.  But he that would see it whole and entire, in one subject, must
+go to the hypocrite, who is a kind of religious broker, and puts out at
+five-and-forty per cent. the very Sacraments and Ten Commandments.
+
+“I am very glad too,” said I, “that I have seen judgment as I find it
+here, in its purity; for that which we call judgment in the world is a
+mere mockery: if it were like this, men would live otherwise than they
+do.  To conclude: if it be expected that our judges should govern
+themselves and us by this judgment, the world’s in an ill case; for
+there’s but little of’t there.  And to deal plainly, as matters are, I
+have no great maw to go home again: for ’tis better being with the dead,
+where there’s justice, than with the living, where there’s none.”
+
+Our next step was into a fair and spacious plain, encompassed with a huge
+wall, where he that’s once in must never look to come out again.  “Stop
+here,” quoth Death, “for we are now come to my judgment-seat, and here it
+is that I give audience.”  The walls were hung with sighs and groans,
+ill-news, fears, doubts, and surprises.  Tears did not there avail either
+the lover or the beggar; but grief and care were without both measure and
+comfort; and served as vermin to gnaw the hearts of emperors and princes,
+feeding upon the insolent and ambitious, as their proper nourishment.  I
+saw Envy there dressed up in a widow’s veil, and the very picture of the
+government of one of your noblemen’s houses.  She kept a continual fast
+as to the shambles, preying only upon herself; and could not but be a
+very slender gentlewoman, upon so spare a diet.  Nothing came amiss to
+her teeth (good or bad) which made the whole set of them yellow and
+rotten, and the reason was that, though she bit, and set her mark upon
+the good and the sound, she could never swallow it.  Under her, sat
+discord; the legitimate issue of her own bowels.  She had formerly
+conversed much with married people, but finding no need of her there,
+away she went to colleges and corporations, where it seems they had more
+already than they knew what to do withal; and then she betook herself to
+courts and palaces, and officiated there, as the devil’s lieutenant.
+Next to her was ingratitude, and she out of a certain paste made up of
+pride and malice, was moulding of new devils.  I was extreme glad of this
+discovery, being of opinion, till now, that the ungrateful had been the
+devils themselves, because I read, that the angels that fell were made
+devils for their ingratitude.  To be short, the whole place echoed with
+rage and curses.  “What a devil have we here to do,” said I, “does it
+rain curses in this country?”  With that; a death at my elbow asked me,
+what a devil could I expect else, in a place where there were so many
+matchmakers, attorneys, and common barristers, who are a pack of the most
+accursed wretches in nature.  Is there anything more common in the world,
+than the exclamations of husbands and wives?  “Oh! that damned devil of a
+pander: a heavy curse upon that bitch of a bawd that ever brought us
+together.”  “The pillory and ten thousand gibbets to boot take that
+pickpocket attorney, that advised me to this lawsuit; h’ as ruined me for
+ever.”  “But pray’e,” said I, “what do all these matchmakers and
+attorneys here together?  Do they come for audience?”  Death was here a
+little quick upon me, and called me fool for so impertinent a question.
+“If there were no matchmakers,” said she, “we should not have the tenth
+part of these skeletons, and desperadoes.  Am not I here the fifth
+husband of a woman yet living in the world, that hopes to send twice as
+many more after me, and drink maudlin at the fifteenth funeral?”  “You
+say well,” said I, “as to the business of matchmakers; but why so many
+pettifoggers, I pray’e?”  “Nay, then, I perceive,” quoth Death, “now you
+have a mind to seize me; for that rascally sort of caterpillars have been
+my undoing.  Had not a man better die by the common hangman than by the
+hand of an attorney? to be killed by falsities, quirks, cavils, delays,
+exceptions, cheats, circumventions: yes, yes, and it must not be denied,
+that these makers of matches, and splitters of causes, are the principal
+support of this imperial throne.”
+
+At these words, I raised my eyes, and saw Death seated in her chair of
+state, with abundance of little deaths crowding about her: as the death
+of love, of cold, hunger, fear, and laughter; all, with their several
+ensigns and devices.  The death of love, I perceived, had very little
+brain, and to keep herself in countenance, she kept company with Pyramus
+and Thisbe, Hero and Leander, and some Amadis’s and Palmerins d’Oliva;
+all embalmed, steeped in good vinegar, and well dried.  I saw a great
+many other sorts of lovers too, that were brought, in all appearance, to
+their last agonies, but by the singular miracle of self-interest
+recovered to the tune of
+
+    Will, if looking well won’t move her,
+    Looking ill prevail?
+
+The death of cold was attended by a many prelates, bishops, abbots, and
+other ecclesiastics, who had neither wives, nor children, nor indeed
+anybody else that cared for them, further than for their fortunes.
+These, when they come to a fit of sickness, are pillaged even to their
+sheets and bedding, before ye can say a paternoster.  Nay, many times
+they are stripped, ere they are laid, and destroyed for want of clothes
+to keep them warm.
+
+The death of hunger was encompassed with a multitude of avaricious misers
+that were cording up of trunks, bolting of doors and windows, locking up
+of cellars and garrets, and nailing down of trap doors, burying of pots
+of money, and starting at every breath of wind they heard.  Their eyes
+were ready to drop out of their heads, for want of sleep; their mouths
+and bellies complaining of their hands, and their souls turned into gold
+and silver (the idols they adored.)
+
+The death of fear had the most magnificent train and attendance of all
+the rest, being accompanied with a great number of usurpers arid tyrants,
+who commonly do justice upon themselves, for the injuries they have done
+to others, their own consciences doing the office of tormentors, and
+avenging their public crimes by their private sufferings; for they live
+in a perpetual anguish of thought, with fears and jealousies.
+
+The death of laughter was the last of all, and surrounded with a throng
+of people, hasty to believe, and slow to repent, living without fear of
+justice, and dying without hope of mercy.  These are they that pay all
+their debts and duties with a jest.  Bid any of them, “Give every man his
+due, and return what he has either borrowed, or wrongfully taken,” his
+answer is, “You’d make a man die with laughing.”  Tell him, “My friend,
+you are now in years, your dancing days are done, and your body is worn
+out; what should such a scarecrow as you are do with a bed-fellow?  Give
+over your bawdy haunts for shame, and don’t make a glory of a sin, when
+you’re past the pleasure of it, and yourself upon all accounts
+contemptible into the bargain.”  “This fellow,” says he, “would make a
+man break his heart with laughing.”  “Come, come, say your prayers, and
+bethink yourself of eternity; you have one foot in the grave already, and
+’tis high time to fit yourself for the other world.”  “Thou wilt
+absolutely kill me with laughing.  I tell thee I’m as sound as a rock,
+and I do not remember that ever I was better in my life.”  Others there
+are, that, let a man advise them upon their deathbeds and even at the
+last gasp to send for a divine, or to make some handsome settlement of
+their estates, “Alas, alas!” they’ll cry; “I have been as bad as this
+many a time before, and (with Falstaffe’s hostess) I hope in the Lord
+there’s no need to think of him yet.”  These men are lost for ever,
+before they can be brought to understand their danger.  This vision
+wrought strangely upon me, and gave me all the pains and marks imaginable
+of a true repentance.  “Well,” said I, “since so it is, that man has but
+one life allotted him and so many deaths; but one way into the world and
+so many millions out of it, I will certainly at my return make it more my
+care than it has been to live with a good conscience, that I may die with
+comfort.”
+
+These last words were scarce out of my mouth, when the crier of the court
+with a loud voice called out, “The dead, the dead; appear the dead.”  And
+so immediately, I saw the earth begin to move, and gently opening itself,
+to make way, first for heads and arms, and then by degrees for the whole
+bodies of men and women, that came out, half muffled in their nightcaps,
+and ranged themselves in excellent order, and with a profound silence.
+“Now,” says Death, “let everyone speak in his turn;” and in the instant,
+up comes one of the dead to my very beard, with so much fury and menace,
+in his face and action, that I would have given him half the teeth in my
+head for a composition.  “These devils of the world,” quoth he, “what
+would they be at? my masters, cannot a poor wretch be quiet in his grave
+for ye? but ye must be casting your scorns upon him, and charging him
+with things that upon my soul he’s as innocent of as the child that’s
+unborn.  What hurt has he done any of you (ye scoundrels you) to be thus
+abused?”  “And I beseech you, sir,” said I, “(under your favourable
+correction) who may you be? for I confess I have not the honour either to
+know or to understand ye.”  “I am,” quoth he, “the unfortunate Tony, that
+has been in his grave now this many a fair year, and yet your wise
+worships forsooth have not wit enough to make yourselves and your company
+merry, but Tony must still be one-half of your entertainment and
+discourse.  When any man plays the fool or the extravagant, presently
+he’s a Tony.  Who drew this or that ridiculous piece?  Tony.  Such or
+such a one was never well taught: no, he had a Tony to his master.  But
+let me tell ye, he that shall call your wisdoms to shrift and take a
+strict account of your words and actions, will upon the upshot find you
+all a company of Tonys, and in effect the greater impertinents.  As for
+instance: did I ever make ridiculous wills (as you do) to oblige others
+to pray for a man in his grave, that never prayed for himself in his
+life?  Did I ever rebel against my superiors?  Or, was I ever so arrant a
+coxcomb, as by colouring my cheeks and hair, to imagine that I could
+reform nature, and make myself young again?  Can ye say that I ever put
+an oath to a lie? or broke a solemn promise, as you do every day that
+goes over your heads?  Did I ever enslave myself to money?  Or, on the
+other side, make ducks and drakes with it? and squander it away in
+gaming, revelling, and whoring?  Did my wife ever wear the breeches?  Or,
+did I ever marry at all, to be revenged of a false mistress?  Was I ever
+so very a fool as to believe any man would be true to me, who had
+betrayed his friend?  Or, to venture all my hopes upon the wheel of
+fortune?  Did I ever envy the felicity of a court-life, that sells and
+spends all for a glance?  What pleasure did I ever take in the lewd
+discourses of heretics and libertines?  Or, did I ever list myself in the
+party, to get the name of a gifted brother?  Who ever saw me insolent to
+my inferiors, or basely servile to my betters?  Did I ever go to a
+conjurer, or to your dealers in nativities, and horoscopes upon any
+occasion of loss or death?  Now if you yourselves be guilty of all these
+fopperies, and I innocent, I beseech ye where’s the Tony?  So that you
+see Tony is not the Tony you take him for.  But (to crown his other
+virtues) he is also endued with so large a stock of patience that whoever
+needed it had it for the asking, unless it were such as came to borrow
+money; or in cases of women, that claimed marriage of him; or lackeys
+that would be making sport with his bauble; and to these, he was as
+resolute as John Florio.”
+
+While we were upon this discourse, another of the dead came marching up
+to me, with a Spanish pace and gravity; and giving me a touch o’ the
+elbow, “Look me in the face,” quoth he with a stern countenance, “and
+know, sir, that you are not now to have to do with a Tony.”  “I beseech
+your lordship,” said I, “(saving your reverence) let me know your honour,
+that I may pay my respects accordingly; for I must confess, I thought all
+people here had been, hail fellow well met.”  “I am called,” quoth he,
+“by mortals, Queen Dick; and whether you know me or not, I’m sure you
+think and talk of me often enough; and if the devil did not possess ye,
+you would let the dead alone, and content yourselves to persecute one
+another.  Ye can’t see a high crowned hat, a threadbare cloak, a
+basket-hilt sword, or a dudgeon dagger, nay not so much as a reverend
+matron, well stricken in years, but presently ye cry, “This or that’s of
+the mode or date of Queen Dick.”  If ye were not every mother’s child of
+ye stark mad, ye would confess that Queen Dick’s were golden days to
+those ye have had since, and ’tis an easy matter to prove what I say.
+Will ye see a mother now teaching her daughter a lesson of good
+government?  ‘Child,’ says she, ‘you know that modesty is the great
+ornament of your sex; wherefore be sure, when ye come in company, that
+you don’t stand staring the men in the face, as if ye were looking babies
+in their eyes, but rather look a little downward, as a fashion of
+behaviour more suitable to the obligations of your sex.’  ‘Downward?’
+says the girl, ‘I beseech you, madam, excuse me: this was well enough in
+the days of Queen Dick, when the poor creatures knew no better.  Let the
+men look downward towards the clay of which they were made, but man was
+our original, and it will become us to keep our eyes upon the matter from
+whence we came.’  If a father give his son in charge, to worship his
+Creator, to say his prayers morning and evening, to give thanks before
+and after meat, to have a care of gaming and swearing, ye shall have the
+son make answer, that ’tis true, this was practised in the time of Queen
+Dick, but it is now quite out of mode; and in plain English, men are
+better known nowadays by their atheism and blasphemy than by their
+beards.”
+
+Hereupon, Queen Dick withdrew, and then appeared a large glass-bottle,
+wherein was luted up (as I heard) a famous necromancer, hacked and minced
+according to his own order, to render him immortal.  It was boiling upon
+a quick fire, and the flesh by little and little began to piece again,
+and made first an arm, then a thigh, after that a leg; and at last there
+was an entire body, that raised itself upright in the bottle.  Bless me
+(thought I!) what’s here?  A man made of a pottage, and brought into the
+world out of the belly of a bottle?  This vision affrighted me to the
+very heart; and while I was yet panting and trembling, a voice was heard
+out of the glass.  “In what year of our Lord are we?”  “1636,” quoth I.
+“And welcome,” said he; “for ’tis the happy year I have longed for so
+many a day.”  “Who is it, I pray’e,” quoth I, “that I now see and hear in
+the belly of this bottle?”  “I am,” said he, “the great necromancer of
+Europe; and certainly you cannot but have heard both of my operations in
+general, and of this particular design.”  “I have heard talk of you from
+a child,” quoth I, “but all those stories I took only for old wives’
+fables.  You are the man then it seems: I must confess that at first, at
+a distance I took this bottle for the vessel that the ingenious Rabelais
+makes mention of; but coming near enough to see what was in it, I did
+then imagine it might be some philosopher by the fire, or some apothecary
+doing penance for his errors.  In fine, it has cost me many a heavy step
+to come hither, and yet to see so great a rarity I cannot but think my
+time and pains very well bestowed.”  The necromancer called to me then to
+unstop the bottle, and as I was breaking the clay to open it, “Hold, hold
+a little,” he cried; “and I prithee tell me first how go squares in
+Spain?  What money?  Force?  Credit?”  “The plate fleets go and come,”
+said I, “reasonably well; but the foreigners that come in for their snips
+have half spoiled the trade.  The Genoeses run out as far as the
+mountains of Potosi, and have almost drained them dry.”  “My child,”
+quoth he, “that trade can never be secure and open, so long as Spain has
+any enemy that’s potent at sea.  And for the Genoeses, they’ll tell you
+this is no injustice at all, but on the contrary, a new way of quitting
+old scores, and justifying his Catholic Majesty for a good paymaster.  I
+am no enemy to that nation, but upon the account of their vices and
+encroachments; and I confess, rather than see these rascals prosper, I’d
+turn myself into a _bouillon_ again, as ye saw me just now; nay, I did
+not care if ’twere into a powder, though I ended my days in a
+tobacco-box.”  “Good sir,” said I, “comfort yourself, for these people
+are as miserable as you’d wish them.  You know they are cavaliers and
+signiors already, and now (forsooth) they have an itch upon them to be
+princes: a vanity that gnaws them like a cancer; and by drawing on great
+expenses, breeds a worm in their traffic, so that you’ll find little but
+debt and extravagance at the foot of the accompt.  And then the devil’s
+in them for a wench, insomuch, that ’tis well, if they bring both ends
+together; for what’s gotten upon the ’Change is spent in the stews.”
+
+“This is well,” quoth the necromancer, “and I’m glad to hear it.  Pray’e
+tell me now, what price bears honour and honesty in the world?”  “There’s
+much to be said,” quoth I, “upon that point; but in brief, there was
+never more of it in talk, nor less in effect.  ‘Upon my honesty,’ cries
+the tradesman; ‘Upon my honour,’ says his lordship.  And in a word, every
+man has it, and every thing is it, in some disguise or other; but duly
+considered, there’s no such thing upon the face of the earth.  The thief
+says ’tis more honourable to take than beg.  He that asks an alms, pleads
+that ’tis honester to beg than steal.  Nay the false witnesses and
+murderers themselves stand upon their points, as well as their
+neighbours, and will tell ye that a man of honour will rather be buried
+alive than submit (though they will not always do as they say).  Upon the
+whole matter, every man sets up a court of honour within himself,
+pronounces everything honourable that serves his purpose, and laughs at
+them that think otherwise.  To say the truth, all things are now
+topsy-turvy.  A good faculty in lying is a fair step to preferment; and
+to pack a game at cards, or help the frail die, is become the mark and
+glory of a cavalier.  The Spaniards were heretofore, I confess, a very
+brave, and well governed people; but they have evil tongues among them
+nowadays, that say they might e’en go to school to the Indians to learn
+sobriety and virtue.  For they are not really sober, but at their own
+tables, which indeed is rather avarice than moderation; for when they eat
+or drink at another man’s cost, there are no greater gluttons in the
+world; and for fuddling, they shall make the best pot-companion in
+Switzerland knock under the table.”
+
+The necromancer went on with his discourse, and asked me what store of
+lawyers and attorneys in Spain at present.  I told him, that the whole
+world swarmed with them, and that there were of several sorts: some, by
+profession; others, by intrusion and presumption; and some again by
+study, but not many of the last, though indeed sufficient of every kind
+to make the people pray for the Egyptian locusts and caterpillars in
+exchange for that vermin.  “Why then,” quoth the necromancer, “if there
+be such plagues abroad, I think I had best e’en keep where I am.”  “It is
+with justice,” said I, “as with sick men; in time past, when we had fewer
+doctors (as well of law as of physic) we had more right, and more health:
+but we are now destroyed by multitudes, and consultations, which serve to
+no other end than to inflame both the distemper and the reckoning.
+Justice, as well as truth, went naked, in the days of old; one single
+book of laws and ordinances, was enough for the best ordered Government
+in the world.  But the justice of our age is tricked up with bills,
+parchments, writs, and labels; and furnished with millions of codes,
+digests, pandects, pleadings, and reports; and what’s their use, but to
+make wrangling a science? and to embroil us in seditions, suits, and
+endless trouble and confusion.  We have had more books published this
+last twenty years than in a thousand before, and there hardly passes a
+term without a new author, in four or five volumes at least under the
+titles of glosses, commentaries, cases, judgments, etc.  And the great
+strife is, who writes most, not best; so that the whole bulk is but a
+body without a soul, and fitter for a churchyard than a study.  To say
+the truth, these lawyers and solicitors are but so many smoke-merchants,
+sellers of wind, and troublers of the public peace.  If there were no
+attorneys, there would be no suits; if no suits, no cheats, no serjeants;
+no catchpoles, no prisons; if no prisons, no judges; no judges, no
+passion; no passion, no bribery or subornation.
+
+“See now what a train of mischiefs one wretched pettifogger draws after
+him!  If you go to him for counsel, he hears your story, reads your case,
+and tells you very gravely: ‘Sir, this is a nice point, and would be well
+handled; we’ll see what the law says.’  And then he runs ye over with his
+eye and finger a matter of a hundred volumes, grumbling all the while,
+like a cat that claws in her play ’twixt jest and earnest.  At last, down
+comes the book, he shows the law, bids ye leave your papers, and he’ll
+study the question.  ‘But your cause is very good,’ says he, ‘by what I
+see already, and if you’ll come again in the evening, or to-morrow
+morning, I’ll tell ye more.  But pardon me, sir, now I think on’t, I am
+retained upon the business of the Fens, it cannot be till Monday next,
+and then I’m for ye.’  When ye are to part, and that you come to the
+greasing of his fist (the best thing in the world both for the wit, and
+memory), ‘Good Lord! sir,’ says he, ‘what do you mean!  I beseech you,
+sir; nay, pray’e sir,’ and if he spies you drawing back, the paw opens,
+seizes the guineas, and good-morrow countryman.”  “Sayst thou me so?”
+quoth the good fellow in the glass, “stop me up close again as thou
+lovest me then: for the very air of these rascals will poison me, if ever
+I put my head out of this bottle, till the whole race of them be extinct.
+In the meantime, take this for a rule: he that would thrive by law, must
+fee his enemies’ counsel as well as his own.
+
+“But now ye talk of great cheats; what news of the Venetians?  Is Venice
+still in the world or no?”  “In the world do ye say?  Yes, marry is’t,”
+said I, “and stands just where it did.”  “Why then,” quoth he, “I prithee
+give it to the devil from me as a token of my love; for ’tis a present
+equal to the severest revenge.  Nothing can ever destroy that Republic
+but conscience; and then you’ll say ’tis like to be long-lived; for if
+every man had his own, it would not be left worth a groat.  To speak
+freely, ’tis an odd kind of common-wealth.  ’Tis the very arse-gut, the
+drain and sink of monarchies, both in war and peace.  It helps the Turk
+to vex the Christians, and the Christians to gall the Turk, and maintains
+itself to torment both.  The inhabitants are neither Moors nor
+Christians, as appears by a Venetian captain, in a combat against a
+Christian enemy: ‘Stand to’t my masters,’ says he, ‘ye were Venetians
+before ye were Christians.’
+
+“Enough, enough of this,” cried the necromancer, “and tell me, how stand
+the people affected?  What malcontents and mutineers?”  “Mutiny,” said I,
+“is so universal a disease that every kingdom is (in effect) but a great
+hospital, or rather a Bedlam (for all men are mad) to entertain the
+disaffected.”  “There’s no stirring for me then,” quoth the necromancer,
+“but pray’e commend me however to those busy fools, and tell them, that
+carry what face they will, there’s vanity and ambition in the pad.  Kings
+and princes have their nature much of quick-silver.  They are in
+perpetual agitation, and without any repose.  Press them too hard (that
+is to say beyond the bounds of duty and reason) and they are lost.  Ye
+may observe that your guilders and great dealers in quick-silver are
+generally troubled with the palsy; and so should all subjects tremble
+that have to do with majesty, and better to do it at first, out of
+respect, than afterward, upon force and necessity.
+
+“But before I fall to pieces again, as you saw me e’en now (for better so
+than worse) I beseech ye, one word more, and it shall be my last.  Who’s
+King of Spain now?”  “You know,” said I, “that Philip the 3rd is dead.”
+“Right,” quoth he, “a prince of incomparable piety, and virtue (or my
+stars deceive me).”  “After him,” said I, “came Philip the 4th.”  “If it
+be so,” quoth he, “break, break my bottle immediately, and help me out;
+for I am resolved to try my fortune in the world once again, under the
+reign of that glorious prince.”  And with that word, he dashed the glass
+to pieces against a rock, crept out of his case and away he ran.  I had a
+good mind to have kept him company; but as I was just about to start,
+“Let him go, let him go,” cried one of the dead, and laid hold of my arm.
+“He has devilish heels, and you’ll never overtake him.”
+
+So I stayed, and what should I see next but a wondrous old man, whose
+name might have been Bucephalus by his head; and the hair on his face
+might very well have stuffed a couple of cushions: take him together, and
+you’ll find his picture in the map, among the savages.  I need not tell
+ye that I stared upon him sufficiently; and he taking notice of it, came
+to me, and told me: “Friend,” says he, “my spirit tells me that you are
+now in pain to know who I am; understand that my name is Nostradamus.”
+“Are you the author, then,” quoth I, “of that gallimaufry of prophecies
+that’s published in your name?”  “Gallimaufry say’st thou?  Impudent and
+barbarous rascal that thou art; to despise mysteries that are above thy
+reach, and to revile the secretary of the stars, and the interpreter of
+the destinies; who is so brutal as to doubt the meaning of these lines?
+
+    “From second causes, this I gather,
+    Nought shall befall us, good, or ill,
+    Either upon the land or water,
+    But what the Great Disposer will.
+
+“Reprobated and besotted villains that ye are! what greater blessing
+could betide the world than the accomplishment of this prophecy? would it
+not establish justice and holiness, and suppress all the vile suggestions
+and motions of the devil?  Men would not then any longer set their hearts
+upon avarice, cozening, and extortion; and make money their god, that
+vagabond money, that’s perpetually trotting up and down like a wandering
+whore, and takes up most commonly with the unworthy, leaving the
+philosophers and prophets, which are the very oracles of the heavens
+(such as Nostradamus) to go barefoot.  But let’s go on with our
+prophecies, and see if they be so frivolous and dark, as the world
+reports them.
+
+    “When the married shall marry,
+    Then the jealous will be sorry;
+    And though fools will be talking,
+    To keep their tongues walking;
+    No man runs well I find,
+    But with’s elbows behind.”
+
+This gave me such a fit of laughing that it made me cast my nose up into
+the air, like a stone-horse that hath got a mare in the wind: which put
+the astrologer out of all patience.  “Buffoon, and dog-whelp, as ye are,”
+quoth he, “there’s a bone for you to pick; you must be snarling and
+snapping at everything.  Will your teeth serve ye now to fetch out the
+marrow of this prophecy?  Hear then in the devil’s name, and be mannerly.
+Hear, and learn I say, and let’s have no more of that grinning, unless ye
+have a mind to leave your beard behind ye.  Do you imagine that all that
+are married marry?  No, not the one half of them.  When you are married,
+the priest has done his part; but after that, to marry, is to do the duty
+of a husband.  Alack! how many married men live as if they were single;
+and how many bachelors on the other side, as if they were married! after
+the mode of the times.  And wedlock to divers couples is no other than a
+more sociable state of virginity.  Here’s one half of my prophecy
+expounded already, now for the rest.  Let me see you run a little for
+experiment, and try if you carry your elbows before, or behind.  You’ll
+tell me perhaps, that this is ridiculous, because everybody knows it.  A
+pleasant shift: as if truth were the worse for being plain.  The things
+indeed that you deliver for truths are for the most part mere fooleries
+and mistakes; and it were a hard matter to put truth in such a dress as
+would please ye.  What have ye to say now, either against my prophecy or
+my argument? not a syllable I warrant ye, and yet somewhat there is to be
+said, for there’s no rule without an exception.  Does not the physician
+carry his elbow before him, when he puts back his hand to take his
+patient’s money?  And away he’s gone in a trice, so soon as he has made
+his purchase.  But to proceed, here’s another of my prophecies for ye,
+
+    “Many women shall be mothers,
+       And their babbies,
+       Their n’own daddies.
+
+“What say ye to this now? are there not many husbands do ye think (if the
+truth were known) that father more children than their own?  Believe me,
+friend, a man had need have good security upon a woman’s belly, for
+children are commonly made in the dark, and ’tis no easy matter to know
+the workman, especially having nothing but the woman’s bare word for’t.
+This is meant of the court of assistance; and whoever interprets my
+prophecies to the prejudice of any person of honour, abuses me.  You
+little think what a world of our gay folks in their coaches and six, with
+lackeys at their heels by the dozens, will be found at the last day, to
+be only the bastards of some pages, gentlemen-ushers, or _valets de
+chambre_ of the family; nay perchance the physician may have had his hand
+in the wrong box, and in case of a necessity, good use has been made of a
+lusty coachman.  Little do you think (I say) how many noble families upon
+that grand discovery, will be found extinct for want of issue.”
+
+“I am now convinced,” said I to the mathematician, “of the excellency of
+your predictions; and I perceive (since you have been pleased to be your
+own interpreter) that they have more weight in them than we were aware
+of.”  “Ye shall have one more,” quoth he, “and I have done.
+
+    “This year, if I’ve any skill i’ th’ weather,
+    Shall many a one take wing with a feather.
+
+“I dare say that your wit will serve ye now to imagine, that I’m talking
+of rooks and jackdaws; but I say, No.  I speak of lawyers, attorneys,
+clerks, scriveners, and their fellows, that with the dash of a pen can
+defeat their clients of their estates, and fly away with them when they
+have done.”
+
+Upon these words Nostradamus vanished, and somebody plucking me behind, I
+turned my face upon the most meagre, melancholic wretch that ever was
+seen, and covered all in white.  “For pity’s sake,” says he, “and as you
+are a good Christian, do but deliver me from the persecution of these
+impertinents and babblers that are now tormenting me, and I’ll be your
+slave for ever” (casting himself at my feet in the same moment; and
+crying like a child).  “And what art thou,” quoth I, “for a miserable
+creature?”  “I am,” says he, “an ancient, and an honest man, although
+defamed with a thousand reproaches and slanders: and in fine, some call
+me another, and others somebody, and doubtless ye cannot but have heard
+of me.  As somebody says, cries one, that has nothing to say for himself;
+and yet till this instant, I never so much as opened my mouth.  The
+Latins call me Quidam, and make good use of me to fill up lines, and stop
+gaps.  When you go back again into the world, I pray’e do me the favour
+to own that you have seen me, and to justify me for one that never did,
+and never will either speak or write anything, whatever some tattling
+idiots may pretend.  When they bring me into quarrels and brawls, I am
+called forsooth, a certain person; in their intrigues, I know not who;
+and in the pulpit, a certain author; and all this, to make a mystery of
+my name, and lay all their fooleries at my door.  Wherefore I beseech ye
+help me;” which I promised to do.  And so this vision withdrew to make
+place for another.
+
+And that was the most frightful piece of antiquity that ever eye beheld
+in the shape of an old woman.  She came nodding towards me, and in a
+hollow, rattling tone (for she spoke more with her chops than her tongue)
+“Pray’e,” says she, “is there not somebody come lately hither from the
+other world?”  This apparition, thought I, is undoubtedly one of the
+devil’s scarecrows.  Her eyes were so sunk in their sockets, that they
+looked like a pair of dice in the bottom of a couple of red boxes.  Her
+cheeks and the soles of her feet were of the same complexion.  Her mouth
+was pale, and open too; the better to receive the distillations of her
+nose.  Her chin was covered with a kind of goose-down, as toothless as a
+lamprey; and the flaps of her cheeks were like an ape’s bags; her head
+danced, and her voice at every word kept time to’t.  Her body was veiled,
+or rather wrapped up in a shroud of crape.  She had a crutch in one hand,
+which served her for a supporter; and a rosary in t’other, of such a
+length, that as she stood stooping over it, a man would have thought she
+had been fishing for death’s heads.  When I had done gaping upon this
+epitome of past ages, “Hola! grannum,” quoth I, good lustily in her ear,
+taking for granted that she was deaf, “what’s your pleasure with me?”
+With that she gave a grunt, and being much in wrath to be called grannum,
+clapped a fair pair of spectacles upon her nose, and pinking through
+them, “I am,” quoth she, “neither deaf, nor grannum; but may be called by
+my name as well as my neighbours,” (giving to understand, that women will
+take it ill to be called old, even in their very graves).  As she spake,
+she came still nearer me, with her eyes dropping, and the smell about her
+perfectly of a dead body.  I begged her pardon for what was past, and for
+the future her name, that I might be sure to keep myself within the
+bounds of respect.  “I am called,” says she, “Doüegna, or Madam the
+Gouvernante.”  “How’s that?” quoth I, in a great amazement.  “Have ye any
+of those cattle in this country?  Let the inhabitants pray heartily for
+peace then; and all little enough to keep them quiet.  But to see my
+mistake now.  I thought the women had died, when they came to be
+gouvernantes, and that for the punishment of a wicked world, the
+gouvernantes had been immortal.  But I am now better informed, and very
+glad truly to meet with a person I have heard so much talk of.  For with
+us, who but Madam the Gouvernante, at every turn?  ‘Do ye see that
+mumping hag,’ cries one?  ‘Come here ye damned jade,’ cries another.
+‘That old bawd,’ says a third, ‘has forgotten, I warrant ye, that ever
+she was a whore, and now see if we do not remember ye.’”  “You do so, and
+I’m in your debt for your remembrance, the great devil be your paymaster,
+ye son of a whore, you; are there no more gouvernantes than myself?  Sure
+there are, and ye may have your choice, without affronting me.”  “Well,
+well,” said I, “have a little patience, and at my return, I’ll try if I
+can put things in better order.  But in the meantime, what business have
+you here?”  Her reverence upon this was a little qualified, and told me
+that she had now been eight hundred years in hell, upon a design to erect
+an order of the gouvernantes; but the right worshipful the
+devil-commissioners are not as yet come to any resolution upon the point.
+For say they, if your gouvernantes should come once to settle here, there
+would need no other tormentors, and we should be but so many Jacks out of
+office.  And besides, we should be perpetually at daggers-drawing about
+the brands and candle-ends which they would still be filching, and laying
+out of the way; and for us to have our fuel to seek, would be very
+inconvenient.  “I have been in purgatory too,” she said, “upon the same
+project, but there so soon as ever they set eye on me, all the souls
+cried out unanimously, _libera nos_, etc.  As for heaven, that’s no place
+for quarrels, slanders, disquiets, heart-burnings, and consequently none
+for me.  The dead are none of my friends neither, for they grumble, and
+bid me let them alone as they do me; and be gone into the world again if
+I please, and there (they tell me) I may play the gouvernante _in sæcula
+sæculorum_.  But truly I had rather be here at my ease than spend my life
+crumpling, and brooding over a carpet at a bed-side, like a thing of
+clouts, to secure the poultry of the family from strange cocks, which
+would now and then have a brush with a virgin pullet, but for the care of
+the gouvernantes.  And yet ’tis she, good woman, bears all the blame, in
+case of any miscarriage: the gouvernante was presently of the plot, she
+had a feeling in the cause, a finger in the pie.  And ’tis she in fine
+that must answer for all.  Let but a sock, an old handkercher, the greasy
+lining of a masque, or any such frippery piece of business be missing,
+ask the gouvernante for this, or for that.  And in short, they take us
+certainly for so many storks and ducks, to gather up all the filth about
+the house.  The servants look upon us as spies and tell-tales: my cousin
+forsooth, and t’other’s aunt dares not come to the house, for fear of the
+gouvernante.  And indeed I have made many of them cross themselves, that
+took me for a ghost.  Our masters they curse us too for embroiling the
+family.  So that I have rather chosen to take up here, betwixt the dead
+and the living, than to return again to my charge of a Doüegna, the very
+sound of the name being more terrible than a gibbet.  As appears by one
+that was lately travelling from Madrid to Vailladolid, and asking where
+he might lodge that night.  Answer was made at a small village called
+Doüegnas.  ‘But is there no other place,’ quoth he, ‘within some
+reasonable distance, either short or beyond it?’  They told him no,
+unless it were at a gallows.  ‘That shall be my quarter then,’ quoth he,
+‘for a thousand gibbets are not so bad to me as one Doüegnas.’  Now ye
+see how we are abused,” quoth the gouvernante, “I hope you’ll do us some
+right, when it lies in your power.”
+
+She would have talked me to death, if I had not given her the slip upon
+the removing of her spectacles; but I could not ’scape so neither, for
+looking about me for a guide to carry me home again, I was arrested by
+one of the dead; a good proper fellow, only he had a pair of rams’ horns
+on his head, and I was about to salute him for Aries in the Zodiac; but
+when I saw him plant himself, just before me, with his best leg forward,
+stretching out his arms, clutching his fists, and looking as sour as if
+he would have eaten me without mustard, “Doubtless,” said I, “the devil
+is dead and this is he.”  “No, no,” cried a bystander, “this is a man:”
+“Why then,” said I, “he’s drunk, I perceive, and quarrelsome in his ale,
+for here’s nobody has touched him.”  With that, as he was just ready to
+fall on, I stood to my guard, and we were armed at all points alike, only
+he had the odds of the headpiece.  “Now, sirrah,” says he, “have at ye,
+slave that you are to make a trade of defaming persons of honour.  By the
+death that commands here, I’ll ha’ my revenge, and turn your skin over
+your ears.”  This insolent language stirred my choler I confess, and so I
+called to him “Come, come on, sirrah; a little nearer yet, and if ye have
+a mind to be twice killed, I’ll do your business; who the devil brought
+this cornuto hither to trouble me?”  The word was no sooner out, but we
+were immediately at it, tooth and nail, and if his horns had not been
+flatted to his head, I might have had the worst on’t.  But the whole ring
+presently came in to part us, and did me a singular kindness in’t, for my
+adversary had a fork, and I had none.  As they were staving and tailing,
+“You might have had more manners,” cried one, “than to give such language
+to your betters, and to call Don Diego Moreno cuckold.”  “And is this
+that Diego Moreno then?” said I.  “Rascal that he is to charge me with
+abusing persons of honour.  A scoundrel,” said I, “that ’tis a shame for
+death to be seen in’s company, and was never fit for anything in his
+whole life, but to furnish matter for a farce.”  “And that’s my
+grievance, gentlemen,” quoth Don Diego, “for which with your leave he
+shall give me satisfaction.  I do not stand upon the matter of being a
+cuckold, for there’s many a brave fellow lives in Cuckold’s-Row.  But why
+does he not name others, as well as me?  As if the horn grew upon
+nobody’s head but mine: I’m sure there are others that a thousand times
+better deserve it.  I hope, he cannot say that ever I gored any of my
+superiors; or that my being cornuted has raised the price of post-horns,
+lanthorns, or pocket-ink-horns.  Are not shoeing-horns and knife-handles
+as cheap now as ever?  Why must I walk the stage then more than my
+neighbours?  Beyond question there never lived a more peaceable wretch
+upon the face of the earth, all things considered, than myself.  Never
+was man freer from jealousy, or more careful to step aside at the time of
+visit: for I was ever against the spoiling of sport, when I could make
+none myself.  I confess I was not so charitable to the poor as I might
+have been; the truth of’t is, I watched them as a cat would do a mouse,
+for I did not love them.  But then in requital, I could have out-snorted
+the Seven Sleepers, when any of the better sort came to have a word in
+private with my wife.  The short on’t is, we agreed blessedly well
+together, she and I; for I did whatever she would have me; and she would
+say a thousand and a thousand times ‘Long live my poor Diego, the best
+conditioned, the most complaisant husband in the world; whatever I do is
+well done, and he never so much as opens his mouth good or bad.’  But by
+her leave that was little to my credit, and the jade when she said it was
+beside the cushion.  For many and many a time have I said ‘This is well,’
+and ‘That’s ill.’  When there came any poets to our house, fiddlers or
+morrice-dancers, I would say, ‘This is not well.’  But when the rich
+merchants came ‘Oh, very good,’ would I say, ‘this is as well as well can
+be.’  Sometimes we had the hap to be visited by some penniless courtier,
+or low-country officer perchance; then should I take her aside, and
+rattle her to some tune: ‘Sweetheart,’ would I say, ‘pray’e what ha’ we
+to do with these frippery fellows and damme boys.  Shake them off, I’d
+advise ye, and take this for a warning.’  But when any came that had to
+do with the mint or exchequer, and spent freely (for lightly come,
+lightly go), ‘I marry, my dear,’ quoth I, ‘there’s nothing to be lost by
+keeping such company.’  And what hurt in all this now?  Nay, on the
+contrary, my poor wife enjoyed herself happily under the protection of my
+shadow, and being a _femme couverte_, not an officer durst come near her.
+Why should then this buffoon of a poetaster make me still the ridiculous
+entertainment of all his interludes and farces, and the fool in the
+play?”  “By your favour,” quoth I, “we are not yet upon even terms; and
+before we part, you shall know what ’tis to provoke a poet.  If thou wert
+but now alive, I’d write thee to death, as Archilocus did Lycambes.  And
+I’m resolved to put the history of thy life in a satire, as sharp as
+vinegar, and give it the name of The Life and Death of Don Diego Moreno.”
+“It shall go hard,” quoth he, “but I’ll prevent that,” and so we fell
+to’t again, hand and foot, till at length the very fancy of a scuffle
+waked me, and I found myself as weary, as if it had been a real combat.
+I began then to reflect upon the particulars of my dream, and to consider
+what advantage I might draw from it: for the dead are past fooling, and
+those are the soundest counsels which we receive from such as advise us
+without either passion or interest.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                       THE END OF THE SECOND VISION
+
+
+
+
+THE THIRD VISION OF THE LAST JUDGMENT
+
+
+HOMER makes Jupiter the author or inspirer of dreams; especially the
+dreams of princes and governors; and if the matter of them be pious and
+important.  And it is likewise the judgment of the learned Propertius
+that good dreams come from above, have their weight, and ought not to be
+slighted.  And truly I am much of his mind, in the case of a dream I had
+the other night.  As I was reading a discourse touching the end of the
+world, I fell asleep over the book, and dreamt of the last judgment.  (A
+thing which in the house of a poet is scarce admitted so much as in a
+dream.)  This fancy minded me of a passage in Claudian: that all
+creatures dream at night of what they have heard and seen in the day, as
+the hound dreams of hunting the hare.
+
+Methought I saw a very handsome youth towering in the air, and sounding
+of a trumpet; but the forcing of his breath did indeed take off much of
+his beauty.  The very marbles, I perceived, and the dead obeyed his call;
+for in the same moment, the earth began to open, and set the bones at
+liberty, to seek their fellows.  The first that appeared were sword-men,
+as generals of armies, captains, lieutenants, common soldiers, who
+supposing that it had sounded a charge, came out of their graves, with
+the same briskness and resolution, as if they had been going to an
+assault or a combat.  The misers put their heads out, all pale and
+trembling, for fear of a plunder.  The cavaliers and good fellows
+believed they had been going to a horserace, or a hunting-match.  And in
+fine, though they all heard the trumpet, there was not any creature knew
+the meaning of it (for I could read their thoughts by their looks and
+gestures).  After this, there appeared a great many souls, whereof some
+came up to their bodies, though with much difficulty and horror; others
+stood wondering at a distance, not daring to come near so hideous and
+frightful a spectacle.  This wanted an arm, that an eye, t’other a head.
+Upon the whole, though I could not but smile at the prospect of so
+strange a variety of figures, yet was it not without just matter of
+admiration at the all-powerful Providence, to see order drawn out of
+confusion, and every part restored to the right owner.  I dreamt myself
+then in a churchyard; and there, methought, divers that were loth to
+appear were changing of heads; and an attorney would have demurred upon
+pretence that he had got a soul was none of his own, and that his body
+and soul were not fellows.
+
+At length, when the whole congregation came to understand that this was
+the day of judgment, it was worth the while to observe what shifting and
+shuffling there was among the wicked.  The epicure and whoremaster would
+not own his eyes, nor the slanderer his tongue, because they’d be sure to
+appear in evidence against them.  The pickpockets ran away as hard as
+they could drive from their own fingers.  There was one that had been
+embalmed in Egypt, and staying for his tripes, an old usurer asked him,
+if the bags were to rise with the bodies?  I could have laughed at this
+question, but I was presently taken up with a crowd of cutpurses, running
+full speed from their own ears (that were offered them again) for fear of
+the sad stories they expected to hear.  I saw all this from a convenient
+standing; and in the instant, there was an outcry at my feet, “Withdraw,
+withdraw.”  The word was no sooner given, but down I came, and
+immediately a great many handsome ladies put forth their heads, and
+called me clown, for not paying them that respect and ceremony which
+belonged to their quality (now you must know that the women stand upon
+their pantofles, even in hell itself).  They seemed at first very gay and
+frolic; and truly, well enough pleased to be seen naked, for they were
+clean-skinned and well made.  But when they came to understand that this
+was the great day of accompt; their consciences took check, and all the
+jollity was dashed in a moment; whereupon they took to the valley,
+miserably listless and out of humour.  There was one among the rest, that
+had had seven husbands, and promised every one of them never to marry
+again, for she could never love anything else she was sure: this lady was
+casting about for fetches, and excuses, and what answer she should make
+to that point.  Another that had been as common as Ratcliff highway,
+would neither lead nor drive, and stood humming and hawing a good while,
+pretending she had forgot her night-gear, and such fooleries; but spite
+of her heart, she was brought at last within sight of the throne, where
+she found a world of her old acquaintance that she had carried part of
+their way to hell, who had no sooner set eye on her, but they fell a
+pointing and hooting, so that she took up her heels and herded herself in
+a troop of serjeants.  After this, I saw a many people driving a
+physician along the bank of a river, and these were only such as he had
+unnecessarily dispatched before their time.  They followed him with cries
+of, “Justice, justice,” and forced him on toward the judgment-seat, where
+they arrived in the end with much ado.  While this passed, I heard,
+methought, upon my left hand a paddling in the water, as if one had been
+swimming: and what should this be, but a judge in the middle of a river
+washing and rinsing his hands, over and over.  I asked him the meaning of
+it; and he told me, that in his lifetime he had been often daubed in the
+fist, to make the business slip the better, and he would willingly get
+out the grease before he came to hold up his hand at the bar.  There
+followed next a multitude of vintners and tailors, under the guard of a
+legion of devils, armed with rods, whips, cudgels, and other instruments
+of correction: and these counterfeited themselves deaf, and were very
+loth to leave their graves, for fear of a worse lodging.  As they were
+passing on, up started a little lawyer, and asked whither they were
+going; they made answer, that they were going to give an account of their
+works.  With that the lawyer threw himself flat upon his belly in his
+hole again: “If I am to go downward at last,” says he, “I am thus much
+onward of my way.”  The vintner sweat as he walked, till one drop
+followed another; “That’s well done,” cried a devil at’s elbow, “to purge
+out thy water, that we may have none in our wine.”  There was a tailor
+wrapped up in sarcenets, crook-fingered and baker-legged, spake not one
+word all the way he went, but alas! alas! how can any man be a thief that
+dies for want of bread?  But his companions gave him a rebuke for
+discrediting his trade.  The next that appeared were a band of
+highwaymen, following upon the heels one of another, in great distrust
+and jealousy of thieves among themselves.  These were fetched up by a
+party of devils in the turning of a hand and lodged with the tailors;
+“for,” said one of the company, “your highwayman is but a wild tailor.”
+They were a little quarrelsome at first, but in the conclusion, they went
+down into the valley, and kennelled quietly together.  After these came
+Folly with her gang of poets, fiddlers, lovers, and fencers: the people
+of all the world, that dream the least of a day of reckoning; these were
+disposed of among the hangmen, Jews, scribes, and philosophers.  There
+were also a great many solicitors wondering among themselves, that they
+should have so much conscience when they were dead, and none at all
+living.  In fine, the word was given, Silence.
+
+The throne being erected, and the great day come: a day of comfort to the
+good, and of terror to the wicked.  The sun and the stars waited on the
+footstool; the wind was still; the water quiet; the earth in suspense and
+anguish for fear of her children: and in brief, the whole creation was in
+anxiety and disorder.  The righteous they were employed in prayers and
+thanksgivings; and the ungodly in framing of shifts and evasions, to
+extenuate their pains.  The guardian angels were at hand, on the one side
+to acquit themselves of their duties and commissions.  And on the other
+side, were the devils hunting for more matters of aggravation and charge
+against offenders.  The Ten Commandments had the guard of a narrow gate,
+which was so strait, that the most mortified body could not pass it,
+without leaving a good part of his skin behind him.
+
+On one hand, there were in multitudes, disgraces, misfortunes, plagues,
+griefs, and troubles; all in a clamour against the physicians.  The
+plague confessed, indeed, that she had struck many; but ’twas the doctor
+did their business.  Melancholy and disgrace said the like; and
+misfortunes of all sorts made open protestation, that they never brought
+any man to his grave without the help and advice of a doctor.  So that
+the gentlemen of the faculty were called to account for those they had
+killed.  They took their places upon a scaffold, with pen, ink, and paper
+about them; and still as the dead were called, some or other of them
+answered to the name, and declared the year and day when such a patient
+passed through his hand.
+
+They began the inquiry at Adam, who, methought, was severely handled
+about an apple.  “Alas!” cried Judas that was by, “if that were such a
+fault, what will become of me that sold and betrayed my Lord and Master?”
+Next came the patriarchs, and then the apostles, who took their places by
+Saint Peter.  It was worth the noting, that at this day there was no
+distinction between kings and beggars, before the judgment-seat.  Herod
+and Pilate, so soon as they put out their heads, found it was like to go
+hard with them.  “My judgment is just,” quoth Pilate.  “Alack!” cried
+Herod, “what have I to trust to?  Heaven is no place for me, and in Limbo
+I should fall among the innocents I have murdered; so that without more
+ado I must e’en take up my lodging in hell: the common receptacle of
+notorious malefactors.”
+
+There came in immediately upon this a kind of a sour rough-hewn fellow.
+“Look ye,” says he, stretching out his arm, “here are my letters.”  The
+company wondered at the humour, and asked the porter what he was; which
+he himself overhearing, “I am,” quoth he, “a master of the noble science
+of defence;” and, plucking out several sealed parchments, “These,” said
+he, “are the attestations of my exploits.”  At which word, all his
+testimonials fell out of his hand, and a couple of devils would fain have
+whipped them up, to have brought them in evidence against him at his
+trial; but the fencer was too nimble for them, and took them up himself.
+At which time, an angel offered him his hand to help him in; but he, for
+fear of an attack, leaped a step backward, and with great agility,
+alonging withal, “Now,” says he, “if ye think fit, I’ll give ye a taste
+of my skill.”  The company fell a laughing, and this sentence was passed
+upon him: that since by his rules of art he had occasioned so many duels
+and murders, he should himself go to the devil by a perpendicular line.
+He pleaded for himself, that he was no mathematician, and knew no such
+line; but while the word was in his mouth a devil came up to him, gave
+him a turn and a half, and down he tumbled.
+
+After him, came the treasurers, and such a cry following them, for
+cheating and stealing, that some said the thieves were coming; others
+said no; and the company was divided upon’t.  They were much troubled at
+the word, thieves, and desired the benefit of counsel to plead their
+cause.  “And very good reason,” said one of the devils, “here’s a
+discarded apostle that has executed both offices, let them take him,
+where’s Judas?”  When the treasurers heard that, they turned aside, and
+by chance, spied in a devil’s hand, a huge roll of accusations ready
+drawn into a formal charge against them.  With that, one of the boldest
+among them: “Away, away,” cried he, “with these informations; we’ll
+rather come to a fine and compound, though it were for ten or twenty
+thousand years in purgatory.”  “Ha! ha!” quoth the devil, a cunning snap
+that drew up the charge, “if ye are upon those terms ye are hard put
+to’t.”  Whereupon the treasurers, being brought to a forced put, were
+e’en glad to make the best of a bad game, and follow the fencer.
+
+These were no sooner gone, but in came an unlucky pastry-man; they asked
+him if he would be tried.  “That’s e’en as’t hits,” said he.  At that
+word, the devil that managed the cause against him, pressed his charge,
+and laid it home to him, that he had put off cats for hares; and filled
+his pies with bones instead of flesh; and not only so, but that he had
+sold horse-flesh, dogs, and foxes, for beef and mutton.  Upon the issue,
+it was proved against him, that Noah never had so many animals in his ark
+as this poor fellow had put in his pies (for we read of no rats and mice
+there), so that he e’en gave up his cause, and went away to see if his
+oven were hot.  Next, came the philosophers with their syllogisms, and it
+was no ill entertainment to hear them chop logic, and put all their
+expostulations, in mood and figure.  But the pleasantest people in the
+world were the poets, who insisted upon it, that they were to be tried by
+Jupiter; and to the charge of worshiping false gods, their answer was
+that through them they worshipped the true one, and were rather mistaken
+in the name than in the worship.  Virgil had much to say for himself, for
+his _Sicelides Musæ_; but Orpheus interrupted him, who being the father
+of the poets desired to be heard for them all.  “What, he?” cried one of
+the devils, “yes; for teaching that boys were better bed-fellows than
+wenches; but the women had combed his coxcomb for him, if they could have
+catched him.”  “Away with him to hell once again,” then they cried; “and
+let him get out now if he can.”  So they all filed off, and Orpheus was
+their guide, because he had been there once before.  So soon as the poets
+were gone, there knocked at the gate a rich penurious chuff; but ’twas
+told him that the Ten Commandments kept it, and that he had not kept
+them.  “It is impossible,” quoth he, “under favour, to prove that ever I
+broke any one of them.”  And so he went to justify himself from point to
+point: he had done this and that; and he had never done that, nor
+t’other; but in the end, he was delivered over to be rewarded according
+to his works.  And then came on a company of house-breakers and robbers,
+so dexterous, some of them, that they saved themselves from the very
+ladder.  The scriveners and attorneys observing that, ah! thought they;
+if we could but pass for thieves now!  And yet they set a face good
+enough upon the business too; which made Judas and Mahomet hope well of
+themselves; “for,” said they, “if any of these fellows come off, there’s
+no fear of us.”  Whereupon they advanced boldly, with a resolution to
+take their trial; which set the devils all a laughing.  The guardian
+angels of the scriveners and attorneys moved that the evangelists might
+be of their counsel; which the devils opposed, “for,” said they, “we
+shall insist only upon the matter of fact, and leave them without any
+possibility of reply, or excuse.  We might indeed content ourselves with
+the bare proof of what they are; for ’tis crime enough that they are
+scriveners and attorneys.”  With that, the scriveners denied their trade,
+alleging that they were secretaries; and the attorneys called themselves
+solicitors.  All was said, in effect, that the case would bear; but the
+best part of their plea was church-membership.  And in fine, after
+several replications and rejoinders, they were all sent to Old Nick; save
+only two or three, that found mercy.  “Well,” cried one of the
+scriveners, “this ’tis to keep lewd company!”  The devils called out
+then, to clear the bar, and said they should have occasion for the
+scriveners themselves, to enter protestations in the quality of public
+notaries, against lawless and disorderly people; but the poor wretches,
+it seems, could not hear on that ear.  To say the truth, the Christians
+were much more troublesome than the pagans, which the devils took
+exceeding ill; but they had this to say for themselves, that they were
+christened when they were children, so that ’twas none of their fault,
+and their parents must answer for’t.  Judas and Mahomet took such
+courage, when they saw two or three of the scriveners and attorneys saved
+that they were just upon the point of challenging their clergy; but they
+were prevented by the doctor I told ye of, who was set first to the bar,
+in company with an apothecary and a barber, when a certain devil, with a
+great bundle of evidences in his hand, informed the court that the
+greatest part of the dead there present were sent thither by the doctor
+then at the bar, in confederacy with his apothecary and barber, to whom
+they were to acknowledge their obligation for that fair assembly.  An
+angel then interposing for the defendant, recommended the apothecary for
+a charitable person and one that physicked the poor for nothing.  “No
+matter for that,” cried the devil; “for I have him in my books, and am
+able to prove that he has killed more people with two little boxes than
+the King of Spain has done with two thousand barrels of powder, in the
+low-country wars.  All his medicines are corrupted, and his compositions
+hold a perfect intelligence with the plague: he has utterly unpeopled a
+couple of his neighbour villages, in a matter of three weeks’ time.”  The
+doctor he let fly upon the ’pothecary too, and said he would maintain,
+against the whole college, that his prescriptions were according to the
+dispensatory; and if an apothecary would play the knave, or the fool, and
+put in this for that, he could not help it.  So that without any more
+words the ’pothecary was put to the sommersault, and the doctor and
+barber were brought off, at the intercession of St. Cosmus and St.
+Damian.
+
+After these, came a dapper lawyer, with a tongue steeped in oil, and a
+great master of his words and actions; a most exquisite flatterer, and no
+man better skilled in the art of moving the passions than himself, or
+more ready at bolting a lucky president at a dead lift, or at making the
+best of a bad cause; for he had all the shifts and starting-holes in the
+law at his fingers’ ends.  But all this would not serve, for the verdict
+went against him, and he was ordered to pay costs.  In that instant,
+there was a discovery made of a fellow that hid himself in a corner, and
+looked like a spy.  They asked him what he was.  He made answer, “An
+empiric.”  “What,” said a devil, “my old friend Pontæus: Alas! alas! thou
+hadst ten thousand times better be in Covent Garden now, or at Charing
+Cross; for upon my word thou’t have nothing to do here, unless, perhaps,
+for an ointment for a burn or so;” and so Pontæus went his way.  The next
+that appeared were a company of vintners, who were accused for
+adulterating and mingling water with their wines.  Their plea was that in
+compensation they had furnished the hospitals with communion-wine that
+was right, upon free cost; but this excuse signified as little as that of
+the tailors there present, who suggested that they had clothed so many
+friars, gratis; and so they were dispatched away together.  After these,
+followed a number of bankers, that had turned bankrupt to cozen their
+creditors; who finding there several of their old correspondents, that
+they had reduced to a morsel of bread, began to treat of composition; but
+one of the devils presently cried out, “All the rest have had enough to
+do to answer for themselves; but these people are to reckon for other
+men’s scores as well as their own.”  And hereupon, they were forthwith
+sent away to Pluto with letters of exchange; but, as it happened at that
+time, the devil was out of cash.
+
+After this, entered a Spanish cavalier, as upright as Justice itself.  He
+was a matter of a quarter of an hour in his legs and reverences to the
+company.  We could see no head he had, for his prodigious starched ruff
+that stood staring up like a turkey-cock’s tail, and covered it.  In
+fine, it was so fantastic a figure that the porter was gaping at it a
+good while, and asked if it were a man, or no?  “It is a man,” quoth the
+Spaniard, “upon the honour of a cavalier, and his name is Don Pedro
+Rhodomontadoso,” etc.  He was so long a telling his name and titles that
+one of the devils burst out a laughing in the middle of his pedigree, and
+demanded What he would be at.  “Glory,” quoth he, which they taking in
+the worse sense, for pride, sent him away immediately to Lucifer.  He was
+a little severe upon his guides, for disordering his mustachios, but they
+helped him presently to a pair of beard-irons, and all was well again.
+
+In the next place, came a fellow, weeping and wailing.  “But, my
+masters,” says he, “my cause is never the worse for my crying, for if I
+would stand upon my merits, I could tell ye that I have kept as good
+company, and had as much to do with the saints as another body.”  “What
+have we here,” cried one, “Diocletian, or Nero?”  For they had enough to
+do with the saints, though ’twere but to persecute them.  But upon the
+upshot, what was this poor creature but a small officer, that swept the
+church and dusted the images and pictures.  His charge was for stealing
+the oil out of the lamps and leaving all in the dark, pretending that the
+owls and jackdaws had drunk it up.  He had a trick too of clothing
+himself out of the church habits, which he got new-dyed; and of cramming
+his porridge with consecrated bread, that he stole every Sunday.  What he
+said for himself, I know not; but he had his mittimus, and took the
+left-hand way at parting.
+
+With that, a voice was heard, “Make way there, clear the passage;” and
+this was for a bevy of handsome, buxom Bona Roba’s, in their caps and
+feathers that came dancing, laughing, and singing of ballads and
+lampoons, and as merry as the day was long.  But they quickly changed
+their note, for so soon as ever they saw the hideous looks of the devils,
+they fell into violent fits of the mother; beating their breasts, and
+tearing their hair, with all the horror and fury imaginable.  There was
+an angel offered in their favour that they had been great frequenters of
+Our Lady’s chapel.  “Yes, yes,” cried a devil, “less of her chapel, and
+more of her virtue, would have done well.”  There was a notable whipster,
+among the rest, that confessed the devil had reason.  And then her trial
+came on, for making a cloak of a sacrament, and only marrying, that she
+might play the whore with privilege, and never want a father for her
+bastards.  It was her fortune alone to be condemned; and going along,
+“Well!” she cried; “if I had thought ’twould have come to this, I should
+ne’er have troubled myself with so many masses.”
+
+And now, after long waiting, came Judas and Mahomet upon the stage, and
+to them Jack of Leyden.  Up comes an officer and asked which of the three
+was Judas.  “I am he,” quoth Jack of Leyden.  “Nay, but I am Judas,”
+cried Mahomet.  “They’re a couple of lying rascals,” says Judas himself,
+“for I am the man: only the rogues make use of my name to save their
+credit.  ’Tis true I sold my Master once, and the world has ever since
+been the better for’t; but these villains sell Him and themselves too
+every hour of the day, and there follows nothing but misery and
+confusion.”  So they were all three packed away to their disciples.
+
+The angel that kept the book found that the serjeants and remembrancers
+were to come on next; whereupon they were called, and appeared; but the
+court was not much troubled with them, for they confessed guilty at first
+word, and so were tied up without any more ado.
+
+The next that appeared was an astrologer, loaden with almanacks, globes,
+astrolabes, etc., making proclamation as loud as he could bawl that there
+must needs be a gross mistake in the reckoning, for Saturn had not
+finished his course, and the world could not be yet at an end.  One of
+the devils that saw how he came provided, and looked upon him as his own
+already: “A provident slave,” quoth he, “I warrant him, to bring his
+firing along with him.  But this I must needs tell ye,” says he to the
+mathematician, “’tis a strange thing, ye should create so many heavens in
+your life, and go to the devil for want of one after your death.”  “Nay,
+for going,” cried the astrologer, “ye shall excuse me; but if you’ll
+carry me, well and good.”  And immediately order was given to carry him
+away and pay the porter.
+
+Hereupon, methought, the court rose, the throne vanished; the shadows and
+darkness withdrew; the air sweetened; the earth was covered with flowers;
+the heavens clear: and then I waked, not a little satisfied to find that
+after all this, I was still in my bed, and among the living.  The use I
+made of my dream was this: I betook myself presently to my prayers, with
+a firm resolution of changing my life, and putting my soul into such a
+frame of piety and obedience, that I might attend the coming of the great
+day with peace and comfort.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                       THE END OF THE THIRD VISION
+
+
+
+
+THE FOURTH VISION OF LOVING FOOLS
+
+
+ABOUT four o’clock, in a cold frosty morning, when it was much better
+being in a warm bed, with a good bedfellow, than upon a bier in the
+churchyard; as I lay advising with my pillow, tumbling and tossing a
+thousand love-toys in my head, I passed from one fancy to another, till
+at last I fell into a slumber; and there appeared the genius of disabuse,
+laying before me all the follies, and vanities of love, and supporting
+her opinions with great authorities and reasons.  I was carried then
+(methought I knew not how) into a fair meadow: a meadow, pleasant and
+agreeable infinitely beyond the very fictions of your half-witted poets,
+with all their far-fetched gilding, and enamellings (for a paper of
+verses is worth nothing with them, unless they force nature for’t, and
+rifle both the Indies).  This delicious field was watered with two
+rivulets, the one bitter, the other sweet; and yet they mingled their
+streams with a pretty kind of murmur, equal perhaps to the best music in
+the world.  The use of these waters was (as I observed) to temper the
+darts of love; for while I was upon the prospect of the place, I saw
+several of Cupid’s little officers, and subjects, dipping of arrows
+there, for their entertainment and ease.  Upon this, I fancied myself in
+one of the gardens of Cyprus, and that I saw the very hive, where the bee
+lived that stung my young master, and occasioned that excellent ode which
+Anacreon has written upon the subject.  The next thing I cast my eye upon
+was a palace in the midst of the meadow; a rare piece, as well for the
+structure as design.  The porches were of the Doric order, excellently
+wrought; and the pedestals, bases, columns, cornices, capitals,
+architraves, friezes (and in short the whole front of the fabric) was
+beautified with imaginary trophies, and triumphs of love, in half relief,
+which as they were intermixed with other fantastic works and conceits,
+carried the face of several little histories, and gave a great ornament
+to the building.  Over the porch, there was in golden letters, upon black
+marble, this inscription:
+
+    This is called fools’ paradise,
+    From the loving fools that dwell in’t,
+    Where the great fools rule the less,
+    The rest obey, and all do well in’t.
+
+The finishing and materials were pleasant to admiration.  The portal
+spacious, the doors always open, and the house free to all comers, which
+were very many; the porter’s place was supplied by a woman; exquisitely
+handsome, both for face and person; tall, delicately shaped, and set off
+with great advantages of dress, and jewels.  She was made up, in fine, of
+charms, and her name (as I understood) was Beauty.  She would let any man
+in to see the house for a look; and that was all I paid for my passage.
+In the first court, I found a many of both sexes, but so altered in habit
+and countenance, that they could scarce know one another.  They were sad,
+pensive; and their complexions tinted with a yellow paleness (which Ovid
+calls Cupid’s livery).  There was no talk of being true to friends; loyal
+to superiors; and dutiful to parents: but kindred did the office of
+procurers; and procurers were called cousins.  Wives loved their
+husbands’ she friends, and husbands did as much for them, in loving their
+gallants.
+
+While I was upon the contemplation of these encounters of affection,
+there appeared a strange extravagant figure, but in the likeness of a
+human creature.  It was neither perfectly man nor perfectly woman, but
+had indeed a resemblance of both.  This person I perceived was ever busy,
+up and down, going and coming; beset all over with eyes and ears, and had
+one of the craftiest distrustful looks (methought) that ever I saw.  And
+withal, (as I observed) no small authority in the place, which made me
+inquire after this creature’s name, and office.  “My name,” quoth she,
+for now it proved to be a woman, “is Jealousy, and methinks, you and I
+should be better acquainted, for how came you here else?  However, for
+your satisfaction, you are to understand that the greater part of the
+distempered people you see here are of my bringing; and yet I am not
+their physician, but their tormentor; and serve only to aggravate and
+embitter their misfortunes.  If you would know anything further of the
+house, never ask me, for ’tis forty to one I shall tell you a lie; I have
+not told you half the truth even of myself; and to deal plainly with you,
+I am made up of inventions, artifice, and imposture: but the good old man
+that walks there, is the Major Domo, and will tell you all, if you will
+but bear with his slow way of discourse.”
+
+Thereupon I went to the good man, whom I knew presently to be Time, and
+desired him to let me look into the several quarters and lodgings of the
+house, for there were some fools of my acquaintance there I’d fain visit;
+he told me that he was at present so busy about making of caudles,
+cock-broths, and jellies for his patients, that he could not stir; but
+yet he directed me where I might find all those I inquired for, and gave
+me the freedom of the house to walk at pleasure.
+
+I passed out of the first court, into the maids’ quarter, which was the
+very strongest part of the whole building; and so’t had need; for divers
+of the young wenches were so extravagant and furious, that no other place
+would have held them.  (The wives and widows were in another room apart.)
+Here ye should have one, sobbing and raging with jealousy of a rival.
+There another, stark mad for a husband, and inwardly bleeding because she
+durst not discover it.  A third was writing of letters all riddle and
+mystery, mending and marring, till at last the paper had more blots than
+whole words in it.  Some were practising in the glass the gracious smile,
+the roll of the eye, the velvet lip, etc.  Others again were in a diet of
+oatmeal, clay, chalk, coal, hard wax, and the like.  Some were
+conditioning with their servants for a ball, or a serenade, that the
+whole town might ring of the address.  “Yes, yes,” they cried, “you can
+go to the park with this lady, and to a play with that lady, and to
+Banstead with t’other lady, and spend whole nights at beste or ombre with
+my Lady Pen-Tweezel; but by my troth, I think you are ashamed to be seen
+in my company.”  Some I saw upon the very point of sealing and
+delivering.  “I am thine,” cries one, “and thine alone, or let all the
+devils in hell, etc.  But be sure you be constant.”  “If I be not,” says
+he, “let my soul,” etc., and the silly jade believes him.  In one corner
+ye should have them praying for husbands, that they might the better love
+at random; in another, nothing would please them but to be married men’s
+wives, and this disease was looked upon as a little desperate.  Some
+again stood ready furnished with love letters and tickets to be cast out
+at the window, or thrust under the door, and these were looked upon not
+only as fools but beasts.
+
+I had seen as much already as I desired, for I had learned of old that he
+that keeps such company seldom comes off without a scratched face; but if
+he misses a mistress, he gets a wife, and stands condemned to a
+repentance during life, without redemption, unless one of the two dies.
+For women in the case are worse than pirates; a galley-slave may compound
+for his freedom, but there’s no thought of ransom in case of wedlock.  I
+had a good mind to a little chat with some of them, but (thought I)
+they’ll fancy I’m in love with them.  And so I e’en marched off into the
+married quarter, where there was such ranting, damning, and tearing, as
+if hell had been broke loose.  And what was all this? but a number of
+women that had been locked up and shackled by their husbands, to keep
+them in obedience, and had now broken their prisons, and their chains,
+and were grown ten times madder than before.  Some I saw caressing and
+coaxing their husbands, in the very moment they designed to betray them.
+Others were picking their husbands’ pockets to pay now and then for a
+by-blow.  Some again were upon a religious point, and all upon the humour
+(forsooth) of pilgrimages and lectures; when alas! they had no other
+business with the altars or churches than a sacrifice to Venus, or a love
+meeting.  Divers there were that went to the bath; but bathing was the
+least part of their errand.  Others to confession, that mistook their
+martyr for their confessor: some to be revenged of jealous husbands were
+resolving to do the thing they feared, and pay them in their own coin.
+Others were for making sure aforehand by way of advance; for that’s the
+revenge, they say, that’s as sweet as muscadine and eggs.  One was
+melancholy for a delay; another for a defeat; a third is preparing to
+make her market at a play.  There was one among the rest was never out of
+her coach; and asking her the reason, she told me, she loved to be
+jolted.  In this crowd of women, you must know that there were no wives
+of ambassadors, soldiers, or merchants that were abroad upon commission;
+for such were considered in effect as single women, and not allowed as
+members of this commonwealth.
+
+The next quarter was that of the grave and wise, the right reverend
+widows, women in appearance of marvellous severity and reserve, and yet
+every one of them had her weak side, and ye might read her folly and
+distemper through her disguise.  One of them I saw crying with one eye
+for the loss of one husband, and laughing with t’other upon him that was
+to come next.  Another, with the Ephesian matron, was solacing herself
+with her gallant before her husband was thorough cold in the mouth,
+considering, that he that died half an hour ago is as dead as William the
+Conqueror.  There were several others passing to and again, quite out of
+their mourning, that looked so demurely (I warrant ye) as if butter would
+not have melted in their mouths, and yet apostate widows (as I was told)
+and there they were kept as strictly, as if they had been in the Spanish
+Inquisition.  Some were laying wagers whose mourning was most _à la
+mode_, and best made, or whose peak or veil became her best, and setting
+themselves off with a thousand tricks of ornament and dress.  The widows
+I observed that were marching off, with the mark out of their mouths,
+were hugely concerned to be thought young, and still talking of masks,
+balls, fiddles, treats; chanting and jigging to every tune they heard,
+and all upon the hoity-toity like mad wenches of fifteen.  The younger,
+on the other side, made use of their time and took pleasure while ’twas
+to be had.  There were too of the religious strain; a people much at
+their beads, and in private; and these were there in the quality of love
+heretics, or platonics, and under the penance of perpetual abstinence
+from the flesh they loved best (which is the most mortifying Lent of all
+other).  Some, that had skill in perspective, were before the glass with
+their boxes of patch and paint about them; shadowing, drawing out,
+refreshing, and in short, covering and palliating, all the imperfections
+of feature and complexion, every one after her own humour.  Now these
+women were absolutely insufferable, for they were most of them old and
+headstrong, having got the better of their husbands, so that they would
+be taking upon them to domineer here, as they had done at home; and
+indeed, they found the master of the college enough to do.
+
+When I had tired myself with this variety of folly and madness, I went to
+the devotees, where I found a great many women and girls that had
+cloistered up themselves from the conversation of the world; and yet were
+not a jot soberer than their fellows.  These one would have thought might
+have been easily cured, but many of them were in for their lives, in
+despite of either counsel or physic.  The room where they were was
+barricaded with strong bars of iron; and yet when the toy took them,
+they’d make now and then a sally; for when the fit was upon them, they’d
+own no superior but love, come what would on’t in the event.  The greater
+part of these good people were writing of tickets and dispatches, which
+had still the sign of the cross at the top, and Satan at the bottom,
+concluding with this, or some such postscript: I commend this paper to
+your discretion.  The fools of this province would be twattling night and
+day; and if it happened that any one of them had talked herself a-weary
+(which was very rare), she would presently take upon her very gravely to
+admonish the rest, and read a lecture of silence to the company.  There
+were some that for want of better entertainment fell in love with one
+another; but these were looked upon as a sort of fops and ninnies, and
+therefore the more favourably used; but they’d have been of another mind,
+if they had known the cause of their distemper.
+
+The root of all these several extravagances was idleness, which
+(according to Petrarch’s observation) never fails to make way for
+wantonness.  There was one among the rest that had more letters of
+exchange upon the credit of her insatiable desires than a whole regiment
+of bankers.  Some of them were sick of their old visitor, and called for
+a freshman.  Others, by intervals, I perceived, had their wits about
+them, and contented themselves discreetly with the physician of the
+house.  In short, it e’en pitied my heart to see so many poor people in
+so sad a condition and without any hope of relief, as I gathered from him
+that had them in care; for they were still puddering and royling their
+bodies; and if they got a little ease for the present, they’d be down
+again as soon as they had taken their medicine.
+
+From thence I went to the single women (such as made profession never to
+marry) which were the least outrageous and discomposed of all; for they
+had a thousand ways to lay the devil as well as to raise him.  Some of
+them lived like common highwaymen, by robbing Peter to pay Paul; and
+stripping honest men to clothe rascals, which is (under favour) but a
+lewd kind of charity.  Others there were, that were absolutely out of
+their seven senses, and as mad as March hares for this wit and t’other
+poet, that never failed to pay them again in rhymes and madrigals, with
+ruby lips, pearly teeth, so that to read their verses, a man would swear
+the whole woman to be directly petrified.
+
+    Of sapphire fair, or crystal clear,
+    Is the forehead of my dear, etc.
+
+I saw one in consultation with a cunning man to know her fortune;
+another, dealing with a conjurer for a philter, or drink to make her
+beloved.  A third was daubing and patching up an old ruined face, to make
+it fresh and young again; but she might as well have been washing of a
+blackamoor to make him white.  In fine, a world there were, that with
+their borrowed hair, teeth, eyes, eyebrows, looked like fine folks at a
+distance, but would have been left as ridiculous as Æsop’s crow, if every
+bird had fetched away his own feather.  ’Deliver me (thought I, smiling
+and shaking my head) if this be woman.
+
+And so I stepped into the men’s quarter, which was but next door, and
+only a thick wall between.  Their great misery was that they were deaf to
+good advice, obstinately hating and despising both physic and physician;
+for if they would have either quitted or changed, they might have been
+cured.  But they chose rather to die, and though they saw their error,
+would not mend it.  Which minded me of the old rhyme:
+
+    Where love’s in the case,
+    The doctor’s an ass.
+
+These fools-male were all in the same chamber; and one might perfectly
+read their humour and distemper in their looks and gestures.  Oh! how
+many a gay lad did I see there in his point band and embroidered vest
+that had not a whole shirt to his back!  How many huffs and highboys that
+had nothing else in their mouths but the lives and fortunes they’d spend
+in their sweet ladies’ service! that would yet have run five miles on
+your errand, to have been treated but at a threepenny ordinary?  How many
+a poor devil that wanted bread, and was yet troubled with the rebellion
+of the flesh!  Some there were that spent much time in setting their
+perukes, ordering the mustache, and dressing up the very face of Lucifer
+himself for a beauty: the woman’s privilege, and in truth an
+encroachment, to their prejudice.  There were others that made it their
+glory to pass for Hectors, sons of Priam, brothers of the blade; and
+talked of nothing but attacks, combats, reverses, stramazons, stoccados;
+not considering that a naked weapon is present death to a timorous woman.
+Some were taking the round of their ladies’ lodgings, at midnight, and
+went to bed again as wise as they rose.  Others fell in love by contagion
+and merely conversing with the infected.  Some again went post from
+church to chapel, every holy day, to hunt for a mistress; and so turned a
+day of rest into a day of labour.  Ye might see others skipping
+continually from house to house, like the knight upon a chess-board,
+without ever catching the (queen or) dame.  Some, like crafty beggars,
+made their case worse than ’twas: and others, though ’twere ne’er so bad,
+durst not so much as open their mouths.  Really it grieved me for the
+poor mutes, and I wished with all my heart their mistresses had been
+witches, that they might have known their meaning by their mumping; but
+they were lost to all counsel, so that there was no advising them.  There
+was another sort of elevated, and conceited lovers; and these forsooth
+were not to be satisfied without the seven liberal sciences, and the four
+cardinal virtues, in the shape of a woman; and their case was desperate.
+The next I observed were a generation of modest fools, that passed under
+the notion of people diffident of themselves.  They were generally men of
+good understanding, but for the most part younger brothers, of low
+fortunes, and such as for want of wherewithal to go to the price of
+higher amours, were fain to take up with ordinary stuff, that brought
+them nothing in the end, but beggary and repentance.  The husbands, I
+perceived, were horribly furious, although in manacles and shackles.
+Some of them left their own wives, and fell upon their neighbours’.
+Others, to keep the good women in awe and obedience, would be taking upon
+them, and playing the tyrants, but upon the upshot they found their
+mistake, and that though they came on as fierce as lions, they went off
+as tame as muttons.  Some were making friendships with their wives’
+she-cousins, and agreeing upon a cross-gossiping whoever should have the
+first child.
+
+The widowers, that had bit of the bridle, passed from place to place,
+where they stayed more or less, according to their entertainment, and so
+were in effect, as good as married; for as long, or as little a while as
+themselves pleased.  These lived single, and spent their time in
+visiting, first one friend, then another.  Here they fell in love; there
+they kindled a jealousy, which they contracted themselves in one place,
+and cured it in another.  But the miracle was, that they all knew, and
+confessed themselves a company of mad fools, and yet continued so.  Those
+that had skill in music, and could either sing or fiddle, made use of
+their gifts, to put the silly wenches that were but half moped before,
+directly out of their wits.  They that were poetical were perpetually
+hammering upon the subjects of cruelty and disappointment.  One tells his
+good fortune to another, that requites him with the story of his bad.
+They that had set their hearts upon girls were beating the streets all
+day, to find what avenues to a lady’s lodgings at night.  Some were
+tampering and caressing the chamber-maid, as the ready way to the
+mistress.  Others chose rather to put it to the push, and attempt the
+lady herself.  Some were examining their pockets and taking a view of
+their furniture, which consisted much in love-letters, delicately sealed
+up with perfumed wax, upon raw silk; and a thousand pretty devices
+within; all wrapt up in riddle, and cipher.  Abundance of hair bracelets,
+lockets, pomanders, knots of riband, and the like.  There were others,
+that were called the husband’s friends, who were ready upon all occasions
+to do this, and to do that kindness for the husband.  Their purse,
+credit, coach and horses, were all at his service; and in the meantime,
+who but they to gallant the wife?  To the park, the gardens, a treat, or
+a comedy, where forty to one, by the greatest good luck in the world,
+they stumble upon an aunt, an old housekeeper of the family, or some such
+reverend goer-between that’s a well-willer to the mathematics; she takes
+the hint, performs the good office, and the work is done.
+
+Now there were two sorts of fools for the widows: the one was beloved,
+and the other not.  The latter were content to be a kind of voluntary
+slaves, for the compassing their ends; but the other were the happier,
+for they were ever at perfect liberty to do their pleasure, unless some
+friend or child of the house perchance came in, in the mischievous nick,
+and then in case of a little colour more than ordinary, or a tumbled
+handkercher: ’twas but changing the scene, and struggling for a paper of
+verses, or some such business to keep all in countenance.  Some made
+their assaults both with love and money, and they seldom failed, for they
+came doubly armed; and your Spanish pistols are a sort of battery hardly
+to be resisted.
+
+I came now to reflect upon what I had seen, and as I was walking (in that
+meditation) toward another lodging, I found myself (ere I was aware) in
+the first court again; where I entered, and in it I observed new wonders:
+I saw that the number of the mad fools increased every moment; although
+time (I perceived) did all that was possible to recover them.  There was
+Jealousy tormenting even those that were most confident of the faith of
+what they loved.  There was Memory rubbing of old sores.  There was
+Understanding, locked up in a dark cellar; and Reason with both her eyes
+out.  I made a little pause, the better to observe these varieties and
+disguises.  And when I had looked myself a-weary, I turned about and
+spied a door; but so narrow that it was hardly passable; and yet strait
+as it was, divers there were that ingratitude and infidelity had set at
+liberty, and made a shift to get through.  Upon which opportunity of
+returning, I made what haste I could to be one of the first at the door,
+and in that instant, my man drew the curtain of my bed, and told me the
+morning was far spent.  Whereupon I waked, and recollecting myself, found
+all was but a dream.  The very fancy however of having spent so much time
+in the company of fools and madmen, gave me some disorder, but with this
+comfort, that both sleeping and waking, I had experimented passionate
+love to be nothing else than a mere frenzy and folly.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                       THE END OF THE FOURTH VISION
+
+
+
+
+THE FIFTH VISION OF THE WORLD
+
+
+IT is utterly impossible for anything in this world to fix our appetites
+and desires; but they are still flitting, and restless like pilgrims;
+delighted and nourished with variety: which shows how much we are
+mistaken in the value and quality of the things we covet.  And hence it
+is, that what we pursue with the greatest delight and passion imaginable,
+yields us nothing but satiety and repentance in the possession; yet such
+is the power of these appetites of ours that when they call and command,
+we follow and obey; though we find in the end that what we took for a
+beauty, upon the chase proves but a carcass in the quarry; and we are
+sick on’t as soon as we have it.  Now the world, that knows our palate
+and inclination, never fails to feed the humour, and to flatter and
+entertain us with all sorts of change and novelty, as the most certain
+method of gaining upon our affections.
+
+One would have thought that these considerations might have put sober
+thoughts and resolutions in my head, but it was my fate to be taken off,
+in the very middle of my morality and speculations, and carried away from
+myself by vanity and weakness into the wide world, where I was for a
+certain time, not much unsatisfied with my condition.  As I passed from
+one place to another, several that saw me (I perceived) did but make
+sport with me: for the further I went, the more I was at a loss in that
+labyrinth of delusions.  One while I was in with the sword-men and
+bravoes; up to the ears in challenges, and quarrels; and never without an
+arm in a scarf, or a broken head.  Another fit; I was never well, but at
+the Fleece Tavern, or Bear at bridge-foot, stuffing my guts with food and
+tipple, till the hoops were ready to burst.  Beside twenty other
+entertainments that I found, every jot as extravagant as these, which to
+my great trouble and admiration left me not so much as one moment of
+repose.
+
+As I was in one of my unquiet and pensive moods, somebody called after
+me, and plucked me by the cloak, which proved to be a person of a
+venerable age; his clothes miserably poor and tattered; and his face,
+just as if he had been trampled upon in the streets, which did not yet
+hinder but that he had still the air and appearance of one that deserved
+much honour and respect.  “Good father,” said I to him, “why should you
+envy me my enjoyments?  Pray’e let me alone, and do not trouble yourself
+with me or my doings.  You’re past the pleasure of life yourself, and
+can’t endure to see other people merry, that have the world before them.
+Consider of it; you are now upon the point of leaving the world, and I am
+but newly come into’t, but ’tis the trick of all old men to be carping at
+the actions of their juniors.”  “Son,” said the old man, smiling, “I
+shall neither hinder nor envy thy delights, but in pure pity I would fain
+reclaim thee.  Dost thou know the price of a day an hour or a minute?
+Didst ever examine the value of time?  If thou hadst, thou wouldst employ
+it better; and not cast away so many blessed opportunities upon trifles;
+and so easily, and insensibly, part with so inestimable a treasure.
+What’s become of thy past hours? have they made thee a promise to come
+back again at a call, when thou hast need of them?  Or, canst thou show
+me which way they went?  No, no; they are gone without recovery; and in
+their flight, methinks, Time seems to turn his head, and laugh over his
+shoulder in derision of those that made no better use of him, when they
+had him.  Dost thou not know that all the minutes of our life are but as
+so many links of a chain that has death at the end on’t? and every moment
+brings thee nearer thy expected end, which perchance, while the word is
+speaking, may be at thy very door; and doubtless at thy rate of living,
+it will be upon thee before thou art aware.  How stupid is he that dies
+while he lives, for fear of dying!  How wicked is he that lives, as if he
+should never die; and only fears death when he comes to feel it! which is
+too late for comfort, either to body or soul: and he is certainly none of
+the wisest that spends all his days in lewdness and debauchery, without
+considering that of his whole life any minute might have been his last.”
+
+“My good father,” said I, “I am beholding to you for your excellent
+discourses, for they have delivered me out of the power of a thousand
+frivolous and vain affections, that had taken possession of me.  But who
+are you, I pray’ee?  And what is your business here?”  “My poverty and
+these rags,” quoth he, “are enough to tell ye that I am an honest man, a
+friend to truth, and one that will not be mealy-mouthed, when he may
+speak it to purpose.  Some call me the plain-dealer; others, the
+undeceiver-general.  You see me all in tatters, wounds, scars, bruises.
+And what is all this but the requital the world gives me for my good
+counsel and kind visits?  And yet after all this endeavour to get shut of
+me they call themselves my friends, though they curse me to the pit of
+hell, as soon as ever I come near them; and had rather be hanged than
+spend one quarter of an hour in my company.  If thou hast a mind to see
+the world I talk of, come along with me, and I’ll carry thee into a place
+where thou shalt have a full prospect of it, and without any
+inconvenience see all that’s in’t, or in the people that dwell in’t, and
+look it through and through.”  “What’s the name of this place?” quoth I.
+“It is called,” said he, “the Hypocrites’ Walk; and it crosses the world
+from one Pole to th’ other.  It is large, and populous; for I believe
+there’s not any man alive but has either a house or a chamber in’t.  Some
+live in’t for altogether; others take it only in passage: for there are
+hypocrites of several sorts; but all mortals have, more or less, a tang
+of the leaven.  That fellow there in the corner came but t’other day from
+the plow tail, and would now fain be a gentleman.  But had not he better
+pay his debts, and walk alone, than break his promises to keep a lackey?
+There’s another rascal that would fain be a lord, and would venture a
+voyage to Venice for the title, but that he’s better at building castles
+in the air than upon the water.  In the meantime he puts on a nobleman’s
+face and garb; he swears and drinks like a lord, and keeps his hounds and
+whores, which ’tis feared in the end will devour their master.  Mark now
+that piece of gravity and form; he walks, ye see, as if he moved by
+clock-work; his words are few and low; he makes all his answers by a
+shrug or a nod.  This is the hypocrite of a Minister of State, who with
+all his counterfeit of wisdom is one of the veriest noddies in nature.
+
+“Face about now, and mind those decrepit sots there that can scarce lift
+a leg over a threshold, and yet they must be dyeing their hair, colouring
+their beards, and playing the young fools again, with a thousand
+hobby-horse tricks and antique dresses.  On the other side, ye have a
+company of silly boys taking upon them to govern the world, under a visor
+of wisdom and experience.”  “What lord is that,” said I, “in the rich
+clothes there, and the fine laces?”  “That lord,” quoth he, “is a tailor,
+in his holiday clothes; and if he were now upon his shop-board, his own
+scissors and needles would hardly know him: and you must understand that
+hypocrisy is so epidemical a disease that it has laid hold of the trades
+themselves as well as the masters.  The cobbler must be saluted Mr.
+Translator.  The groom names himself gentleman of the horse; the fellow
+that carries guts to the bears, writes, one of His Majesty’s officers.
+The hangman calls himself a minister of justice.  The mountebank, an able
+man.  A common whore passes for a courtesan.  The bawd acts the Puritan.
+Gaming ordinaries are called academies; and bawdy-houses, places of
+entertainment.  The page styles himself the child of honour; and the
+foot-boy calls himself my lady’s page.  And every pick-thank names
+himself a courtier.  The cuckold-maker passes for a fine gentleman; and
+the cuckold himself, for the best-natured husband in the world: and a
+very ass commences master-doctor.  Hocus-pocus tricks are called
+sleight-of-hand; lust, friendship; usury, thrift; cheating is but
+gallantry; lying wears the name of invention; malice goes for quickness
+of apprehension; cowardice, meekness of nature; and rashness carries the
+countenance of valour.  In fine, this is all but hypocrisy, and knavery
+in a disguise, for nothing is called by the right name.  Now there are
+beside these, certain general appellations taken up, which by long usage
+are almost grown into prescription.  Every little whore takes upon her to
+be a great lady; every gown-man, to be a councillor; every huff to be a
+_soldat_; every gay thing to be a cavalier; every parish-clerk to be a
+doctor; and every writing-clerk in the office must be called Mr.
+Secretary.
+
+“So that the whole world, take it where you will, is but a mere juggle;
+and you will find that wrath, gluttony, pride, avarice, luxury, murder,
+and a thousand other heinous sins, have all of them hypocrisy for their
+source, and thither they’ll return again.”  “It would be well,” said I,
+“if you could prove what you say; but I can hardly see how so great a
+diversity of waters should proceed from one and the same fountain.”  “I
+do not wonder,” quoth he, “at your distrust, for you are mistaken in very
+good company; to fancy a contrariety in many things, which are, in
+effect, so much alike.  It is agreed upon, both by philosophers and
+divines, that all sins are evil; and you must allow, that the will
+embraces or pursues no evil but under the resemblance of good; nor does
+the sin lie in the representation, or knowledge of what is evil, but in
+the consent to it.  Which consent itself is sinful, although without any
+subsequent act: it’s true, the execution serves afterward for an
+aggravation, and ought to be considered under many differences and
+distinctions.  But in fine, evident it is that the will entertains no
+ill, but under the shape of some good.  What do ye think now of the
+hypocrite that cuts your throat in his arms, and murders you, under
+pretence of kindness?  ‘What is the hope of an hypocrite?’ says Job.  He
+neither has nor can have any: for he is wicked as he is an hypocrite; and
+even his best actions are worth nothing, because they are not what they
+seem to be.  So that of all sinners he has the most to answer for.  Other
+offenders sin only against God.  But the hypocrite sins with Him, as well
+as against Him, making use of His holy Name as a cloak and countenance
+for his wickedness.  For which reason, our blessed Saviour, after many
+affirmative precepts delivered to His disciples for their instruction,
+gave only this negative: ‘Be not sad as the hypocrites,’ which lays them
+open in few words; and He might as well have said ‘Be not hypocrites, and
+ye shall not be wicked.’”
+
+We were now come to the place the old man told me of, where I found all
+according to my expectation, and took the higher ground, that I might
+have the better prospect of what passed.  The first remarkable thing I
+saw was a long funeral train of kindred and guests, following the corpse
+of a deceased lady, in company with the disconsolate widower, who marched
+with his chin upon his breast, a sad and a heavy pace, muffled up in a
+mourning hood, enough to have stifled him, with at least ten yards of
+cloth upon his body, and no less in his train.  “Alack, alack!” cried I,
+“that ever I should live to see so dismal a spectacle!  Oh blessed woman!
+How did this husband love thee in thy lifetime, that follows thee with
+this infinite faith and affection, even to thy grave!  And happy the
+husband, doubtless, in a wife that deserved this kindness! and in so many
+tender friends and relations, to take part with him in his sorrows.  My
+good father, let me entreat you to observe this doleful encounter.”  With
+that (shaking his head and smiling) “My son,” quoth he, “thou shalt by
+and by perceive that all is nothing in the world but vanity, imposture,
+and constraint; and I will shew thee the difference between things
+themselves, and their appearances.  To see this abundance of torches,
+with the magnificence of the ceremony and attendance, one would think
+there should be some mighty matter in the business; but let me assure
+thee that all this pudder comes to no more than much ado about nothing.
+The woman was nothing (effectually) even while she lived: the body now in
+the coffin is somewhat a less nothing: and the funeral honours, which are
+now paid her come to just nothing too.  But the dead it seems must have
+their vanities, and their holidays as well as the living.  Alas! what’s a
+carcass but the most odious sort of putrefaction?  A corrupted earth, fit
+neither for fruit nor tillage.  And then for the sad looks of the
+mourners: they are only troubled at the invitation; and would not care a
+pin, if the inviter and body too were both at the devil.  And that you
+might see by their behaviour, and discourses; for when they should have
+been praying for the dead, they were prating of her pedigree, and her
+last will and testament.  ‘I’m not so near akin,’ says one, ‘but I might
+have been spared; and I had twenty other things to do.’  Another should
+have met company at a tavern; a third, at a play.  A fourth mutters that
+he is not placed according to his quality.  Another cries out, ‘A pox o’
+your meetings where there is nothing stirring but worms’ meat.’  Let me
+tell ye further, that the widower himself is not grieved as you imagine
+for the dead wife; but for the damned expense in blacks, and scutcheons,
+tapers, and mourners; and that she was not fairly laid to rest, without
+all this ado: for he persuades himself, that she might have found the way
+to her grave without a candle.  And since she was to die, ’tis his
+opinion, that she should have made quicker work on’t: for a good wife is
+(like a good Christian) to put her conscience in order betimes, and get
+her gone; without lingering in the hands of doctors, ’pothecaries, and
+surgeons, to murder her husband too.  Or (to save charges) she might have
+had the discretion to have died of the plague, which would have staved
+off company.  This is the second wife he has already turned over, and (to
+give the man his due) he has had the wit to secure himself of a third,
+while this lay on her deathbed.  So that his case is no more than
+chopping of a cold wife for a warm one, and he’ll recover this
+affliction, I warrant ye.”
+
+The good man, methought, spoke wonders; and being thoroughly convinced of
+the danger of trusting to appearances, I took up a resolution, never to
+conclude upon anything, though never so plausible, without due
+examination and inquiry.  With that, the funeral vanished, leaving us
+behind; and for a farewell, this sentence: “I am gone before, you are to
+follow; and in the meantime, to accompany others to their graves, as you
+have done me; and as I, when time was, have attended many others, with as
+little care and devotion as yourselves.”
+
+We were taken off from this meditation by a noise we heard in a house
+behind us, where we had no sooner set foot over the threshold, but we
+were entertained with a concert of six voices, that were set and tuned to
+the sighs and groans of a woman newly become a widow.  The passion was
+acted to the life; but the dead little the better for’t.  They would be
+ever and anon clapping and wringing of their hands; groaning and sighing,
+as if their hearts would break.  The hangings, pictures, and furniture
+were all taken down and removed; the rooms hung with black, and in one of
+them lay the poor disconsolate upon a couch with her condoling friends
+about her.  It was as dark as pitch, and so much the better, for the
+parts they had to play; for there was no discovering of the horrid faces
+and strains they made, to fetch up their artificial tears and
+lamentations.  “Madam,” says one, “tears are but thrown away; and really
+the grief to see your ladyship in this condition has made me as lost a
+woman to all thought of comfort as yourself.”  “I beseech you, madam,
+cheer up,” cries another, with almost as many sighs as words, “your
+husband’s e’en happy that he is out of this miserable world.  He was a
+good man, and now he finds the sweet on’t.”  “Patience, patience, dear
+madam,” cries a third, “’tis the will of Heaven, and there’s no
+contending.”  “Dost talk of patience,” says she, “and no contending?
+Wretched creature that I am! to outlive that dear man!  Oh that dear
+husband of mine!  Oh that I should ever live to see this day!”  And then
+she fell to blubbering, sobbing, and raving a thousand times worse than
+before.  “Alas, alas, who will trouble himself with a poor widow!  I have
+never a friend left to look after me; what shall become of me!”
+
+At this pause came in the chorus with their nose-instruments; and there
+was such blowing, snobbing, snivelling, and throwing snot about, that
+there was no enduring the house.  And all this, you must know, served
+them to a double purpose; that is to say, for physic and for complement:
+for it passed for the condoling office, and purged their heads of ill
+humours all under one.  I could not choose but compassionate the poor
+widow, a creature forsaken of all the world; and I told my guide as much;
+and that a charity (as I thought) would be well bestowed upon her.  The
+Holy Writ calls them mutes, according to the import of the Hebrew: in
+regard that they have nobody to speak for them.  And if at any time they
+take heart to speak for themselves, they had e’en as good hold their
+tongues, for nobody minds them.  Is there anything more frequently given
+in charge throughout the whole Bible, than to protect the fatherless, and
+defend the cause of the widow? as the highest and most necessary point of
+Christian charity: in regard that they have neither power, nor right to
+defend themselves.  Does not Job in the depth of his misery and disgraces
+make choice to clear himself toward the widow, upon his expostulations
+with the Almighty?  [If I have caused the eyes of the widow to fail] (or
+consumed the eyes of the widow; after the Hebrew) so that it seems to me,
+beside the general duty of charity, we are also bound by the laws of
+honour and generosity to assist them: for the poor souls are fain to
+plead with their eyes, and beg with their eyes, for want of either hands
+or tongues to help themselves.  “Indeed you must pardon me my good
+father,” said I, “if I cannot hold any longer from bearing a part in this
+mournful concert, upon this sad occasion.”  “And is this,” quoth the old
+man, “the fruit of your boasted divinity? to sink into weakness and
+tears, when you have the greatest need of your resolution and prudence.
+Have but a little patience, and I’ll unfold you this mystery; though (let
+me tell ye) ’tis one of the hardest things in nature, to make any man as
+wise as he should be, that conceits himself wise enough already.  If this
+accident of the widow had not happened, we had had none of the fine
+things that have been started upon’t: for ’tis occasion that awakens both
+our virtue and philosophy; and ’tis not enough to know the mine where the
+treasure lies, unless a man has the skill of drawing it out, and making
+the best of what he has in his possession.  What are you the better for
+all the advantages of wit and learning, without the faculty of reducing
+what you know into apt and proper applications?
+
+“Observe me now, and I will show you that this widow that looks as if she
+had nothing in her mouth but the service for the dead, and only
+hallelujahs in her soul, that this mortified piece of formality has green
+thoughts under her black veil, and brisk imaginations about her, in
+despite of her calamity and misfortune.  The chamber you see is dark; and
+their faces are muffled up in their funeral dresses.  And what of all
+this? when the whole course of their mourning is but a thorough cheat.
+Their weeping signifies nothing more, than crying, at so much an hour;
+for their tears are hackneyed out, and when they have wept out their
+stage, they take up, and are quiet.  If you would relieve them, leave
+them to themselves; and as soon as your back is turned, you shall have
+them singing and dancing, and as merry as Greeks: for take away the
+spectators, their hypocrisy is at an end, and the play is done; and now
+the confidents’ game begins.  ‘Come, come, madam, ’faith we must be
+merry’ cries one, ‘we are to live by the living, and not by the dead.
+For a bonny young widow as you are, to lie whimpering away your
+opportunities and lose so many brave matches!  There’s, you know who, I
+dare swear, has a month’s mind to you; by my troth I would you were in
+bed together, and I’d be hanged, if you did not find one warm bedfellow
+worth twenty cold ones.’  ‘Really, madam,’ cries a second, ‘she gives you
+good counsel; and if I were in your place, I’d follow it, and make use of
+my time.  ’Tis but one lost, and ten found.  Pray’e tell me, madam, if I
+may be so bold; what’s your opinion of that cavalier that was here
+yesterday?  Certainly he has a great deal of wit; and methinks he’s a
+very handsome proper gentleman.  Well! if that man has not a strange
+passion for you, I’ll never believe my eyes again for his sake; and, in
+good faith, if all parties were agreed, I would you were e’en well in his
+arms the night before to-morrow.  Were it not a burning shame to let such
+a beauty lie fallow?’  This sets the widow a-pinking, and simpering like
+a furmety-kettle; at length she makes up the pretty little mouth, and
+says, ‘’Tis somewhat of the soonest to talk of those affairs; but let it
+be as Heaven pleases.  However, madam, I am much beholden to you for your
+friendly advice.’  You have here the very bottom of her sorrow: she has
+taken a second husband into her heart before her first was in his grave.
+I should have told you that your right widow eats and drinks more the
+first day of her widowhood than in any other of her whole life: for there
+appears not a visitant, but presently out comes the groaning cake, a cold
+baked meat, or some restorative morsel or other, to comfort the
+afflicted; and the cordial bottle must not be forgotten neither, for
+sorrow’s dry.  So to’t they fall, and at every bit or gulp, the lady
+relict fetches ye up a heavy sigh, pretends to chew false, and makes
+protestation that for her part she can taste nothing; she has quite lost
+her digestion; and has such an oppression in her stomach that she dares
+not eat any more, for fear of over-charging nature.  ‘And in truth,’ says
+she, ‘how can it be otherwise; since (unhappy creature that I am!) he is
+gone that gave the relish to all my enjoyments; but there is no recalling
+him from the grave, and so, no remedy but patience.’  By this time, you
+see,” quoth the old man, “whether your exclamations were reasonable, or
+no.”
+
+The words were hardly out of his mouth, when hearing an uproar among the
+rabble in the street, we looked out to see what was the matter.  And
+there we saw a catchpole, without either hat or band, out of breath, and
+his face all bloody, crying out, “Help, help, in the king’s name! stop
+thief, stop thief!” and all the while, running as hard as he could drive,
+after a thief that made away from him, as if the devil had been at his
+breech.  After him, came an attorney, all dirty, a world of papers in his
+hand, an inkhorn at his girdle, and a crowd of nasty people about him;
+and down he sat himself just before us, to write somewhat upon his knee.
+Bless me (thought I) how a cause prospers in the hand of one of these
+fellows, for he had filled his paper in a trice.  “These catchpoles,”
+said I, “had need to be well paid, for the hazards they run to secure us
+in our lives and fortunes; and indeed they deserve it.  Look how the poor
+wretch is torn, bruised, and battered, and all this for the good and
+benefit of the public.”
+
+“Soft and fair,” quoth the old man; “I think thou wouldst never leave
+talking, if I did not stop thy mouth sometime.  You must know, that he
+that made the escape and the catchpole are a couple of ancient friends
+and pot-companions.  Now the catchpole quarrels the thief for not giving
+him a snip in the last booty; and the thief, after a great struggle, and
+a good lusty rubber at cuffs, has made a shift to save himself.  You’ll
+say the rogue had need of good heels, to outrun this gallows-beagle; for
+there’s hardly any beast will outstrip a bailiff that runs upon the view
+of a quarry.  So that there’s not the least thought of a public good in
+the catchpole’s action; but merely a prosecution of his own profit, and a
+spite to see himself choused.  Now if the catchpole, I confess, without
+any private interest had made this attempt upon the thief, (being his
+friend) to bring him to justice, it had been well; and yet, take this
+along with you: it is as natural to let slip a serjeant at a pickpocket
+as a greyhound at a hare.  The whip, the pillory, the axe, and the halter
+make up the best part of the catchpole’s revenue.  These people are of
+all sorts the most odious to the world; and if men in revenge would
+resolve to be virtuous, though but for a year or two, they might starve
+them all.  It is in fine an unlucky employment, and catchpoles as well as
+the devils themselves have the wages of tormentors.”
+
+“I hope,” said I to my guide, “that the attorneys shall have your good
+word too.”  “Yes, yes, ye need not doubt it,” said the old man, “for your
+attorney and your catchpole always hunt in couples.  The attorney draws
+the information, and has all his forms ready, so that ’tis no more then
+but to fill up the blanks, and away to the jail with the delinquent; if
+there be anything to be gotten ’tis not a halfpenny matter, whether the
+party be guilty or innocent: give but an attorney pen, ink, and paper,
+and let him alone for witnesses.  In case of an examination, he has the
+grace not to insist too much upon plain and naked truth; but to set down
+only what makes for his purpose, and then when they come to signing, to
+read over in the deponent’s sense (for his memory is good) what he has
+written in his own; and by this means, the cause goes on as he pleases.
+To prevent this villainy, it were well, if the examiners were as well
+sworn to write the truth as the witnesses are to speak it.  And yet there
+are some honest men of all sorts but among the attorneys; the very
+calling does by the honest catchpoles, marshal’s men, and their fellows,
+as the sea by the dead: it may entertain them for a while, but in a very
+short space it spews them up again.”
+
+The good man would have proceeded, if he had not been taken off by the
+rattling of a gilt coach, wherein was a courtier that was blown up as big
+as pride and vanity could make him.  He sat stiff and upright, as if he
+had swallowed a stake; and made it his glory to show himself in that
+posture: it would have hurt his eyes, to have exchanged a glance with
+anything that was vulgar, and therefore he was very sparing of his looks.
+He had a deep laced ruff on, that was right Spanish, which he wore erect,
+and stiff starched, that a man would have thought he had carried his head
+in a paper-lanthorn.  He was a great studier of set faces, and much
+affected with looking politic and big.  But, for his arms and body, he
+had utterly lost or forgotten the use of them: for he could neither bow
+nor move his hat to any man that saluted him; no, nor so much as turn
+from one side to the other; but sat as if he had been boxed up, like a
+Bartlemew-baby.  After this magnificent statue, followed a swarm of gaudy
+butterfly-lackeys: and his lordship’s company in the coach was a buffoon
+and a parasite.  “Oh blessed prince!” said I, “to live at this rate of
+ease and splendour, and to have the world at will!  What a glorious train
+is that!  Beyond all doubt, there never was a great fortune better
+bestowed.”  With that, the old man took me up, and told me that the
+judgment I had made upon this occasion, from one end to the other, was
+all dotage and mistake; save only, when I said he had the world at will:
+“and in that,” says he, “you have reason; for what is the world but
+labour, vanity, and folly; which is likewise the composition and
+entertainment of this cavalier.
+
+“As for the train that follows him let it be examined, and my life for
+yours, you shall find more creditors in’t, than servants: there are
+bankers, jewellers, scriveners, brokers, mercers, drapers, tailors,
+vintners; and these are properly the stays and supporters of this
+animated machine.  The money, meat, drink, robes, liveries, wages, all
+comes out of their pockets; they have this honour for their security; and
+must content themselves with promises, and fair words for full
+satisfaction, unless they had rather have a footman with a cudgel for
+their pay-master.  And after all, if this gallant were taken to shrift,
+or that a man could enter into the secrets of his conscience, I dare
+undertake, it would appear that he that digs in a mine for his bread
+lives ten thousand times more at ease than the other, with beating of his
+brains night and day for new shifts, tricks and projects to keep himself
+above water.
+
+“Observe his companions now, his fool and his flatterer.  They are too
+hard for him, ye see; and eat, drink, and make merry at his expense.
+What greater misery or shame in the world, than for a man to make a
+friendship with such rascals, and to spend his time and estate in so
+brutal, and insipid a society!  It costs him more (beside his credit) to
+maintain that couple of coxcombs than would have bought him the
+conversation of a brace of grave and learned philosophers.  But will ye
+now see the bottom of this scandalous and dishonourable kindness?  ‘My
+lord,’ says the buffoon, ‘you were most infallibly wrapt in your mother’s
+smock; for let me be — if ye have not set all the ladies about the court
+agog.’  ‘The very truth is,’ cries the parasite, ‘all the rest of the
+nobility look like corn-cutters to you; and indeed, wherever you come,
+you have still the eyes of the whole company upon you.’  ‘Go to, go to,
+gentlemen,’ says my lord, ‘you must not flatter your friends.  This is
+more your courtesy than my desert; and I have an obligation to you for
+your kindness.’  After this manner these asses knab and curry one
+another, and play the fools by turns.”
+
+The old man had his words yet between his teeth, when there passed just
+by us a lady of pleasure, of so excellent a shape and garb, that it was
+impossible to see her without a passion for her, and no less impossible
+to look upon anything else, so long as she was to be seen.  They that had
+seen her once were to see her no more, for she turned her face still to
+new-comers.  Her motion was graceful and free.  One while she’d stare ye
+full in the eyes, under colour of opening her hood, to set it in better
+order.  By and by she’d steal a look at ye with one eye, and a side face,
+from the corner of her visor, like a witch that’s afraid to be known when
+she comes from a caterwaul.  And then out comes the delicate hand, and
+discovers the more delicious neck, and breasts, to adjust the handkercher
+or the scarf, or to remove some other grievance that made her ladyship
+uneasy.  Her hair was most artificially disposed into careless rings; and
+the best red and white in nature was in her cheeks, if that of her lips
+and teeth did not exceed it.  In a word, all she looked upon was her own;
+and this was the vision for my money, from all the rest.  As she was
+marching off, I could not choose but take up a resolution to follow her.
+But my old man laid a block in the way, and stopped me at the very
+starting; which was an affront to a man that was both in love and in
+haste, that might very well stir his choler.  “My officious friend,” said
+I, “he that does not love a woman sucked a sow.  And questionless, he
+must be either blind or barbarous that’s proof against the charms of so
+divine a beauty.  Nor would any but a sot let slip the blessed
+opportunity of so fair an encounter.  A handsome woman? why, what was she
+made for, but to be loved?  And he that has her, has all that’s lovely or
+desirable in nature.  For my own part, I would renounce the world for the
+fellow of her, and never desire anything either beyond her, or beside
+her.  What lightning does she carry in her eyes!  What charms, and chains
+in her looks, and motions, for the very souls of her beholders!  Was ever
+anything so clear as her forehead? or so black as her eyebrows?  One
+would swear that her complexion had taken a tincture of vermilion and
+milk: and that nature had brought her into the world with pearl and
+rubies in her mouth.  To speak all in little, she’s the masterpiece of
+the creation, worthy of infinite praise, and equal to our largest desires
+and imaginations.”
+
+Here the old man cut me short, and bade me make an end of my discourse,
+“for thou art,” said he, “a man of much wonder, and small experience, and
+delivered over to the spirit of folly and blindness.  Thou hast thy eyes
+in thy head, and yet not brain enough to know either why they were given
+thee, or how to use them.  Understand then that the office of the eye is
+to see, but ’tis the privilege of the soul to distinguish and choose,
+whereas you either do the contrary, or else nothing, which is worse.  He
+that trusts his eyes, exposes his mind to a thousand torments and
+confusions: he shall take clouds for mountains, straight for crooked, one
+colour for another, by reason of an undue distance, or an indisposed
+medium.  We are not able sometimes to say which way a river runs, till we
+throw in a twig or straw to find out the current.  And what will you say
+now, if this prodigious beauty, your new mistress, prove as gross a cheat
+and imposture as any of the rest?  She went to bed last night as ugly as
+a witch; and yet this morning she comes forth in your opinion as glorious
+as an angel.  The truth of it is, she hires all by the day; and if you
+did but see this puppet taken to pieces, you would find her little else
+but paint and plaister.  To begin her anatomy at the head.  You must know
+that the hair she wears is borrowed of a tire-woman, for her own was
+blown off by an unlucky wind from the coast of Naples.  Or if she has any
+left, she keeps it private, as a memorial of her antiquity.  She is
+beholden to the pencil for her eyebrows and complexion.  And upon the
+whole matter, she is but an old picture refreshed.  But the wonder is, to
+see a picture, with life and motion; unless perchance she has got the
+necromancer’s receipt that made himself young again in his glass bottle.
+For all that you see of her that’s good, comes from distilled waters,
+essences, powders, and the like; and to see the washing of her face would
+fright the devil.  She abounds in pomanders, sweet waters, Spanish
+pockets, perfumed drawers; and all little enough to qualify the poisonous
+whiffs she sends from her toes and arm-pits, which would otherwise
+out-stink ten thousand pole-cats.  She cannot choose but kiss well, for
+her lips are perpetually bathed in oil and grease.  And he that embraces
+her, shall find the better half of her the tailor’s, and only a stuffing
+of cotton and canvas, to supply the defects of her body.  When she goes
+to bed, she puts off one half of her person with her shoes.  What do ye
+think of your adored beauty now? or have your eyes betrayed ye?  Well,
+well; confess your error and mend it; and know that (without more descant
+upon this woman) ’tis the design and glory of most of the sex to lead
+silly men captive.  Nay take the best of them, and what with the trouble
+of getting them and the difficulty of pleasing them, he that comes off
+best will find himself a loser at the foot of the account.  I could
+recommend you here to other remedies of love, inseparable from the very
+sex, but what I have said already, I hope, will be sufficient.”
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                       THE END OF THE FIFTH VISION
+
+
+
+
+THE SIXTH VISION OF HELL
+
+
+BEING one autumn at a friend’s house in the country (which was indeed a
+most delicious retreat) I took a walk one moonlight night into the park,
+where all my past visions came fresh into my head again, and I was well
+enough pleased with the meditation.  At length the humour took me to
+leave the path, and go further into the wood: what impulse carried me to
+this, I know not.  Whether I was moved by my good angel, or some higher
+power, but so it was that in half a quarter of an hour, I found myself a
+great way from home, and in a place where ’twas no longer night; with the
+pleasantest prospect round about me that ever I saw since I was born.
+The air was calm and temperate; and it was no small advantage to the
+beauty of the place, that it was both innocent and silent.  On the one
+hand, I was entertained with the murmurs of crystal rivulets; on the
+other, with the whispering of the trees; the birds singing all the while
+either in emulation, or requital of the other harmonies.  And now, to
+show the instability of our affections and desires, I was grown weary
+even of tranquillity itself, and in this most agreeable solitude began to
+long for company.
+
+When in the very instant (to my great wonder) I discovered two paths,
+issuing from one and the same beginning but dividing themselves forwards,
+more and more, by degrees, as if they liked not one another’s company.
+That on the right hand was narrow, almost beyond imagination; and being
+very little frequented, it was so overgrown with thorns and brambles, and
+so stony withal, that a man had all the trouble in the world to get
+into’t.  One might see, however, the prints and marks of several
+passengers that had rubbed through, though with exceeding difficulty; for
+they had left pieces of heads, arms, legs, feet, and many of them their
+whole skins behind them.  Some we saw yet upon the way, pressing forward,
+without ever so much as looking back; and these were all of them
+pale-faced, lean, thin, and miserably mortified.  There was no passing
+for horsemen; and I was told that St. Paul himself left his horse, when
+he went into’t.  And indeed, there was not the footing of any beast to be
+seen.  Neither horse nor mule, nor the track of any coach or chariot.
+Nor could I learn that any had passed that way in the memory of man.
+While I was bethinking myself of what I had seen, I spied at length a
+beggar that was resting himself a little to take breath; and I asked him
+what inns or lodgings they had upon that road.  His answer was that there
+was no stopping there, till they came to their journey’s end.  “For
+this,” said he, “is the way to paradise, and what should they do with
+inns or taverns, where there are so few passengers?  Do not you know that
+in the course of nature, to die is to be born, to live is to travel; and
+the world is but a great inn, after which, it is but one stage either to
+pain or glory?”  And with these words he marched forward, and bade me
+God-b’w’ye, telling me withal that it was time lost to linger in the way
+of virtue, and not safe to entertain such dialogues as tend rather to
+curiosity than instruction.  And so he pursued his journey, stumbling,
+tearing his flesh, and sighing, and groaning at every step; and weeping
+as if he thought to soften the stones with his tears.  This is no way for
+me, thought I to myself; and no company neither; for they are a sort of
+beggarly, morose people, and will never agree with my humour.  So I drew
+back and struck off into the left-hand way.
+
+And there I found company enough and room for more.  What a world of
+brave cavaliers!  Gilt coaches, rich liveries, and handsome, lively
+lasses, as glorious as the sun!  Some were singing and laughing, others
+tickling one another and toying; some again, at their cheese-cakes and
+China oranges, or appointing a set at cards: so that taking all together,
+I durst have sworn I had been at the park.  This minded me of the old
+saying, “Tell me thy company, and I’ll tell thee thy manners;” and to
+save the credit of my education, I put myself into the noble mode, and
+jogged on.  And there was I at the first dash up to the ears, in balls,
+plays, masquerades, collations, dalliances, amours, and as full of joy as
+my heart could hold.
+
+It was not here, as upon t’other road, where folks went barefoot and
+naked, for want of shoemakers and tailors, for here were enow, and to
+spare; beside mercers, drapers, jewellers, bodice-makers, peruke-makers,
+milliners, and a French ordinary at every other door.  You cannot imagine
+the pleasure I took in my new acquaintance; and yet there was now and
+then some justling and disorder upon the way, chiefly between the
+physicians upon their mules, and the infantry of the lawyers, that
+marched in great bodies before the judges, and contested for place.  But
+the physicians carried it in favour of their charter, which gives them
+privilege to study, practise, and teach the art of poisoning, and to read
+lectures of it in the universities.  While this point of honour was in
+dispute, I perceived divers crossing from one way to the other, and
+changing of parties.  Some of them stumbled and recovered; others fell
+down right.  But the pleasantest gambol of all was that of the vintners.
+A whole litter of them tumbled into a pit together, one over another, but
+finding they were out of their element, they got up again as fast as they
+could.  Those that were in the right-hand way, which was the way of
+paradise, or virtue, advanced very heavily, and made us excellent sport.
+“Prithee look what a Friday-face that fellow makes!” cries one; “Hang
+him, prick-eared cur,” says another; “Damn me,” cries a third, “if the
+rogue be not drunk with holy water;” “If the devil had raked hell, he
+could not have found such a pack of ill-looked rascals,” says another.
+Some of them stopped their ears, and went on without minding us.  Others
+we put out of countenance, and they came over to us.  And a third sort
+came out of pure love to our company.
+
+After this, I observed a great many people afar off in a by-path: with as
+much contrition and devotion in their looks and gestures as ever I saw in
+men.  They walked shaking their heads, and lifting up their hands to
+heaven; and they had most of them large ears, and, to my thinking, Geneva
+Bibles.  These, thought I, are a people of singular integrity, and
+strictness of life, above their fellows; but coming nearer, we found them
+to be hypocrites; and that though they’d none of our company upon the
+road, they would not fail to meet us at our journey’s end.  Fasting,
+repentance, prayer, mortification, and other holy duties, which are the
+exercise of good Christians, in order to their salvation, are but a kind
+of probation to these men, to fit them for the devil.  They were followed
+by a number of devotees, and holy sisters, that kissed the skirts of
+their garments all the way they went, but whether out of zeal, spiritual,
+or natural, is hard to say; and undoubtedly, some women’s kisses are
+worse than Judas’s.  For though his kiss was treacherous in the
+intention, it was right yet in the application: but this was one Judas
+kissing another, which makes me think there was more of the flesh than of
+the spirit in the case.  Some would be drawing a thread now and then out
+of the holy man’s garment, to make a relic of.  Others would cut out
+large snips, as if they had a mind to see them naked.  Some again desired
+they would remember them in their prayers; which was just as much as if
+they had commended themselves to the devil by a third person.  Some
+prayed for good matches for their daughters; others begged children for
+themselves: and sure the husband that allows his wife to ask children
+abroad will be so civil as to take them home, when they are given him.
+In fine, these hypocrites may for a while perchance impose upon the
+world, and delude the multitude; but no mask or disguise is proof against
+the all-piercing eye of the Almighty.  There are I must confess many
+religious and godly men, for whose persons and prayers I have a great
+esteem.  But these are not of the hypocrites’ humour, to build their
+hopes and ambition upon popular applause, and with a counterfeit
+humility, to proclaim their weakness and unworthiness; their failings;
+yea and their transgressions in the market-place; all which is indeed but
+a true jest; for they are really what they say, though they would not be
+thought so.
+
+These went apart, and were looked upon to be neither fish nor flesh nor
+good red-herring.  They wore the name of Christians; but they had neither
+the wit nor the honesty of pagans.  For they content themselves with the
+pleasures of this life, because they know no better.  But the hypocrite,
+that’s instructed both in the life temporal and eternal, lives without
+either comfort in the one, or hope in the other; and takes more pains to
+be damned than a good Christian does to compass his salvation.  In short,
+we went on our way in discourse.  The rich followed their wealth, and the
+poor the rich; begging there what Providence had denied them.  The
+stubborn and obstinate went away by themselves, for they would hear
+nobody that was wiser than themselves, but ran huddling on, and pressed
+still to be foremost.  The magistrates drew after them all the solicitors
+and attorneys.  Corrupt judges were carried away by passion and avarice.
+And vain and ambitious princes trailed along with them principalities and
+commonwealths.  There were a world of clergy upon this road too.  And I
+saw one full regiment of soldiers there, which would have been brave
+fellows indeed, if they had but been half so good at praying and
+fighting, as they were at swearing.  Their whole discourse was of their
+adventures, how narrowly they came off at such an assault; what wounds
+they received upon t’other breach; and then what a destruction they made
+at such a time, of mutton and poultry.  But all they said came in at one
+ear and went out at t’other.  “Don’t you remember, sirrah,” says one,
+“how we clawed it away at such a place!”  “Yes, ye damned rogue you,”
+cries t’other, “when you were so drunk you took your aunt for the bawd.”
+These and such as these were the only exploits they could truly brag of.
+
+While they were upon these glorious rhodomontades, certain generous
+spirits from the right-hand way, that knew what they were, by the boxes
+of passports, testimonials, and recommendations they wore at their
+girdles, cried out to them, as if it had been to an attack: “Fall on,
+fall on, my lads, and follow me.  This, this is the path of honour, and
+if you were not poltroons you would not quit it for fear of a hard march,
+or an ill lodging.  Courage comrades; and be assured that this combat
+well fought makes all your fortunes, and crowns ye for ever.  Here, ye
+shall be sure both of pay and reward, without casting the issue of all
+your hazards and hopes upon the empty promises of princes.  How long will
+ye pursue this trade of blood and rapine?  And accustom your ears and
+tongues to the tragical outcries of, Burn; No quarter; Kill, or Die.  It
+is not pay, or pillage, but Virtue that’s a brave man’s recompense.
+Trust to her, and she’ll not deceive ye.  If it be the war ye love, come
+to us; bear arms on the right side, and we’ll find you work.  Do not you
+know that man’s life is a warfare?  That the world, the flesh, and the
+devil, are three vigilant enemies?  And that it is as much as his soul is
+worth, to put himself, but for one minute, out of his guard.  Princes
+tell ye, that your bloods and your lives are theirs, and that to shed the
+one, and lose the other, in their service, is no obligation, but a duty.
+You are still however to look to the cause; wherefore turn head, and come
+along with us, and be happy.”  The soldiers heard all this with exceeding
+patience and attention; but the brand of cowardice had such an effect
+upon them, that without any more ado, like men of honour, they presently
+quitted the road; drew; and as bold as lions, charged headlong into a
+tavern.
+
+After this, we saw a great troop of women, upon the highway to hell, with
+their bags and their fellows, at their heels, ever and anon hunching and
+justling one another.  On the other side, a number of good people, that
+were almost at the end of their journey, came over into the wrong road;
+for the right-hand way growing easier and wider toward the end, and that
+on the left hand, on the contrary, narrower, they thought they had been
+out of their way, and so came in to us; as many of ours went over to
+them, upon the same mistake.  Among the rest, I saw a great lady, without
+either coach, sedan, or any living creature with her, foot it all the way
+to hell: which was to me so great a wonder, considering how she had lived
+in the world, that I presently looked about for a public notary to make
+an entry of it.  The woman was in a most miserable pickle; and I did not
+know what design she might drive on, under that disguise; but finding
+never a notary, or register at hand, though I missed my particular aim,
+yet I was well enough pleased with it, for I took it then for granted
+that I was in my ready way to heaven.  But when I came afterward to
+reflect upon the crosses, afflictions, and mortifications, that lie in
+the way to paradise; and to consider that there was nothing of that upon
+this road; but on the contrary, laughing, singing, frollicking, and all
+manner of jollity: this I must confess gave me a qualm, and made me a
+little doubtful whither I was going.
+
+But I was quickly delivered of that doubt by a gang of married men, that
+we overtook with their wives in their hands, in evidence of their
+mortifications: “My wife’s my witness,” cries one, “that every day since
+I married her has been a fasting day to me; to pamper her with
+cock-broth, and jellies.  And my wife knows how I have humbled my body by
+nakedness; for I have hardly allowed myself a rag to my backside; or a
+shoe to my foot, to maintain her in her coach, pages, gowns, petticoats,
+and jewels.”  So that upon the matter, I perceive an unlucky hit with a
+wife gives a man as much right to the catalogue of martyrs, as if he had
+ended his days at the stake.
+
+The misery these poor wretches endured made me think myself in the right
+again; till I heard a cry behind me, “Make way there; make way for the
+’pothecaries.”  Bless me, thought I, if they be here, we are certainly
+going to the devil.  And so it proved, for we were just then come to a
+little door, that was made like a mousetrap, where ’twas easy to get in,
+but there was no getting out again.
+
+It was a strange thing, that scarce anybody so much as dreamt of hell,
+all the way we went; and yet everybody knew where they were, as soon as
+they came there; and cried out with one voice, “Miserable creatures! we
+are damned, we are damned.”  That word made my heart ache; and is it come
+to that? said I.  Then did I begin with tears in my eyes to reflect upon
+what I had left in the world, as my relations, friends, ladies,
+mistresses, and in fine, all my old acquaintance: when with a heavy sigh,
+looking behind me, I saw the greater part of them posting after me.  It
+gave me, methought, some comfort, that I should have so good company;
+vainly imagining that even hell itself might be capable of some relief.
+
+Going farther on I was gotten into a crowd of tailors, that stood up
+sneaking in a corner, for fear of the devils.  At the first door, there
+were seven devils, taking the names of those that came in; and they asked
+me mine, and my quality, and so they let me pass.  But, examining the
+tailors, “These fellows,” cried one of the devils, “come in such shoals,
+as if hell were made only for tailors.”  “How many are they?” says
+another.  Answer was made, “About a hundred.”  “About a hundred?  They
+must be more than a hundred,” says t’other, “if they be tailors; for they
+never come under a thousand, or twelve hundred strong.  And we have so
+many here already, I do not know where we shall ’stow them.  Say the
+word, my masters, shall’s let them in or no?”  The poor prick-lice were
+damnedly startled at that, for fear they should not get in: but in the
+end, they had the favour to be admitted.  “Certainly,” said I, “these
+folks are but in an ill condition, when ’tis a menace for the devils
+themselves to refuse to receive them.”  Thereupon a huge, overgrown,
+club-footed, crump-shouldered devil, threw them all into a deep hole.
+Seeing such a monster of a devil, I asked him how he came to be so
+deformed.  And he told me, he had spoiled his back with carrying of
+tailors: “for,” said he, “I have been formerly made use of as a sumpter
+to fetch them; but now of late they save me that labour, and come so fast
+of themselves, that ’tis one devil’s work to dispose of them.”  While the
+word was yet speaking, there came another glut of them, and I was fain to
+make way, that the devil might have room to work in, who piled them up,
+and told me they made the best fuel in hell.
+
+I passed forward then into a little dark alley, where it made me start to
+hear one call me by my name, and with much ado I perceived a fellow there
+all wrapt up in smoke and flame.  “Alas! sir,” says he; “have you
+forgotten your old bookseller in Popes-Head Alley?”  “I cry thee mercy,
+good Livowell,” quoth I, “what? art thou here?”  “Yes, sir,” says he,
+“’tis e’en too true.  I never dreamt it would have come to this.”  He
+thought I must needs pity him, when I knew him: but truly I reflected
+rather upon the justice of his punishment.  For in a word, his shop was
+the very mint of heresy, schism, and sedition.  I put on a face of
+compassion however, to give him a little ease, which he took hold of, and
+vented his complaint.  “Well sir,” says he, “I would my father had made
+me a hangman, when he made me a stationer; for we are called to account
+for other men’s works, as well as for our own.  And one thing that’s cast
+in our dish, is the selling of translations, so dog cheap, that every sot
+knows now as much as would formerly have made a passable doctor, and
+every nasty groom and roguey lackey is grown as familiar with Homer,
+Virgil, Ovid, as if ’twere _Robin the Devil_, _The Seven Champions_, or a
+piece of George Withers.”  He would have talked on, if a devil had not
+stopped his mouth with a whiff from a roll of his own papers, and choked
+him with the smoke on’t.  The pestilent fume would have dispatched me
+too, if I had not got presently out of the reach on’t.  But I went my
+way, saying this to myself, If the bookseller be thus criminal, what will
+become of the author!
+
+I was diverted from this meditation, by the rueful groans of a great many
+souls that were under the lash, and the devil tyrannising over them with
+whips and scourges.  I asked what they were, and it was told me, that
+there was a plot among the hackney-coachmen to exhibit an information
+against the devils, for taking the whip out of their hands, and setting
+up a trade they had never served to, (which is directly contrary to
+_Quinto Elizabethæ_).  “Well,” said I: “but why are these tormented
+here?”  With that, an old sour-looked coachman took the answer out of the
+devil’s mouth, and told me, that it was because they came to hell a
+horseback, which they pretended was a privilege that did not belong to
+rogues of their quality.  “Speak truth, and be hanged,” cried the devil;
+“and make an honest confession here.  Say, sirrah, how many bawdy voyages
+have you made to Hackney?  How many nights have you stood pimping at
+Marybone?  How many whores and knaves have you brought together?  And how
+many lies have you told, to keep all private, since you first set up this
+scandalous trade?”  There was a coachman by, that had served a judge, and
+thought ’twas no more for his old master to fetch a rascal out of hell
+than out of Newgate; which made this fellow stand upon his points, and
+ask the devil, how he durst give that language to so honourable a
+profession; “for,” says he, “who wears better clothes than your coachmen?
+Are not we in our velvets, embroideries, and laces? and as glorious as so
+many phaetons?  Have not our masters reason to be good to us, when their
+necks are at stake and their lives at our mercy?  Nay, we govern those,
+many times, that govern kingdoms; and a prince is almost in as much
+danger of his coachman as of his physician.  And there are that
+understand it too, and themselves, and us; and that will not stick to
+trust their coachmen as far as they would do their confessors.  There’s
+no absurdity in the comparison; for if they know some of their privacies,
+we know more; yes, and perhaps more than we’ll speak of.”  “What have we
+here to do?” cried a devil that was ready to break his heart with
+laughing.  “A coachman in his tropes and figures?  An orator instead of a
+waggoner?  The slave has broke his bridle, and got his head at liberty,
+and now he’ll never have done.”  “No, why should he?” says another that
+had served a great lady more ways than one.  “Is this the best
+entertainment you can afford your servants? your daily drudges?  I’m sure
+we bring you good commodity, well packed; well conditioned; well
+perfumed; right, neat, and clean: not like your city-ware that comes
+dirty to you, up to the hocks; and yet every daggle-tailed wench, and
+skip-kennel, shall be better used than we.  Ah!  The ingratitude of this
+place!  If we had done as much for somebody else, as we have done for
+you, we should not have been now to seek for our wages.  When you have
+nothing else to say, you tell me that I am punished for carrying the
+sick, the gouty, the lame, to church, to mass; or some straggling
+virgins, back again to their cloister: which is a damned lie; for I am
+able to prove, that all my trading lay at the play-houses, bawdy-houses,
+taverns, balls, collations: or else at the _Tour à la Mode_, where there
+was still appointed some after-meeting; to treat of certain affairs, that
+highly import the interest and welfare of your dominions.  I have indeed
+carried my mistress sometimes to the church door, but it signified no
+more than if I had carried her to a conventicle; for all her business
+there was to meet her gallant, and to agree when they should meet next;
+according to the way of devotion now in mode.  To conclude: It is most
+certain, that I never took any creature (knowingly) into my coach, that
+had so much as a good thought.  And this was so well known, that it was
+all one to ask, If a lady were a maid, or if she had ever been in my
+coach.  If it appeared she had, he that married her knew beforehand what
+he had to trust to.  And after all this, ye have made us a fair
+requital.”  With that the devil fell a-laughing, and with five or six
+twinging jerks, half flayed the poor coachman; so that I was e’en glad to
+retire, in pity partly to the coachman and partly to myself; for the
+currying of a coachman is little better than the turning up of a
+dunghill.
+
+My next adventure was into a deep vault, where I began immediately to
+shudder, and my teeth chattered in my head.  I asked the meaning of it;
+and there came up to me a devil, with kibed heels and his toes all
+mortified; and told me that that quarter was allotted to the buffoons and
+drolls, “which are a people,” says he, “of so starved a conceipt, and so
+cold a discourse, that we are fain to chain and lock them up, for fear
+they should spoil the temper of our fire.”  I asked if a man might see
+them.  The devil told me yes, and showed me one of the lewdest kennels in
+hell.  And there were they at it, pecking at one another, and nothing but
+the same fooleries over and over again that they had practised upon
+earth.  Among the buffoons, I saw divers that passed here in the world
+for men of honesty and honour; which were in, as the devil told me, for
+flattery, and were a sort of buffoon, that goes betwixt the bark and the
+tree.  “But, why are they condemned?” said I.  “The other buffoons are
+condemned,” quoth the devil, “for want of favour; and these, for having
+too much, and abusing it.  You must know, they come upon us, still at
+unawares; and yet they find all things in readiness; the cloth laid, and
+the bed made, as if they were at home.  To say the truth, we have some
+sort of kindness for them; for they save us a great deal of trouble, in
+tormenting one another.
+
+“Do you see him there?  That was a wicked, and a partial judge; and all
+he has to say for himself, is, that he remembers the time when he could
+have broke the neck of two honest causes, and he put them only out of
+joint.  That good fellow there was a careless husband, and him we lodge
+too with the buffoons.  He sold his wife’s portion, wife and all, to
+please his companions; and turned both into an annuity.  That lady there
+(though a great one) is fain to take up too with the buffoons, for they
+are both of a humour: what they do with their talk, she does with her
+body, and seasons it to all appetites.  In a word, you shall find
+buffoons in all conditions; and, in effect, there are nigh as many as
+there are men and women: for the whole world is given to jeering,
+slandering, backbiting, and there are more natural buffoons than
+artificial.”
+
+At my going out of the vault, I saw a matter of a thousand devils
+following a drove of pastry-men, and breaking their heads as they passed
+along, with iron peels.  “Alack!” cried one of them, that was yet in a
+whole skin, “it is hard the sin of the flesh should be laid to our
+charge, that never had to do with women.”  “Impudent, nasty rascals,”
+quoth a devil, “who has deserved hell, if they have not?  How many
+thousand men have these slovens poisoned, with the grease of their heads
+and tails, instead of mutton-suet? with snot-pies for marrow; and flies
+for currants?  How many stomachs have they turned into lay-stalls with
+the dogs’-flesh, horse-flesh and other carrion that they have put into
+them?  And do these rogues complain (in the devil’s name) of their
+sufferings!  Leave your bawling, ye whelps,” says he, “and know, that the
+pain you endure is nothing to that of your tormentors.  And for your
+part,” says he, to me, with a sour look, “because you are a stranger, you
+may go about your business; but we have a crow to pluck with these
+fellows, before we part.”
+
+I went next down a pair of stairs into a huge cellar, where I saw men
+burning in unquenchable fire; and one of them roaring, cried out, “I
+never over-sold; I never sold, but at conscionable rates, why am I
+punished thus?”  I durst have sworn it had been Judas, but going nearer
+to him, to see if he had a red head, I found him to be a merchant of my
+acquaintance, that died not long since.  “How now, old Martin,” said I,
+“art thou there?”  He was dogged, because I did not call him Sir, and
+made no answer.  I saw his grief, and told him how much he was to blame,
+to cherish that vanity even in hell, that had brought him thither.  “And
+what do ye think on’t now,” said I, “had not you better have traded in
+blacks than Christians?  Had not you better have contented yourself with
+a little, honestly got, than run the hazard of your soul for an estate;
+and have gone to heaven afoot, rather than to the devil on horseback?”
+My friend was as mute as a fish; whether out of anger, shame, or grief, I
+know not.  And then a devil in office took up the discourse.  “These
+pickpocket rogues,” says he, “did they think to govern the world with
+their own weights and measures, _in secula seculorum_?  Methinks, the
+blinking and false lights of their shops should have minded them of their
+quarter, in the other world, aforehand.  And ’tis all a case, with
+jewellers, goldsmiths, and other trades, that serve only to flatter and
+bolster up the world in luxury and folly.  But if people would be wise,
+these youths should have little enough to do.  For what’s their cloth of
+gold and silver, their silks, their diamond and pearl, (which they sell
+at their own price) but matter of mere wantonness and superfluity?  These
+are they that inveigle ye into all sorts of extravagant expenses, and so
+ruin ye insensibly, under colour of kindness and credit.  For they set
+everything at double the rate; and if you keep not touch at your day,
+your persons are imprisoned, your goods seized, and your estates
+extended.  And they that helped to make you princes before, are now the
+forwardest to put you into the condition of beggars.”
+
+The devil would have talked on, if I had given him the hearing, but there
+was such a laugh set up on one side of me, as if they would all have
+split; and I went to see what the matter was; for ’twas a strange thing,
+methought, to hear them so merry in hell.  The business was, there were
+two men upon a scaffold, in Gentile habits, gaping as loud as they could
+bawl.  One of them had a great parchment in his hand, displayed, with
+divers’ labels hanging at it, and several seals.  I thought at first it
+might have been execution-day, and took the writing for a pardon or
+reprieve.  At every word they spoke, a matter of seven or eight thousand
+devils burst out a-laughing, as they would have cracked their sides.  And
+this again made me think, it might be some jack-pudding or mountebank,
+showing his tricks or his attestations, with his congregation of fools
+about him.  But, nearer hand, I found my mistake; and that the devils’
+mirth made the gentlemen angry.  At last, I perceived that this great
+earnestness of theirs was only to make out their pedigree, and get
+themselves passed for gentlemen; the parchment being a testimonial from
+the Heralds Office to that purpose.  “My father,” says he with the
+writing in’s hand, “bore arms for His Majesty in many honourable
+occasions of watching and warding; and has made many a tall fellow speak
+to the constable, at all hours of the night.  My uncle was the first man
+that ever was of the Order of the Black-Guard: and we have had five brave
+commanders of our family, by my father’s side, that have served the State
+in the quality of marshal’s men and turnkeys, and given His Majesty a
+fair account of all the prisoners committed to their charge.  And by my
+mother’s side, it will not be denied but that I am honourably descended;
+for my grandmother was never without a dozen chamber-maids and nurses in
+family.”  “It may be ’twas her trade,” quoth the devil, “to procure
+services and servants, and consequently to deal in that commodity.”
+“Well, well,” said the cavalier, “she was what she was; and I’m sure I
+tell you nothing but truth.  Her husband wore a sword, by his place, for
+he was a Deputy-Marshal; and to prove myself a man of honour, I have it
+here in black and white, under the Seal of the Office.  Why must I then
+be quartered among a pack of rascals?”  “My gentleman friend,” quoth the
+devil, “your grandfather wore a sword, as he was usher to a fencing
+school; and we know very well what his son and grandchild can pretend to.
+But let that pass; you have led a wicked and infamous life, and spent
+your time in whoring, drinking, blaspheming, and in lewd company; and do
+you tell us now of the privileges of your nobility?  Your testimonials;
+and the Seal of the Office?  A fart for your privileges, testimonials,
+office and all.  There is no honour, but virtue.  And if your children,
+though they had a scoundrel to their father, should come to do honourable
+and worthy things, we should look upon them as persons sacred, and not
+dare to meddle with them.  But talking is time lost; you were ever a
+couple of pitiful fellows, and your tails scarce worth the scalding.
+Have at ye,” says he, and at that word, with a huge iron bar he gave him
+such a salute over the buttocks, that he took two or three turns in the
+air, heels over head, and dropped at last into the common-shore; where
+never any man as yet found the bottom.
+
+When his companion had seen him cut that caper, “This usage,” says he,
+“may be well enough for a parchment gentleman; but for a cavalier of my
+extraction, and profession, I suppose you’ll treat him with somewhat more
+of civility and respect.”  “Cavalier,” quoth the devil, “if you have
+brought no better plea along with you than the antiquity of your house,
+you may e’en follow your comrade, for ought I know, for we find very few
+ancient families that had not some oppressor or usurper for their
+founders; and they are commonly continued by the same means they were
+begun.  How many are there of our titular nobility, that write Noble
+purely upon the account of their violence and injustice?  Their subjects
+and tenants, what with impositions, hard services, and racked rents, are
+they not worse than slaves?  If they happen to have anything
+extraordinary, as a pleasant fruit, a handsome colt, a good cow; and that
+the landlord, or his sweet lady take a liking to it, they must either
+submit to part with it gratis, or else take their pay in foul language or
+bastinadoes.  And ’tis well if they ’scape so: for many times when the
+sign’s in Gemini, their wives and daughters go to pot, without any regard
+of laws either sacred or profane.  What damned blasphemies and
+imprecations do they make use of, to get credit with a mistress or a
+creditor, upon a faithless promise!  How intolerable is their pride and
+insolence, even towards many considerable officers, both in Church and
+State! for they behave themselves as if all people below their quality
+and rank in the world were but as so many brutes, or worse.  As if human
+blood were not all of a colour; as if nature had not brought them into
+the world the common way, or moulded them of the same materials with the
+meanest wretches upon the earth.  And then, for such as have military
+charges and commands, how many great officers are there, that without any
+consideration of their own, or their princes’ honour, fall to spoil and
+pillage?  Cozening the State with false musters, and the soldiers of
+their pay; and giving them, instead of their due from the prince, a
+liberty of taking what is not their due from the people; forcing them to
+take the bread out of the poor labourers’ mouths to fill their own
+bellies, and protecting them when they have done in the most execrable
+outrages imaginable.  And when the poor soldier comes at last to be
+dismissed, or disbanded; lame, sick, beggarly, naked almost, and enraged;
+with nothing left him to trust to but the highway to keep him from
+starving.  What mischief is there in the world, that these men are not
+the cause of?  How many good families are utterly ruined, and at this day
+in the hospital, for trusting to their oaths and promises! and becoming
+bound for them, for vast sums of money to maintain them in tipple, and
+whores, and in all sorts of luxury and riot?”  This rhetorical devil
+would have said a thousand times more, but that his companions called him
+off, and told him they had business elsewhere.  The cavalier hearing
+that, “My friend,” said he, “your morals are very good, but yet with your
+favour, all men are not alike.”  “There’s never a barrel better herring,”
+said the devil, “you are all of ye tainted with original sin, and if you
+had been any better than your fellows you had never been sent hither.
+But if you are indeed so noble, as you say, you’re worth the burning, if
+’twere but for your ashes.  And that you may have no cause of complaint,
+you shall see, we’ll treat you like a person of your condition.”  And in
+that instant, two devils presented themselves; the one of them bridled
+and saddled; and the other, doing the office of the squire; holding the
+stirrup, with his left hand, and giving the gentleman a lift into the
+saddle with the other.  Which was no sooner done, but away he went like
+an arrow out of a bow.  I asked the devil then into what country he
+carried him.  And he told me, not far: for ’twas only matter of decorum,
+to send the nobility to hell a-horseback.  “Look on that side now,” says
+he, and so I did; and there I saw the poor cavalier in a huge furnace,
+with the first inventors of nobility, and arms: as Cain, Cham, Nimrod,
+Esau, Romulus, Tarquin, Nero, Caligula, Domitian, Heliogabalus; and a
+world of other brave fellows, that had made themselves famous by
+usurpation and blood.  The place was a little too hot for me, and so I
+retired, meditating on what I had heard; and not a little satisfied with
+the discourse of so learned a devil.  Till that time I took the devil for
+a notorious liar; but I find now that he can speak the truth too, when he
+pleases; and I would not for all I am worth but have heard him preach.
+
+When I was thus far, my curiosity carried me still farther; and within
+twenty yards I came to a huge muddy, stinking lake, near twice as big as
+that of Geneva; and heard in’t so strange a noise that I was almost out
+of my wits to know what it was.  They told me that the lake was stored
+with Doüegnas, or Gouvernantes, which are turned into a kind of frogs in
+hell, and perpetually drivelling, sputtering, and croaking.  Methought
+the conversion was apt enough; for they are neither fish, nor flesh, no
+more than frogs; and only the lower parts of them are man’s-meat, but
+their heads are enough to turn a very good stomach.  I could not but
+laugh to see how they gaped, and stretched out their legs as they swam,
+and still as we came near they’d scud away and dive.
+
+This was no place to stay in, there was so noisome a vapour; and so I
+struck off, upon the left hand, where I saw a number of old men beating
+their breasts and tearing their faces, with bitter groans and
+lamentations.  It made my heart ache to see them, and I asked what they
+were: answer was made, that I was now in the quarter of the fathers that
+damned themselves to raise their posterity; which were called by some,
+the unadvised.  “Wretch that I am!” cried one of them, “the greatest
+penitent that ever lived, never suffered the mortification I have
+endured.  I have watched, I have fasted, I have scarce had any clothes to
+my back; my whole life has been a restless course of torment, both of
+body and mind: and all this, to get money for my children; that I might
+see them well married; buy them places at court, or procure them some
+other preferment in the world: starving myself in the conclusion, rather
+than I would lessen the provision I had made for my posterity.  And yet,
+notwithstanding this my fatherly care, I was scarce sooner dead, than
+forgotten: and my next heir buried me without tears, or mourning; and
+indeed without so much as paying of legacies, or praying for my soul: as
+if they had already received certain intelligence of my damnation.  And
+to aggravate my sorrows, the prodigals are now squandering and consuming
+that estate, in gaming, whoring, and debauches, which I had scraped
+together by so much industry, vexation and oppression, and for which I
+suffer at this instant such insupportable torments.”  “This should have
+been thought on before,” cried a devil, “for sure you have heard of the
+old saying, ‘Happy is the child whose father goes to the devil.’”  At
+which word, the old misers brake out into fresh rage and lamentation,
+tearing their flesh, with tooth and nail, in so rueful a manner, that I
+was no longer able to endure the spectacle.
+
+A little farther there was a dark, hideous prison, where I heard the
+clattering of chains, the crackling of flames, the slapping of whips, and
+a confused outcry of complaints.  I asked what quarter this was; and they
+told me it was the quarter of the Oh that I had’s!  “What are those,”
+said I?  Answer was made, that they were a company of brutish sots, so
+absolutely delivered up to vice, that they were damned insensibly, and in
+hell before they were aware.  They are now reflecting upon their
+miscarriages and omissions, and perpetually crying out, “Oh that I had
+examined my conscience!”  “Oh that I had frequented the Sacraments!”  “Oh
+that I had humbled myself with fasting, and prayer!”  “Oh that I had
+served God as I ought!”  “Oh that I had visited the sick, and relieved
+the poor!”  “Oh that I had set a watch before the door of my lips!”
+
+I left these late repentants, (as it appeared) in exchange for worse,
+which were shut up in a base court, and the nastiest that ever I saw.
+These were such as had ever in their mouths, “God is merciful, and will
+pardon me.”  “How can this be,” said I, “that these people should be
+damned? when condemnation is an act of justice, not of mercy.”  “I
+perceive you are simple,” quoth the devil, “for half these you see here,
+are condemned with the mercy of God in their mouths.  And to explain
+myself, consider I pray’e how many sinners are there, that go on in their
+ways, in spite of reproof, and good counsel; and still this is their
+answer, ‘God is merciful, and will not damn a soul for so small a
+matter.’  But let them talk of mercy as they please, so long as they
+persist in a wicked life, we are like to have their company at last.”
+“By your argument,” said I, “there’s no trusting to Divine Mercy.”  “You
+mistake me,” quoth the devil, “for every good thought and work flows from
+that mercy.  But this I say: He that perseveres in his wickedness, and
+makes use of the name of mercy, only for a countenance to his impieties,
+does but mock the Almighty, and has no title to that mercy.  For ’tis
+vain to expect mercy from above, without doing anything in order to it.
+It properly belongs to the righteous and the penitent; and they that have
+the most of it upon the tongue have commonly the least thought of it in
+their hearts: and ’tis a great aggravation of guilt, to sin the more, in
+confidence of an abounding mercy.  It is true that many are received to
+mercy, that are utterly unworthy of it, which is no wonder, since no man
+of himself can deserve it: but men are so negligent of seeking it
+betimes, that they put that off to the last, which should have been the
+first part of their business; and many times their life is at end, before
+they begin their repentance.”  I did not think so damned a doctor could
+have made so good a sermon.  And there I left him.
+
+I came next to a noisome dark hole, and there I saw a company of dyers,
+all in dirt and smoke, intermixed with the devils, and so alike that it
+would have posed the subtlest inquisitor in Spain to have said, which
+were the devils and which the dyers.
+
+There stood at my elbow a strange kind of mongrel devil, begot betwixt a
+black and a white; with a head so bestruck with little horns, that it
+looked at a distance like a hedgehog.  I took the boldness to ask him,
+where they quartered the Sodomites, the old women and the cuckolds.  “As
+for the cuckolds,” said he, “they are all over hell, without any certain
+quarter or station; and in truth, ’tis no easy matter to know a cuckold
+from a devil, for (like kind husbands) they wear their wives’ favours
+still, and the very same headpieces in hell that they wore living in the
+world.  As to the Sodomites, we have no more to do with them than needs
+must; but upon all occasions, we either fly, or face them: for if ever we
+come to give them a broadside, ’tis ten to one but we get a hit betwixt
+wind and water; and yet we fence with our tails, as well as we can, and
+they get now and then a flap o’er the mouth into the bargain.  And for
+the old women, we make them stand off; for we take as little pleasure in
+them, as you do: and yet the jades will be persecuting us with their
+passions; and ye shall have a bawd of five-and-fifty do ye all the
+gambols of a girl of fifteen.  And yet, after all this, there’s not an
+old woman in hell; for let her be as old as Paul’s — bald, blind,
+toothless, wrinkled, decrepit: this is not long of her age, she’ll tell
+you; but a terrible fit of sickness last year, that fetched off her hair,
+and brought her so low that she has not yet recovered her flesh again.
+She lost her eyes by a hot rheum; and utterly spoiled her teeth with
+cracking of peach-stones and eating of sweet-meats when she was a maid.
+And when the weight of her years has almost brought both ends together,
+’tis nothing she’ll tell ye but a crick she has got in her back: and
+though she might recover her youth again, by confessing her age, she’ll
+never acknowledge it.”
+
+My next encounter was, a number of people making their moan that they had
+been taken away by sudden death.  “That’s an impudent lie,” cried a
+devil, “(saving this gentleman’s presence) for no man dies suddenly.
+Death surprises no man, but gives all men sufficient warning and notice.”
+I was much taken with the devil’s civility and discourse; which he
+pursued after this manner.  “Do ye complain,” says he, “of sudden death?
+that have carried death about ye, ever since you were born; that have
+been entertained with daily spectacles of carcasses and funerals; that
+have heard so many sermons upon the subject; and read so many good books
+upon the frailty of life and the certainty of death.  Do ye not know that
+every moment ye live brings ye nearer to your end?  Your clothes wear
+out, your woods and your houses decay, and yet ye look that your bodies
+should be immortal.  What are the common accidents and diseases of life,
+but so many warnings to provide yourself for a remove?  Ye have death at
+the table, in your daily food and nourishment; for your life is
+maintained by the death of other creatures.  And you have the lively
+picture of it, every night for your bedfellow.  With what face then can
+you charge your misfortunes upon sudden death? that have spent your whole
+life, both at bed, and at board, among so many remembrances of your
+mortality.  No, no; change your style, and hereafter confess yourselves
+to have been careless and incredulous.  You die, thinking you are not to
+die yet; and forgetting that death grows upon you, and goes along with ye
+from one end of your life to the other, without distinguishing of persons
+or ages, sex or quality; and whether it finds ye well or ill-doing; As
+the tree falls, so it lies.”
+
+Turning toward my left hand, I saw a great many souls that were put up in
+gallipots, with _Assa fœtida_, _Galbanum_, and a company of nasty oils
+that served them for syrup.  “What a damned stink is here,” cried I,
+stopping my nose.  “We are now come undoubtedly to the devil’s house of
+office.”  “No, no,” said their tormentor, (which was a kind of a
+yellowish complexioned devil) “’tis a confection of apothecaries.  A sort
+of people, that are commonly damned for compounding the medicines by
+which their patients hoped to be saved.  To give them their due, these
+are your only true and chemical philosophers; and worth a thousand of
+Raymund Lullius, Hermes, Geber, Ruspicella, Avicen, and their fellows;
+’tis true, they have written fine things of the transmutation of metals;
+but did they ever make any gold?  Or if they did, we have lost the
+secret.  Whereas your apothecaries, out of a little puddle-water, a
+bundle of rotten sticks, a box of flies—nay out of toads, vipers, and a
+Sir Reverence itself, will fetch ye gold ready minted, and fit for the
+market; which is more than all your philosophical projectors ever
+pretended to.  There is no herb so poisonous, (let it be hemlock) nor any
+stone so dry, (suppose the pumice itself) but they’ll draw silver out of
+it.  And then for words, ’tis impossible to make up any word out of the
+four-and-twenty letters, but they’ll show ye a drug, or a plant of the
+name; and turn the alphabet into as good money as any’s in your pocket.
+Ask them for an eye-tooth of a flying toad; they’ll tell ye, yes, ye may
+have of it, in powder; or if you had rather have the infusion of a tench
+of the mountains, in a little eel’s milk, ’tis all one to them.  If there
+be but any money stirring, you shall have what you will, though there be
+no such thing in nature.  So that it looks as if all the plants and
+stones of the creation had their several powers and virtues given them,
+only for the apothecaries’ sakes; and as if words themselves had been
+only made for their advantage.  Ye call them apothecaries, but instead of
+that, I pray’e call them armourers; and their shops, arsenals; are not
+their medicines as certain death as swords, daggers, or muskets? while
+their patients are purged and blooded into the other world, without any
+regard either to distemper, measure, or season.
+
+“If you will now see the pleasantest sight you have seen yet, walk up but
+these two steps, and you shall see a jury (or conspiracy) of
+barber-surgeons, sitting upon life and death.”  You must think that any
+divertisement there was welcome, so that I went up, and found it in truth
+a very pleasant spectacle.  These barbers were most of them chained by
+the middle, their hands at liberty, and every one of them a cittern about
+his neck, and upon his knees a chess-board; and still as he reached to
+have a touch at the cittern, the instrument vanished; and so did the
+chess-board, when he thought to have a game at draughts; which is
+directly tantalising the poor rogues, for a cittern is as natural to a
+barber as milk to a calf.  Some of them were washing of asses’ brains,
+and putting them in again; and scouring of negroes to make them white.
+
+When I had laughed my fill at these fooleries, my next discovery was, of
+a great many people, grumbling and muttering, that there was nobody
+looked after them; no not so much as to torment them; as if their tails
+were not as well worth the toasting as their neighbours’.  Answer was
+made, that being a kind of devils themselves, they might put in for some
+sort of authority in the place, and execute the office of tormentors.
+This made me ask what they were.  And a devil told me (with respect) that
+they were a company of ungracious, left-handed wretches, that could do
+nothing aright.  And their grievance was that they were quartered by
+themselves; but not knowing whether they were men or no, or indeed what
+else to make of them, we did not know how to match them, or in what
+company to put them.  In the world they are looked upon as ill omens; and
+let any man meet one of them, upon a journey in a morning, fasting, ’tis
+the same thing as if a hare had crossed the way upon him; he presently
+turns head in a discontent, and goes to bed again.  Ye know that Scævola,
+when he found his mistake, in killing another for Porsenna (the
+secretary, for the prince) burned his right hand in revenge of the
+miscarriage; now the severity of the vengeance, was not so much the
+maiming or the crippling of himself, but the condemning of himself to be
+for ever left-handed.  And so ’tis with a malefactor that suffers
+justice; the shame and punishment does not lie so much in the loss of his
+right hand, as that the other is left.  And it was the curse of an old
+bawd, to a fellow that had vexed her, that he might go to the devil by
+the stroke of a left-handed man.  If the poets speak truth, (as ’twere a
+wonder if they should not) the left is the unlucky side; and there never
+came any good from it.  And for my last argument against these creatures;
+the goats and reprobates stand upon the left hand, and left-handed men
+are, in effect, a sort of creature that’s made to do mischief; nay
+whether I should call them men, or no, I know not.
+
+Hereupon, a devil beckoned me to come softly to him; and so I did,
+without a word speaking or the least noise in the world.  “Now,” says he,
+“if you’ll see the daily exercise of ill-favoured women, look through
+that lattice window.”  And there I saw such a kennel of ugly bitches, you
+would have blest yourself.  Some, with their faces so pounced and
+speckled, as if they had been scarified, and newly passed the
+cupping-glass; with a world of little plaisters, long, round, square; and
+briefly, cut out into such variety, that it would have posed a good
+mathematician to have found out another figure; and you would have sworn
+that they had been either at cat’s play or cuffs.  Others, were scraping
+their faces with pieces of glass; tearing up their eyebrows by the roots,
+like mad; and some that had none to tear were fetching out of their black
+boxes, such as they could get, or make.  Others were powdering and
+curling their false locks, or fastening their new ivory teeth in the
+place of their old ebony ones.  Some were chewing lemon peel, or
+cinnamon, to countenance a foul breath; and raising themselves upon their
+ciopines, that their view might be the fairer and their fall the deeper.
+Others were quarrelling with their looking-glasses, for showing them such
+hags’ faces: and cursing the State of Venice for entertaining no better
+workmen.  Some were stuffing out their bodies, like pack saddles, to
+cover secret deformities: and some again had so many hoods over their
+faces, to conceal the ruins, that I could hardly discern what they were;
+and these passed for penitents.  Others, with their pots of hog’s grease
+and pomatum were sleeking and polishing their faces, and indeed their
+foreheads were bright and shining, though there were neither suns nor
+stars in that firmament.  Some there were (in fine) that would have
+fetched a man’s guts up at’s mouth, to see them with their masques of
+after-births; and with their menstruous slibber slobbers, daubing one
+another to take away the heats and bubos.  “Nasty and abominable!” I
+cried.  “Well,” quoth the devil, “you see now how far a woman’s wit and
+invention will carry her to her own destruction.”  I could not speak one
+word for astonishment at so horrid a spectacle, till I had a little
+recollected myself; and then said I, “If I may deal freely without
+offence, I dare defy all the devils in hell to outdo these women.  But
+pray’e let’s be gone, for the sight of them makes my very heart ache.”
+
+“Turn about then,” said the devil, and there was a fellow sitting in a
+chair, all alone; never a devil near him; no fire or frost; no heat or
+cold, or anything else, that I could perceive, to torment him; and yet
+crying and roaring out the most hideously of anything I had yet heard in
+hell; tearing his flesh, and beating his body, like a bedlam; and his
+heart, all the while, bleeding at his eyes.  Good Lord, thought I, what
+ails this wretch, to yell out thus when nobody hurts him!  So I went up
+to him.  “Friend,” said I, “what’s the meaning of all this fury and
+transport? for, so far as I can see, there’s nothing to trouble you.”
+“No, no,” says he with a horrid outcry, and with all the extravagances of
+a man in rage and despair, “you do not see my tormentors; but the
+all-searching eye of the Almighty sees my pains as well as my
+transgressions, and with a severe and implacable justice has condemned me
+to suffer punishments answerable to my crimes.”  (Which words he uttered
+with redoubled clamours.)  “My executioners are in my soul, and all the
+plagues of hell in my conscience.  My memory serves me instead of a cruel
+devil.  The remembrance of the good I should have done, and omitted; and
+of the ill I should not have done, and did.  The remembrance of the
+wholesome counsels I have rejected, and of the ill example I have given.
+And for the aggravation of my misery; where my memory leaves afflicting
+me, my understanding begins: showing me the glories and beatitudes I have
+lost, which others enjoy, who have gained heaven with less anxiety and
+pain than I have endured to compass my damnation.  Now am I perpetually
+meditating on the comforts, beauties, felicities, and raptures of
+paradise, only to enflame and exasperate my despair in hell; begging in
+vain but for one moment’s interval of ease, without obtaining any; for my
+will is also as inexorable as either my memory or my understanding.  And
+these (my friend of the other world) are the three faculties of my soul,
+which Divine Justice, for my sins, has converted into three tormentors,
+that torture me without noise; into three flames, that burn me without
+consuming.  And if I chance at any time to have the least remission or
+respite, the worm of my conscience gnaws my soul, and finds it, to an
+insatiable hunger, an immortal aliment and entertainment.”  At that word,
+turning towards me with a hellish yell, “Mortal,” says he, “learn, and be
+assured from me, that all those that either bury or misemploy their
+talents, carry a hell within themselves, and are damned even above
+ground.”  And so he returned to his usual clamours.  Upon this, I left
+him, miserably sad and pensive.  Well, thought I, what a weight of sin
+lies upon this creature’s conscience!  Whereupon the devil observing me
+in a muse, told me in my ear, that this fellow had been an atheist, and
+believed neither God nor devil.  “Deliver me then,” said I, “from that
+unsanctified wisdom, that serves us only for our further condemnation.”
+
+I was gone but a step or two aside, and I saw a world of people running
+after burning chariots, with a great many souls in them, and the devils
+tearing them with pincers; and before them marched certain officers,
+making proclamation of their sentence, which with much ado I got near
+enough to hear, and it was to this effect.  “Divine Justice hath
+appointed this punishment to the scandalous, for giving ill examples to
+their neighbours.”  And at the same time, several of the damned laid
+their sins to their charge, and cried out, that ’twas ’long of them they
+were thus tormented.  So that the scandalous were punished both for their
+own sins and for the offences of those they had misled to their
+destruction.  And these are they of whom ’tis said, that they had better
+never have been born.
+
+My very soul was full of anguish, to see so many doleful spectacles; and
+yet I could not but smile, to see the vintners everywhere up and down
+hell, as free as if they had been in their taverns, and only prisoners
+upon parole.  I asked how they came by that privilege; and a devil told
+me, there was no need of shackling them, or so much as shutting them up;
+for there was no fear of their making a ’scape, that took so much pains
+in the world, and made it their whole business to come thither.  “Only,”
+says he, “if we can keep them from throwing water in the fire, as they do
+in their wines, we are well enough.  But if you would see somewhat worth
+the while, leave these fellows, and follow me; and I’ll show ye Judas and
+his brethren, the stewards, and purse-bearers.”  So I did as he bade me,
+and he brought me to Judas, and his companions, who had no faces, divers
+of them, and most of them no foreheads.
+
+I was well enough pleased to see him, and to be better informed; for I
+had ever fancied him to be a kind of an olive-coloured,
+tawny-complexioned fellow, without a beard; and an Eunuch into the
+bargain: which perhaps (nay probably) he was; for nothing but a capon, a
+thing unmanned, could ever have been guilty of so sordid and treacherous
+a villainy, as to sell and betray his Master, with a kiss; and after
+that, so cowardly, as to hang himself in despair, when he had done.  I do
+believe, however, what the Church says of him, that he had a carrot beard
+and a red head; but it may be his beard was burnt, and as he appeared to
+me in hell I could not but take him for an Eunuch, which to deal freely,
+is my opinion of all the devils, for they have no hair; and they are for
+the most part wrinkled and baker-legged.
+
+Judas was beset with a great many money-mongers and purse-bearers, that
+were telling him stories of the pranks they had played, and the tricks
+they had put upon their masters, after his example.  Coming up to them, I
+perceived that their punishment was like that of Titius, who had a
+vulture continually gnawing upon his liver; for there were a number of
+ravenous birds perpetually preying upon them, and tearing off their
+flesh; which grew again as fast as they devoured it; a devil in the
+meantime crying out, and the damned filling the whole place with clamour
+and horror; Judas, with his purse, and his pot by his side, bearing a
+large part in the outcry and torment.  I had a huge mind (methought) to
+have a word or two with Judas, and so I went to him with this greeting:
+“Thou perfidious, impudent, impious traitor,” said I, “to sell thy Lord
+and Master at so base a price, like an avaricious rascal.”  “If men,”
+said he, “were not ungrateful, they would rather pity, or commend me, for
+an action so much to their advantage, and done in order to their
+redemption.  The misery is mine, that am to have no part myself in the
+benefit I have procured to others.  Some heretics there are (I must
+confess to my comfort) that adore me for’t.  But do you take me for the
+only Judas?  No, no.  There have been many since the death of my Master,
+and there are at this day, more wicked and ungrateful, ten thousand times
+than myself; that buy the Lord of Life, as well as sell Him, scourging
+and crucifying Him daily with more spite and ignominy than the Jews.  The
+truth is, I had an itch to be fingering of money, and bartering, from my
+very entrance into the apostleship.  I began, you know, with the pot of
+ointment, which I would fain have sold, under colour of a relief to the
+poor.  And I went on, to the selling of my Master, wherein I did the
+world a greater good than I intended, to my own irreparable ruin.  My
+repentance now signifies nothing.  To conclude, I am the only steward
+that’s condemned for selling; all the rest are damned for buying: and I
+must entreat you, to have a better opinion of me; for if you’ll look but
+a little lower here, you’ll find people a thousand times worse than
+myself.”  “Withdraw then,” said I, “for I have had talk enough with
+Judas.”
+
+I went down then some few steps, as Judas directed me; and there I saw a
+world of devils upon the march, with rods and stirrup-leathers in their
+hands, lashing a company of handsome lasses, stark naked, and driving
+them out of hell, (which methought was pity, and if I had had some of
+them in a corner, I should have treated them better) with the
+stirrup-leathers, they disciplined a litter of bawds.  I could not
+imagine why these, of all others, should be expelled the place, and asked
+the question.  “Oh,” says a devil, “these are our factresses in the
+world, and the best we have, so that we send them back again to bring
+more grist to the mill: and indeed, if it were not for women, hell would
+be but thinly peopled; for what with the art, the beauty, and the
+allurements of the young wenches, and the sage advice and counsel of the
+bawds, they do us very good service.  Nay, for fear any of our good
+friends should tire upon the road, they send them to us on horseback, or
+bring them themselves, e’en to the very gates, lest they should miss
+their way.”
+
+Pursuing my journey, I saw, a good way before me, a large building, that
+looked (methought) like some enchanted castle, or the picture of
+ill-luck; it was all ruinous, the chimneys down, the planchers all to
+pieces, only the bars of the windows standing; the doors all bedaubed
+with dirt, and patched up with barrel-heads, where they had been broken.
+The glass gone, and here and there a quarrel supplied with paper.  I made
+no doubt at first but the house was forsaken; but, coming nearer, I found
+it otherwise, by a horrible confusion of tongues and noises within it.
+As I came just up to the door, one opened it, and I saw in the house many
+devils, thieves, and whores.  One of the craftiest jades in the pack,
+placed herself presently upon the threshold, and made her address to my
+guide and me.  “Gentlemen,” says she, “how comes it to pass, I pray’e,
+that people are damned both for giving and taking?  The thief is
+condemned for taking away from another; and we are condemned for giving
+what is our own.  I do not find, truly, any injustice in our trade; and
+if it be lawful to give every one their own, and out of their own, why
+are we condemned?”  We found it a nice point, and sent the wench to
+counsel learned in the law, for a resolution in the case.  Her mentioning
+of thieves made me inquire after the scriveners and notaries.  “Is it
+possible,” said I, “that you should have none of them here? for I do not
+remember that I have seen so much as one of them upon the way; and yet I
+had occasion for a scrivener, and made a search for one.”  “I do believe
+indeed,” quoth the devil, “that you have not found any of them upon the
+road.”  “How then?” said I, “what, are they all saved?”  “No, no,” cried
+the devil, “but you must understand, that they do not foot it hither, as
+other mortals; but come upon the wing, in troops like wild geese; so that
+’tis no wonder you see none of them upon the way.  We have millions of
+them, but they cut it away in a trice, for they are damnedly rank-winged,
+and will make a flight, in the third part of a minute, betwixt earth and
+hell.”  “But if there be so many,” said I, “how comes it we see none of
+them?”  “For that,” quoth the devil, “we change their names, when they
+come hither once, and call them no longer notaries or scriveners, but
+cats: and they are so good mousers, that though this place is large, old,
+and ruinous, yet you see not so much as a rat or a mouse in hell, how
+full soever of all other sorts of vermin.”  “Now ye talk of vermin,” said
+I, “are there any catchpoles here?”  “No, not one,” says he.  “How so,”
+quoth I, “when I dare undertake there are five hundred rogues of the
+trade for one that’s ought.”  “The reason is,” says the devil, “that
+every catchpole upon earth carries a hell in’s bosom.”  “You have still,”
+said I, crossing myself, “an aching tooth at those poor varlets.”  “Why
+not,” cried he, “for they are but devils incarnate, and so damnedly
+versed in the art of tormenting, that we live in continual dread of
+losing our places, and that His Infernal Majesty should take these
+rascals into his service.”
+
+I had enough of this, and travelling on, I saw a little way off a great
+enclosure, and a world of souls shut up in’t; some of them weeping and
+lamenting without measure, others in a profound silence.  And this I
+understood to be the lovers’ quarter.  It saddened me to consider, that
+death itself could not kill the lamentations of lovers.  Some of them
+were discoursing their passions, and teasing themselves with fears and
+jealousies; casting all their miseries upon their appetites and fancies,
+that still made the picture infinitely fairer than the person.  They were
+for the most part troubled with a simple disease, called (as the devil
+told me) “I thought.”  I asked him what that was, and he answered me, it
+was a punishment suitable to their offence: for your lovers, when they
+fall short of their expectations, either in the pursuit or enjoyment of
+their mistresses, they are wont to say, “Alas! I thought she would have
+loved me; I thought she would never have pressed me to marry her; I
+thought she would have been a fortune to me; I thought she would have
+given me all she had; I thought she would have cost me nothing; I thought
+she would have asked me nothing; I thought she would have been true to my
+bed; I thought she would have been dutiful and modest; I thought she
+would never have kept her gallant.”  So that all their pain and damnation
+comes from I thought this or that, or so, or so.
+
+In the middle of them was Cupid, a little beggarly rogue, and as naked as
+he was born, only here and there covered with an odd kind of embroidery:
+but whether it was the workmanship of the itch, pox, or measles, I could
+not perfectly discover; and close by him was this inscription—
+
+    Many a good fortune goes to wrack;
+    And so does many an able back;
+    With following whores and cards and dice,
+    Were poxed and beggared in a trice.
+
+“Aha!” said I, “by these rhymes methinks the poets should not be far
+off;” and the word was hardly out of my mouth, when I discovered millions
+of them through a park pale, and so I stopped to look upon them.  (It
+seems in hell they are not called poets now, but fools.)  One of them
+showed me the women’s quarter there hard by, and asked me what I thought
+of it, and of the handsome ladies in it.  “Is it not true,” says he,
+“that a buxom lass is a kind of half chamber-maid to a man? when she has
+stripped him and brought him to bed, she has done her business, and never
+troubles herself any further about the helping him up again, and dressing
+him.”  “How now,” said I, “Have ye your quirks and conceipts in hell?  In
+troth ye are pleasant: I thought your edge had been taken off.”  With
+that, out stepped the most miserable wretch of the whole company laden
+with irons: “Ah!” quoth he, “I would to God the first inventor of rhymes
+and poetry were here in my place,” and then he went on with this
+following and sad complaint.
+
+                       A COMPLAINT OF THE POETS IN HELL
+
+    Oh, this damned trade of versifying
+    Has brought us all to hell for lying!
+    For writing what we do not think;
+    Merely to make the verse cry clink.
+    For rather than abuse the metre,
+    Black shall be white, Paul shall be Peter.
+
+    One time I called a lady, whore;
+    Which in my soul she was no more
+    Than I am; a brave lass, no beggar,
+    And true, as ever man laid leg o’er.
+    Not out of malice, Jove’s my witness,
+    But merely for the verses fitness.
+    “Now we’re all made,” said I, “if luck hold,”
+    And then I called a fellow cuckold;
+    Though the wife was (or I’ll be hanged)
+    As good a wench as ever twanged.
+    I was once plaguely put to’t;
+    This would not hit, that would not do’t;
+    At last, I circumcised (’tis true)
+    A Christian, and baptized a Jew.
+    Nay I’ve made Herod innocent
+    For rhyming to Long-Parliament:
+    Now to conclude, we are all damned ho,
+    For nothing but a game at crambo.
+    And for a little jingling pleasure,
+    Condemned to torments without measure:
+    Which is a little hard in my sense,
+    To fry thus for poetic licence.
+    ’Tis not for sin of thought or deed,
+    But for bare sounds, and words we bleed:
+    While the cur Cerberus lies growling
+    In consort with our catterwowling.
+
+So soon as he had done.  “There is not in the world,” said I, “a more
+ridiculous frenzy than yours, to be poetising in hell.  The humour sticks
+close sure, or the fire would have fetched it out.”  “Nay,” cried a
+devil, “these versifiers are a strange generation of buffoons.  The time
+that others spend in tears and groans for their sins and follies, these
+wretches employ in songs and madrigals; and if they chance to light upon
+the critical minute, and get a snap at a lady, all’s worth nothing,
+unless the whole kingdom ring of it, in some miserable sing-song or
+other, under the name forsooth of Phyllis, Chloris, Silvia, or the like:
+and the goodly idol must be decked and dressed up with diamond, pearl,
+rubies, musk, and amber, and both the Indies are too little to furnish
+eyes, lips, and teeth for this imaginary goddess.  And yet after all this
+magnificence and bounty, it would put the poor devil’s credit upon the
+stretch, to take up an old petticoat in Long Lane, or a pair of
+cast-shoes, at the next cobbler’s.  Beside, we can give no account either
+of their country or religion.  They have Christian names, but most
+heretical souls; they are Arabians in their hearts: and in their
+language, Gentiles; but to say the truth, they fall short of the right
+Pagans in their manners.”  If I stay here a little longer, (said I to
+myself) this spiteful devil will hit me over the thumbs ere I’m aware;
+for I was half jealous, that he took me already for a piece of a poet.
+
+For fear of being discovered, I went my way, and my next visit was to the
+impertinent devotees, whose very prayers are made up of impiety and
+extravagance.  Oh! what sighing was there, and sobbing! groaning and
+whining!  Their tongues were tied up to a perpetual silence; their souls
+drooping, and their ears condemned to hear eternally the hideous cries
+and reproaches of a wheezing devil, greeting them after this manner.
+“Oh, ye impudent and profane abusers of prayer and holy duties! that
+treat the Lord of heaven and earth in His own house, with less respect
+than ye would do a merchant upon the Change, sneaking into a corner with
+your execrable petitions, for fear of being overheard by your neighbours;
+and yet without any scruple at all, ye can expose and offer them up to
+that Eternal Purity! shameless wretches that ye are!  ‘Lord,’ says one,
+‘take the old man, my father, to Thyself, I beseech Thee, that I may have
+his office and estate.  Oh, that this uncle of mine would but march off!
+There’s a fat Bishopric, and a good Deanery; I would the devil had the
+incumbent so I had the dignity.  Now for a lusty pot of guineas, or a
+lucky hand at dice if it be Thy pleasure, and then I would not doubt of
+good matches for my children.  Lord, make me His Majesty’s favourite and
+Thy servant; that I may get what’s convenient, and keep what I have
+gotten.  Grant me this, and I do here engage myself, to entertain six
+blue-coats, and bind them out to good trades; to set up a lecture for
+every day of the week; to give one-third part of my clear gains to
+charitable uses; and another, toward the repairing of Paul’s; and to pay
+all honest debts, so far as may stand with my private convenience.’
+Blind and ridiculous madness! for dust and ashes thus to reason and
+condition with the Almighty! for beggars to talk of giving, and obtrude
+their vain and unprofitable offerings upon the inexhaustible fountain of
+riches and bounty!  To pray for those things as blessings, which are
+commonly showered down upon us for our confusion and punishment.  And
+when, in case your wishes take effect, what becomes of all the sacred
+vows and promises ye made, in storms, (perhaps) sickness or adversity? so
+soon as ye have gained your port, recovered your health; or patched up a
+broken fortune, you show yourselves, all of ye, a pack of cheats; your
+vows and promises are not worth so many rushes: they are forgotten with
+your dreams; and to keep a promise upon devotion, that you made out of
+necessity, is no article of your religion.  Why do ye not ask for peace
+of conscience?  Increase of grace?  The aid of the Blessed Spirit?  But
+you are too much taken up with the things of this world, to attend those
+spiritual advantages and treasures; and to consider, that the most
+acceptable sacrifices and obligations you can make to the Almighty, are
+purity of mind, an humble spirit, and a fervent charity.  The Almighty
+takes delight to be often called upon, that He may often pour down His
+blessings upon His petitioners.  But such is the corruption of human
+nature, that men seldom think of Him, unless under afflictions; and
+therefore it is that they are often visited; for by adversity they are
+brought to the knowledge and exercise of their duty.  I would now have
+you consider, how little reason there is in your ordinary demands.  Put
+case you have your asking; what are you the better for the grant? since
+it fails you at last; because you did not ask aright.  When you die, your
+estate goes to your children; and for their parts, you are scarce cold,
+before you are forgotten.  You are not to expect they should bestow much
+upon works of charity; for if nothing went that way while you were
+living, they’ll live after your example when you are dead.  And, beside,
+there’s no merit in the case.”  At this word some of the poor creatures
+were about to reply; but the devils had put barnacles upon their lips,
+that hindered them.
+
+From thence, I went to the witches and wizards; such as pretend to cure
+man and beast by charms, words, amulets, characters: and these were all
+burning alive.  “These,” says a devil, “are a company of cozening rogues;
+the most accursed villains in nature.  If they help one man, they kill
+another, and only remove the disease from a worse to a better: and yet
+there’s no great clamour against them neither; for if the patient
+recover, he’s well enough content, and the doctor gets both reputation
+and reward for his pains.  If he dies, his mouth is stopped, and forty to
+one the next heir does him a good turn for the dispatch.  So that, hit or
+miss, all is well at last.  If you enter into a debate with them about
+their remedies, they’ll tell you, they learned the mystery of a certain
+Jew; and there’s the original of the secret.  Now to hear these quacks
+give you the history of their cures, is beyond all the plays and farces
+in the world.  You shall have a fellow tell you of fifteen people that
+were run clean through the body, and glad for a matter of three days to
+carry their puddings in their hands; that in four-and-twenty hours he
+made them as whole as fishes, and not so much as a scar for a remembrance
+of the orifice.  Ask him, when and where? you’ll find it some twelve
+hundred leagues off, in a _terra incognita_, by the token, that at that
+time he was physician in ordinary to a great prince that died about
+five-and-twenty years ago.”
+
+“Come, come,” cried a devil, “make an end of this visit, and you shall
+see those now that Judas told you were ten times worse than himself.”  I
+went along with him, and he brought me to a passage into a great hall,
+where there was a damned smell of brimstone, and a company of
+match-makers, as I thought at first; but they proved afterward to be
+alchymists, and the devils examining them upon interrogatories, who were
+filthily put to’t, to understand their gibberish.  Their talk was much of
+the planetary metals; gold they called Sol; silver, Luna; tin, Jupiter;
+copper, Venus.  They had about them their furnaces, crucibles, coal,
+bellows, clay, minerals, dung, man’s blood, powders, and alembics.  Some
+were calcining, others washing, here purifying, there separating.  Fixing
+what was volatile in one place, and rarefying what was fix in another.
+Some were upon the work of transmutation, and fixing of mercury with
+monstrous hammers upon an anvil.  And after they had resolved the vicious
+matter, and sent out the subtler parts, that they came to the coppel, all
+went away in fume.  Some again were in a hot dispute, what fuel was best;
+and whether Raymund Lullius his fire, and no fire, could be anything else
+than lime; or otherwise to be understood of the light effective of heat,
+and not of the effective heat of fire.  Others were making their entrance
+upon the great work, after the hermetical method.  Here they were
+watching the progress of their operations, and making their observations
+upon proportions and colour.  While all the rest of these blind oracles
+lay waiting for the recovery of the _materia prima_, till they brought
+themselves to the last cast both of their lives and fortunes, and instead
+of turning base metals and materials into gold, as they pretended, they
+made the contrary inversion, and were glad at length to take up with
+beggarly fools and false coiners.  What a stir was there, with crying
+out, ever and anon!  “Look ye, look ye! the old father is got up again;
+down with him, down with him;” what glossing and commenting upon the old
+chymical text, that says, “Blessed be Heaven, that has ordered the most
+excellent thing in nature out of the vilest.”  “If so,” quoth one, “let’s
+try if we can fetch the Philosopher’s Stone out of a common strumpet,
+which is of all creatures undoubtedly the vilest.”  And the word was no
+sooner out, but a matter of three-and-twenty whores went to pot, but the
+flesh was so cursedly mawmish and rotten, that they soon gave over the
+thought of that projection.  And then they entered upon a fresh
+consultation, and concluded, _nemine contradicente_, that the
+mathematicians, by that rule, were the only fit matter to work upon; as
+being most damnably dry, (to say nothing of their divisions among and
+against themselves) so that with one voice, they called for a parcel of
+mathematicians, to the furnace, to begin the experiment.  But a devil
+came in just in the God-speed, and told them, “Gentlemen philosophers,”
+says he, “if you would know the wretchedest and most contemptible thing
+in the world, it is an alchymist: and we are of opinion, that you’ll make
+as good philosopher’s stones as the mathematicians.  However, for
+curiosity’s sake, we’ll try for once.”  And so he threw them all together
+into a great caldron; and to say the truth, the poor snakes suffered very
+contentedly; out of a desire, I suppose, to help on toward the perfecting
+of the operation.
+
+On the other side were a knot of astrologers, and one among the rest that
+had studied chiromancy or palmistry, who took all the damned by the
+hands, one after another.  One he told, that it was as plain as the nose
+on his face, that he was to go to the devil, for he perceived it by the
+Mount of Saturn.  “You,” says he to another, “have been a swindging
+whore-master in your days; I see that by the Mount of Venus here, and by
+her girdle.”  And in short, every man’s destiny he read in his fist.
+After him advanced another, creeping upon all four, with a pair of
+compasses betwixt his teeth, his spheres and globes about him, his
+Jacob’s staff before him, and his eyes upon the stars, as if he were
+taking a height or making an observation.  When he had gazed a while, up
+he starts of a sudden, and, wringing his hands, “Good Lord,” says he,
+“what an unlucky dog was I!  If I had come into the world but one half
+quarter of an hour sooner, I had been saved; for just then Saturn
+shifted, and Mars was lodged in the house of life.”  One that followed
+him, bade his tormentors be sure he was dead; “for,” says he, “I am a
+little doubtful of it myself; in regard that I had Jupiter for my
+ascendant, and Venus in the house of life, and no malevolent aspect to
+cross me.  So that by the rules of astrology, I was to live, precisely, a
+hundred years and one, two months, six days, four hours, and three
+minutes.”  The next that came up was a geomancer; one that reduced all
+his skill to certain little points, and by them would tell you, as well
+things past as to come: these points he bestowed at a venture, among
+several unequal lines; some long, others shorter, like the fingers of a
+man’s hand; and then, with a certain ribble-rabble of mysterious words,
+he proceeds to his calculation, upon even or odd, and challenges the
+whole world to allow him the most learned and infallible of the trade.
+
+There were divers great masters of the science that followed him.  As
+Haly, Gerard, Bart’lemew of Parma, and one Toudin; a familiar friend, and
+companion of the great Cornelius Agrippa, the famous conjurer, who though
+he had but one soul was yet burning in four bodies.  (I mean the four
+damnable books he left behind him.)  There was Trithemius too, with his
+polygraphy and stenography; that had devils now, his belly-full, though
+in his lifetime his complaint was, that he could never have enough of
+their company; over against him was Cardan; but they could not set their
+horses together, because of an old quarrel, whether was the more impudent
+of the two.  And there I saw Misaldus, tearing his beard, in rage, to
+find himself pumped dry; and that he could not fool on, to the end of the
+chapter.  Theophrastus was there too, bewailing himself for the time he
+had spent at the alchymist’s bellows.  There was also the unknown author
+of _Clavicula Solomonis_, and _The Hundred Kings of Spirits_, with the
+composer of the book, _Adversus Omnia pericula Mundi_; Taysnerus too,
+with his book of _Physiognomy_ and _Chiromancy_; and he was doubly
+punished, first for the fool he was, and then for those he had made.
+Though, to give the man his due, he knew himself to be a cheat, and that
+he that gives a judgment upon the lines of a face takes but a very
+uncertain aim.  There were magicians, necromancers, sorcerers, and
+enchanters innumerable, beside divers private boxes that were kept for
+lords and ladies; and other personages of great quality, that put their
+trust in these disciples of the devil, and go to Strand Bridge or
+Billiter Lane, for resolution in cases of death, love, or marriage, and
+now and then to recover a gold watch or a pearl necklace.
+
+Not far from these were a company of handsome women, that were tormented
+in the quality of witches, which grieved my very heart to see it; but to
+comfort me, “What?” says a devil, “have you so soon forgot the roguery of
+these carrions?  Have you not had trial enough yet of them? they are the
+very poison of life, and the only dangerous magicians that corrupt all
+our senses, and disturb the faculties of your soul; these are they that
+cozen your eyes with false appearances, and set up your wills in
+opposition to your understanding and reason.”  “’Tis right,” said I, “and
+now you mind me of it, I do very well remember, that I have found them
+so; but let’s go on and see the rest.”
+
+I was scarce gone three steps farther, but I was got into so hideous a
+dark place that it was e’en a mercy we knew where we were.  There was
+first at the entrance, Divine Justice, which was most dreadful to behold;
+and a little beyond stood Vice, with a countenance of the highest pride
+and insolence imaginable; there was Ingratitude, Malice, Ignorance,
+obstinate and incorrigible Infidelity, brutish and headstrong
+Disobedience, rash and imperious Blasphemy, with garments dipped in
+blood, eyes sparkling, and a hundred pair of chops, barking at
+Providence, and vomiting rage and poison.  I went in (I confess) with
+fear and trembling, and there I saw all the sects of idolaters and
+heretics, that ever yet appeared upon the stage of the universe; and at
+their feet, in a glorious array, was lascivious Barbara, second wife to
+the Emperor Sigismund, and the queen of harlots: one that agreed with
+Messalina in this, that virginity was both a burden and a folly; and that
+in her whole life she was never either wearied or satisfied; but herein
+she went beyond her, in that she held the mortality as well of the soul
+as of the body; but she was now better instructed, and burnt like a
+bundle of matches.
+
+Passing forward still, I spied a fellow in a corner, all alone, with the
+flames about his ears, gnashing his teeth and blaspheming through fury
+and despair.  I asked him what he was, and he told me he was Mahomet.
+“Why, then,” said I, “thou art the damnedest reprobate in hell, and hast
+brought more wretches hither than half the world beside: and Lucifer has
+done well to allot thee a quarter here by thyself, for certainly thou
+hast well deserved the first place in his dominions.  But since every man
+chooses to talk of what he loves, I prithee, good impostor, tell me,
+what’s the reason that thou hast forbidden wine to all thy disciples?”
+“Oh,” says he, “I have made them so drunk with my Alchoran they need no
+tipple.”  “But why hast thou forbidden them swines’ flesh too?” said I.
+“Because,” says he, “I would not affront the jambon; for water upon
+gammon would be false heraldry.  And beside I never loved my people well
+enough to afford them the pleasure, either of the grape or the spare-rib.
+Nay, and for fear they should chance to grope out the way to heaven, I
+have established my power and my dominion by force of arms; without
+subjecting my laws to idle disputes and discourses of reason.  Indeed
+there is little of reason in my precepts, and I would have as little in
+their obedience.  A world of disciples I have, but I think they follow me
+more out of appetite than religion, or for the miracles I work.  I allow
+them liberty of conscience; they have as many women as they please, and
+do what they list, provided they meddle not with the Government.  But
+look about ye now, and you’ll find that there are more knaves than
+Mahomet.”
+
+I did so, and found myself presently surrounded with a ring of heretics,
+and their adherents; many of which were ready to tear out the throats of
+their leaders.  One among the rest was beset with a brace of devils, and
+either of them a pair of bellows, puffing into each ear fire instead of
+air, which made him a little hot-headed.  There was another, that, as I
+was told, was a kind of a symoniac, and had taken up his seat in a
+pestilential chair; but it was so dark I could not well discern whether
+it was a Pope or a Presbyter.
+
+By this time I had enough of hell, and began to wish myself out again;
+but as I was looking about for a retreat, I stumbled upon a long gallery
+before I was aware: and there I saw Lucifer himself, with all his
+nobility about him, male and female.  (For let married men say their
+pleasure, there are she-devils too,) I should have been at a damned loss
+what to do, or how to behave myself among so many strange faces, if one
+of the ushers had not come to me, and told me, that, being a stranger, it
+was His Majesty’s pleasure I should enter and have free liberty of seeing
+what was there to be seen.  We exchanged a couple or two of compliments,
+and then I began to look about me, but never did I see a palace so
+furnished, nor indeed comparable to it.
+
+Our furniture at the best is but a choice collection of dead and dumb
+statues, or paintings, without life, sense, or motion; but there, all the
+pieces were animated, and no trash in the whole inventory; there was
+hardly anything to be seen, but emperors and princes, with some few
+(perhaps) of their choicest nobility and privados.  The first bank was
+taken up by the Ottoman family; and after them sat the Roman emperors, in
+their order; and the Roman kings down to Tarquin the proud; beside
+highnesses and graces, lords spiritual and temporal innumerable.  My
+lungs began now to call for a little fresh air, and I desired my guide to
+show me the way out again.  “Yes, yes, with all my heart,” says he,
+“follow me then:” and so he carried me away by a back passage into
+Lucifer’s house of office, where there was I know not how many ton of Sir
+Reverence, and bales of flattering panegyrics, not to be numbered; all of
+them licensed, and entered according to order.  I could not but smile at
+this provision of tail-timber, and my guide took notice of it, who was a
+good kind of a damned droll.  But I called still to be gone, and at
+length he led me to a little hole like the vent of a vault, and I crept
+through it as nimbly as if the devil himself had given me a lift at the
+crupper; when, to my great wonder, I found myself in the park again,
+where I begun my story: not without an odd medley of passions, partly
+reflecting upon what others endured, and in part upon my own condition of
+ease and happiness, that had deserved, perhaps, the contrary as well as
+they.  This thought put me upon a resolution of leading such a course of
+life, for the future, that I might not come to feel these torments in
+reality which I had now only seen in vision.
+
+And I must here entreat the reader to follow my example, without making
+any further experiment; and likewise not to cast an ill construction upon
+a fair meaning.  My design is to discredit and discountenance the works
+of darkness, without scandalising of persons; and since I speak only of
+damned, I’m sure no honest man alive will reckon this discourse a satire.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                       THE END OF THE SIXTH VISION
+
+
+
+
+THE SEVENTH VISION OF HELL REFORMED
+
+
+THERE happened lately so terrible an uproar, and disorder in hell, that
+(though it be a place of perpetual outrage and confusion) the oldest
+devil there never knew the fellow of it; and the inhabitants expected
+nothing less than an absolute topsy-turvy and dissolution of their
+empire.  The devils fell upon the damned; and the damned fell upon the
+devils, without knowing one from t’other: and all running helter-skelter,
+to and again, like mad; for, in fine, it was no other than a general
+revolt.  This hurly-burly lasted a good while, before any mortal could
+imagine the meaning of it; but at length there came certain intelligence
+of a monstrous talker, a pragmatical, meddling undertaker, and an old
+bawd of a gouvernante, that had knocked off their shackles, and made all
+this havoc: which may give the reader to understand what kind of cattle
+these are, that could make hell itself more dangerous and unquiet.
+
+Lucifer, in the meantime, went yelping up and down, and bawling for
+chains, handcuffs, bolts, manacles, shackles, fetters, to tie up his
+prisoners again; when, in the middle of his career, he and the babbler or
+talker I told ye of met full-butt; and after a little staring one another
+in the face, upon the encounter, the babbler opened.  “Prince mine,” says
+he, “you have a pack of lazy, droning devils in your dominions, that look
+after nothing but sit with their arms and legs across, and leave all your
+affairs at six and seven.  And you have divers abroad too, upon
+commission, that have stayed out their time, and yet give you no account
+of their employment.”  The gouvernante, who had been blowing the coal and
+whispering sedition from one to another, chanced to pass by in the
+interim, and, stopping short, addressed herself to Lucifer: “Look to
+yourself,” she cried, “there is a desperate plot upon your diabolical
+crown and dignity.  There are two tyrants in’t, three parasites, a world
+of physicians, and whole legions of lawyers and attorneys.  One word more
+in your ear.  There is among them a mongrel priest (a kind of a
+lay-elder) that will go near to sit upon your skirts, if you have not a
+care of him.”
+
+At the very name of priest and lay-elder Lucifer looked as pale as death,
+stood stone-still, as mute as a fish, and in his very looks discovered
+his apprehensions.  After a little pause he roused himself as out of a
+trance: “A priest do ye say? a lay-elder? tyrants? lawyers? physicians?
+A composition to poison all the devils in hell, and purge their very guts
+out.”  With that, away he went to visit the avenues and set his guards,
+and who should he met next but the meddler, in a monstrous haste and
+hurry.  “Nay then,” says he, “here is the forerunner of ill-luck.  But
+what’s the matter?”  “The matter?” cried the meddler; and then with a
+huge deal of tedious and impertinent circumstance, he up and told him
+that a great many of the damned had contrived an escape; and that there
+was a design to call in four or five regiments of hypocrites and usurers,
+under colour forsooth of establishing a better intelligence betwixt earth
+and hell, with a hundred other fopperies; and had gone on till this time,
+if Lucifer would have found ears.  But he had other fish to fry; for neck
+and all was now at stake; and so he went about his business of putting
+all in a posture, and strengthening his guards.  And for the further
+security of his royal person, he entertained into his own immediate
+regiment several reformadoes of the society, that he particularly knew to
+be no flinchers.
+
+He began his survey in the vault and dungeons, among his jailers and
+prisoners.  The make-bate babbler marched in the van, breathing an air
+that kindled and inflamed wherever he passed, without giving any light
+(setting people together by the ears, they know not why).  In the second
+place the gouvernante, as full of news and tittle-tattle as she could
+hold, and telling her tale all the way she went.  In the breech of her
+followed the meddler, leering as he passed along, first on one side then
+on the other, without ever moving his head, and making fair with every
+soul he saw in’s way.  He gave one a bow, t’other a kiss; “Your most
+humble servant,” to a third; “Can I serve you, sir,” to a fourth: but
+every compliment was worse to the poor creatures than the fire itself.
+“Ah, traitor!” says one; “for pity’s sake away with this new tormentor!”
+cries another.  “This fellow is hell upon hell,” says a third.  As he
+trudged on there was a rabble of rascals got together; and in the middle
+of the crowd a most eminent knight of the post, a (great master of his
+trade) that was reading a lecture to that venerable assembly, of the
+noble mystery of swearing and lying; and would have taught any man in one
+quarter of an hour to prove anything upon oath, that he never saw nor
+heard of in his life.  This doctor had no sooner cast his eye upon the
+inter-meddler, but up he started in a fright.  “How now,” says he, “is
+that devil here?  I came hither on purpose to avoid him; and if I could
+but have dreamt he’d have been in hell, beyond all dispute I’d have gone
+myself to paradise.”
+
+As he was speaking we heard a great and a confused noise of arms, blows,
+and outcries; and presently we discovered several persons falling one
+upon another like lightning; and in short with such a fury, that ’tis not
+for any tongue or pen to describe the battle.  One of them appeared to be
+an emperor; for he was crowned with laurel, and surrounded with a grave
+sort of people, that looked like counsellors or senators; and had all the
+old statutes and records at their finger’s end: by which they endeavoured
+to make it out, that a king might be killed in his personal capacity, and
+his politic capacity never the worse for’t.  And upon this point were
+they at daggers drawn with the emperor.  Lucifer came then roundly up to
+him, and with a voice that made hell quake, “What are you, sir,” says he,
+“that take upon you thus in my dominions?”  “I am the great Julius
+Cæsar,” quoth he, “that in this general tumult thought to have revenged
+myself upon Brutus and Cassius, for murdering me in the Senate, under
+colour (forsooth) of asserting the common liberty: whereas these traitors
+did it merely out of envy, avarice, and ambition.  It was the emperor,
+not the empire they hated.  They pretended to destroy me, for introducing
+a monarchy; but did they overthrow the monarchy itself?  No; but on the
+contrary, they confirmed it; and did more mischief, in taking away my
+life than I did in dissolving their republic.  However, I died an
+emperor, and these villains carried only the infamy and brand of
+regicides to their graves, and the world has ever since adored my memory
+and abhorred theirs.  Tell me,” quoth he, “ye cursed bloodhounds,”
+(turning toward them) “whether was your government better, think ye, in
+the hands of your senators, a company of talking gown-men, that knew not
+how to keep it, or in the hands of a soldier that won it by his merit?
+It is not the drawing of a charge, or making of a fine oration, that fits
+people for government; nor will a crown sit well upon the head of a
+pedant; but let him wear it that deserves it.  He is the true patriot
+that advances the glory of his country, by actions of bravery and honour.
+Which has more right to rule, think ye, he that only knows the laws, or
+he that maintains them?  The one only studies the government; the other
+protects it.  Wretched republic!  Thou call’st it freedom to obey a
+divided multitude, and slavery to serve a single person; and when a
+company of covetous little fellows are got together, they must be styled
+fathers of their country, forsooth; and shall one generous person take up
+with the name of tyrant?  Oh! how much better had it been for Rome to
+have preserved that one son that made her mistress of the world, than
+that multitude of fathers, who by so many intestine wars rendered her but
+a stepmother to her own children.  Barbarous and cruel that you are! so
+much as to mention the name of a commonwealth, considering that since the
+people tasted of monarchy they have preferred even the worst of princes
+(as Nero, Tiberius, Caligula, Heliogabalus, etc.) before your tribe of
+senators.”
+
+This discourse of Cæsar’s struck Brutus with exceeding shame and
+confusion; but at length, with a feeble and trembling voice, he delivered
+himself to this effect.  “Gentlemen of the Senate,” says he, “do ye not
+hear Cæsar? or will ye add sin to sin, and suffer all the blame to be
+cast upon the instruments, when you yourselves were the contrivers of the
+villainy?  Why do ye not answer? for Cæsar speaks to you, as well as to
+us.  Cassius and myself were but your bravoes, and governed by your
+persuasions and advice, little dreaming of that insatiable ambition that
+lay lurking under the gravity of your long beards and robes.  But ’tis
+the practice of you all, to arraign that tyranny in the prince, which you
+would exercise yourselves: in effect, when you have gotten power, and the
+colour of authority in your hands, it is more dangerous for a prince not
+to comply with you than for a vassal to rebel against his prince.  To
+what end served your perfidious and ungrateful treason?  Make answer to
+Cæsar.  But for our parts, in the conscience of our sin, we feel the
+severity of our punishment.”
+
+At these words a hollow-eyed, supercilious senator (that had been of the
+conspiracy, and was then blazing like a pitched barrel) raised himself,
+and with a faint voice asked Cæsar what reason he had to complain!  “For,
+prince,” says he, “if King Ptolomy murdered Pompey the Great, upon whose
+score he held his kingdom, why might not the Senate as well kill you, to
+recover what you had taken from them?  And in the case betwixt Cæsar and
+Pompey, let the devils themselves be judges.  As for Achilles (who was
+one of the murderers) what he did, was by Ptolomy’s command, and then he
+was but a free-booter neither, a fellow that got his living by rapine and
+spoil: but Cæsar was undoubtedly the more infamous of the two.  ’Tis
+true, you wept at the sight of Pompey’s head, but such tears as were more
+treacherous than the steel that killed him.  Ah cruel compassion and
+revengeful piety! that made thee a more barbarous enemy to Pompey, dead
+than living.  Oh that ever two hypocrite eyes should creep into the first
+head of the world!  To conclude, the death of Cæsar had been the recovery
+of our republic, if the multitude had not called in others of his race to
+the government, which rendered thy fall the very hydra of the empire.”
+
+We had had another skirmish upon these words, if Lucifer had not
+commanded Cæsar to his cell again, upon pain of death; and there to abide
+such correction as belonged to him, for slighting the warnings he had of
+his disaster.  Brutus and Cassius too were turned over to the politic
+fools: and the senators were dispatched away to Minos and Rhadamanthus,
+and to sit as assistants in the devils’ bench.
+
+After this I heard a murmuring noise, as of people talking at a distance,
+and by degrees I made it out that they were wrangling and disputing still
+louder and louder, till at length it was but a word and a blow, and the
+nearer I came the greater was the clamour.  This made me mend my pace;
+but before I could reach them, they were all together by the ears in a
+bloody fray: they were persons of great quality all of them, as emperors,
+magistrates, generals of armies.  Lucifer, to take up the quarrel,
+commanded them peace and silence, and they all obeyed, but it vexed them
+to the hearts to be so taken off in the full career of their fury and
+revenge.  The first that opened his mouth was a fellow so martyred with
+wounds and scars, that I took him at first for an indigent officer; but
+it proved to be Clitus (as he said himself).  And one at his elbow told
+him, he was a saucy companion, for presuming to speak before his time;
+and so desired audience of Lucifer, for the high and mighty Alexander,
+the son of Jupiter, and the emperor and terror of the world: he was going
+on with his qualities and titles; but an officer gave the word, Silence,
+and bade Clitus begin; which he took very kindly, and told his story.
+
+“If it may please your Majesty,” says he, “I was the first favourite of
+this emperor, who was then lord of all the known world, bare the title of
+the King of Kings, and boasted himself for the son of Jupiter Hammon; and
+yet after all this glory and conquest, he was himself a slave to his
+passions: he was rash and cruel, and consequently incapable either of
+counsel or friendship.  While I lived I was near him, and served him
+faithfully; but it seems he did not entertain me so much for my fidelity
+as to augment the number of his flatterers; but I found myself too honest
+for a base office; and still as he ran into any foul excesses, I took a
+freedom, with all possible modesty, to show him his mistakes.  One day,
+as he was talking slightly of his father Philip (that brave prince, from
+whom he received as well his honour as his being) I told him frankly what
+I thought of that ingratitude and vanity, and desired him to treat his
+dead father with more reverence, as a prince worthy of eternal honour and
+respect.  This commendation of Philip so inflamed him, that presently he
+took a partisan and struck me dead in the place with his own hand.  After
+this, pray’e where was his divinity, when he gave Abdolominus, (a poor
+garden-weeder) the kingdom of Sidonia, which was not, as the world would
+have it, out of any consideration of his virtue, but to mortify and take
+down the pride and insolence of the Persians.  Meeting him here just now
+in hell, I asked him what was become of his father Jupiter now, that he
+lay so long by’t, and whether he were not yet convinced that all his
+flatterers were a company of rascals, who with their incense and altars
+would persuade him that he was of divine extraction and heir-apparent to
+the throne and thunder of Jupiter.  This now was the ground of our
+quarrel.  But, invectives apart, who but a tyrant would have put a loyal
+subject to death, only for his affection and regards to the memory of his
+dead father? how barbarously did he treat his favourites, Parmenio,
+Philotas, Calisthenes, Amintas, etc., so that good or bad is all a case,
+for ’tis crime enough to be the favourite of a tyrant; as, in the course
+of human life, every man dies because he is mortal, and the disease is
+rather the pretext of his death than the cause of it.”  “You find now,”
+says Satan, “that tyrants will show their people many a dog trick, when
+the humour takes them.  The good they hate, for not being wicked; and the
+bad, because they are no worse.  How many favourites have you ever seen
+come to a fair and timely end?  Remember the emblem of the sponge, and
+that’s the use that princes make of their favourites: they let them suck
+and fill, and then squeeze them for their own profit.”
+
+At that word there was heard a lamentable cry, and at the same time a
+venerable old man, as pale as if he had no blood in his veins, came up to
+Lucifer, and told him that his emblem of the sponge came very pat to his
+case; “for,” says he, “I was a great favourite, and a great hoarder of
+treasure, a Spaniard by birth, the tutor and confidant of Nero, and my
+name is Seneca.  Indeed his bounties were to excess, he gave me without
+asking, and in taking I was never covetous but obedient.  It is in the
+nature of princes, and it befits their quality, to be liberal where they
+take a liking, both of honour and fortunes; and ’tis hard for a subject
+to refuse, without some reflection upon the generosity or discretion of
+his master.  For ’tis not the merit or modesty of the vassal, but the
+glory of the prince that is in question; and he is the best subject that
+contributes the most to the splendour and reputation of his sovereign.
+Nero indeed gave me as much as such a prince could bestow, and I managed
+his liberalities with all the moderation imaginable; yet all too little
+to preserve me from the strokes of envious and malicious tongues, which
+would have it, that my philosophising upon the contempt of the world was
+nothing else but a mere imposture, that with less danger and notice I
+might feed and entertain my avarice, and with the fewer competitors.
+Finding my credit with my master declining, it stood me upon to provide
+some way or other for my quiet, and to withdraw myself from being the
+mark of a public envy.  So I went directly to Nero, and with all possible
+respect and humility made him a present back again of his own bounties.
+The truth is, I had so great a passion for his service, that neither the
+severity of his nature nor the debauchery of his manners could ever deter
+me from exhorting him to nobler courses, and paying him all the duties of
+a loyal subject.  Especially in cases of cruelty and blood, I laid it
+perpetually home to his conscience, but all to little purpose; for he put
+his mother to death, laid the city of Rome in ashes, and indeed
+depopulated the empire of honest men.  And this drew on Piso’s
+conspiracy, which was better laid than executed; for upon the discovery,
+the prime instruments lost their lives; and by Divine Providence this
+prince was preserved, in order (as one would have thought) to his
+repentance and change of life.  But upon the issue the conspiracy was
+prevented, and Nero never the better.  At the same time he put Lucan to
+death, only for being a better poet than himself.  And if he gave me my
+choice what death to die, it was rather cruelty than pity; for in the
+very deliberation which death to choose, I suffered all even in the
+terror and apprehension that made me refuse the rest.  The election I
+made was to bleed to death in a bath, and I finished my own dispatches
+hither; where, to my further affliction, I have again encountered this
+infamous prince, studying new cruelties and instructing the very devils
+themselves in the art of tormenting.”
+
+At that word Nero advanced, with his ill-favoured face and shrill voice.
+“It is very well,” says he, “for a prince’s favourite or tutor to be
+wiser than his master; but let him manage that advantage then with
+respect, and not like a rash and insolent fool make proclamation
+presently to the world, that he’s the wiser of the two.  While Seneca
+kept himself within those bounds, I lodged him in my bosom, and the love
+I had for that man was the glory of my government; but when he came to
+publish once (what he should have dissembled or concealed) that it was
+not Nero but Seneca that ruled the empire, nothing less than his blood
+could make satisfaction for so intolerable a scandal, and from that hour
+I resolved his ruin.  And I had rather suffer what I do a hundred times
+over than entertain a favourite that should raise his credit upon my
+dishonour.  Whether I have reason on my side or no, I appeal to all this
+princely assembly: draw near, I beseech ye, as many as are here, and
+speak freely, my royal brethren, Did ye ever suffer any favourite to
+escape unpunished, that had the impudence to write [I and my king] to
+make a stale of majesty, and to publish himself a better statesman than
+his master?”  “No, no,” they cried out all with one voice, “it never was,
+and never shall be endured, while the world lasts: for we have left our
+successors under an oath to have a care on’t.  ’Tis true, a wise
+counsellor at a prince’s elbow is a treasure, and ought to be so esteemed
+while he makes it his business to cry up the abilities and justice of his
+sovereign; but in the instant that his vanity transports him to the
+contrary, away with him to the dogs, and down with him, for there’s no
+enduring of it.”
+
+“All this,” cried Sejanus, “does not yet concern me; for though I had
+indeed more brains than Tiberius, yet I so ordered it that he had the
+credit in public of all my private advices.  And so sensible he was of my
+services, that he made me his partner and companion in the empire; he
+caused my statues to be erected, and invested them with sacred
+privileges.  ‘Let Sejanus live,’ was the daily cry of the people; and in
+truth, my well-being was the joy of the empire; and far and near there
+were public prayers and vows offered up for my health.  But what was the
+end of all?  When I thought myself surest in my master’s arms and favour,
+he let me fall, nay he threw me down, caused me to be cut in pieces,
+delivering me up to the fury of a barbarous and enraged multitude, that
+dragged me along the streets, and happy was he that could get a piece of
+my flesh to carry upon a javelin’s point in triumph.  And it had been
+well if this inhuman cruelty had stopped here; but it extended to my poor
+children, who, though unconcerned in my crimes, were yet to partake in my
+fate.  A daughter I had, whom the very law exempted from the stroke of
+justice, because of her virginity; but to clear that scruple, she was
+condemned first to be ravished by the hangman, and then to be beheaded,
+and treated as her father.  My first failing was upon temerity and pride:
+I would outrun my destiny, defy fortune; and for Divine Providence I
+looked upon it as a ridiculous thing.  When I was once out of the way, I
+thought doing worse was somewhat in order to being better; and then I
+began to fortify myself by violence, against craft and malice.  Some were
+put to death, others banished, till, in fine, all the powers of heaven
+and earth declared themselves against me.  I had recourse to all sorts of
+ill people and means.  I had my physician for poisoning, my assassins for
+revenge; I had my false witnesses and corrupt judges; and, in truth, what
+instruments of wickedness had I not?  And all this, not upon choice or
+inclination, but purely out of the necessity of my condition.  Whenever I
+should come to fall, I was sure to be forsaken both of good and bad; and
+therefore I shunned the better sort, as those that would only serve to
+accuse me; but the lewd and vicious I frequented, to increase the number
+of my complices, and make my party the stronger.  But, after all, if
+Tiberius was a tyrant, I’ll swear he was never so by my advice; but, on
+the contrary, I have suffered more from him for plain dealing and
+dissuading him, than the very subjects of his severity have commonly
+suffered by him.  I know, ’tis charged upon me, that I stirred him up to
+cruelty, to render him odious, and to ingratiate myself to the people.
+But who was his adviser, I pray ’e, in this butcherly proceeding against
+me?  Oh Lucifer, Lucifer! you know very well that ’tis the practice of
+tyrants, when they do amiss themselves, and set their people a-grumbling,
+to lay all the blame (and punishment too) upon the instrument; and hang
+up the minister for the master’s fault.  ‘This is the end of all
+favourites,’ cries one; ‘Not a halfpenny matter if they were all served
+so,’ says another.  And every historian has his saying upon this
+catastrophe, and sets up a buoy to warn after-ages of the rock of court
+favours.  The greatness of a favourite, I must confess, proclaims the
+greatness of his maker; and the prince that maintains what he has once
+raised does but justify the prudence of his own choice; and whenever he
+comes to undo what he has done, publishes himself to be light and
+unconstant, and does as good as declare himself (even against himself) of
+the enemy’s party.”
+
+Up stepped Plaintain then, (Severus his favourite) he that was tossed out
+of a garret window to make the people sport.  “My condition in the
+world,” says he, “was perfectly like that of a rocket or fire-work: I was
+carried up to a prodigious height in a moment, and all people’s eyes were
+upon me, as a star of the first magnitude; but my glory was very
+short-lived, and down I fell into obscurity and ashes.”  After him,
+appeared a number of other favourites; and all of them hearkening to
+Bellisarius the favourite of Justinian, who, blind as he was, had already
+knocked twice with his staff, and shaking his head, with a weak and
+complaining voice, desired audience; which was at length granted him,
+silence commanded; and he said, as follows.
+
+“Princes,” said he, “before they destroy the creatures they have raised
+and chosen, should do well to consider, that cruelty and inconstancy is
+much a greater infamy to a prince than the worst effects of it can be to
+a favourite.  For my own part, I served an emperor that was both a
+Christian and a great lover and promoter of justice.  And yet, after all
+the services I had done him, in several battles and adventures, (insomuch
+that he was effectually become my debtor, for the very glory of his
+empire) my reward, in the end, was to have my eyes put out, and (with a
+dog and a bell) to be turned a-begging from door to door.  Thus was that
+Bellisarius treated, whose very name formerly was worth an army, and he
+was the soul of his friends as well as the terror of his enemies.  But a
+prince’s favour is like quick-silver—restless and slippery, never to be
+fixed, never secured.  Force it, and it spends itself in fumes; sublime
+it, and ’tis a mortal poison.  Handle it only, and it works itself into
+the very bones; and all that have to do with it, live and die pale and
+trembling.”
+
+At these words, the whole band of favourites, set up a hideous and a
+heavy groan, trembling like aspen leaves, and at the same time reciting
+several passages out of the Prophet Habbakuk, against careless and wicked
+governors.  By which threatenings is given to understand, that the
+Almighty, when He has a mind to destroy a wicked ruler, does not always
+punish one potentate by another, and bring His ends about by a trial of
+arms, or the event of a battle; but many times makes use of things the
+most abject and vile, to confound the vanity and arrogance of the mighty;
+and makes even worms, flies, caterpillars, and lice to serve Him as the
+ministers of His terrible justice; nay, the stone in the wall and the
+beam in the house shall rise in judgment against them.
+
+This discourse might have gone further, but that the company presently
+parted, to know the meaning of a sudden noise and clatter they heard,
+that half-deafened the auditory.  And what was it at last? but a scuffle
+between the Gown-men and the Brothers of the Blade; and there were
+persons of great honour and learning, young and old, engaged in the fray;
+the men of war were at it dashing with their swords, and the gentlemen of
+the long robe, fencing, some with tostatus, others with huge pandects,
+that with their old wainscot covers were as good as bucklers, and would
+now and then give the foe a heavy rebuke, over and above.  The combat had
+certainly been very bloody, if one of Lucifer’s constables had not
+commanded them in the king’s name to keep the peace; which made it a
+drawn battle.  And with that, one of the combatants, with the best face
+he had, said aloud, “If ye knew, gentlemen, either us, or our quarrel,
+you’d say we had reason, and perhaps side with us.”  At that instant,
+there appeared Domitian, Commodus, Caracalla, Phalaris, Heliogabalus,
+Alcetes, Andronicus, Busiris, and old Oliver, with a world of great
+personages more; which, when Lucifer saw, he disposed himself to treat
+that majestical appearance, as much to their satisfaction as was
+possible.  And then came up a grave ancient man, with a great train at
+his heels, that were all bloody, and full of the marks they had received
+under the persecution of these tyrants.
+
+“You have here before ye,” quoth the old man, “Solon; and these are the
+seven sages, native of Greece, but renowned throughout the universe.  He
+there in the mortar is that Anaxarchus that was pounded to death by
+command of Nicocreon.  He with the flat nose is Socrates; the little
+crump-shouldered wretch was the famous Aristotle; and t’other there, the
+divine Plato.  Those in the corner are all of the same profession too,
+grave and learned philosophers, that have displeased tyrants with their
+writings; and, in fine, the world is stored with their works and hell
+with the authors.  To come to the point, most mighty Lucifer, we are all
+of us dealers in politics, great writers and deep-read men in the maxims
+of State and Government.  We have digested policy into a method, and laid
+down certain rules, by which princes may make themselves great and
+beloved.  We have advised them impartially to administer justice; to
+reward virtue, as well military as civil; to employ able men, banish
+flatterers; to put men of wisdom and integrity in places of trust; to
+reward or punish without passion, and according to the merits of the
+cause, as God’s vice-gerents.  And this now is our offence.  We name no
+body, we design no body; but ’tis crime enough to wish well to the way
+and to the lovers of virtue.”  With that, turning toward the tyrants.
+“Oh most unjust princes,” said he, “those glorious kings and emperors
+from whom we took the model of our laws and instructions are now in a
+state of rest and comfort, while you are tormented.  Numa is now a star
+in the firmament and Tarquin a fire-brand in hell.  And the memory of
+Augustus and Trajan is still fresh and fragrant, when the names of Nero
+and Sardanapalus are more putrid and odious than their bodies.”
+
+When Dionysius the tyrant heard this, (with his companions about him)
+flesh and blood could hold no longer; and he cried out in a rage, “That
+roguy philosopher has told a thousand lies.  Legislators, with a pox?
+Yes, yes, they are sweet legislators, and princes have many a fair
+obligation to them.  No, no, sirrah,” says he to Solon, “you are all of
+you a company of quacks; ye prate and speculate of things ye don’t
+understand; and with your damned moralities set the people agog upon
+liberty, cry up the doctrine of free-born subjects, and then our portion
+is persecution in one world and infamy in t’other.”
+
+“We shall have a fine time on’t, my most gracious prince,” cried Julian
+the apostate, staring Lucifer in the face, “when these dunghill pedants,
+a company of cock-brained, ridiculous, mortified, ill-bred, beggarly
+tatterdemalions, shall come to erect a committee for politics, and pass
+sentence upon governors and governments; stiling themselves (forsooth)
+the supporters of both, without any more skill than my horse in what
+belongs to either.  Tell me,” says he, “if a brave prince had not better
+be damned than subject himself to hear one of these turdy-facy-paty-nasty
+lowsie-fartical rascals, with a scabbed head and a plantation of lice in
+his beard, and his eyes crept into the nape of his neck, pronouncing, for
+an aphorism, that a prince that looks only to one is a tyrant, and that a
+true king is the shepherd and servant of his people.  Ah, rash and
+besotted coxcombs!  If a king looks only to others, who shall look to
+him?  As if princes had not enemies enough abroad, without being so to
+themselves too.  But you may write your hearts out, and never the nearer.
+Where’s our sovereignty? if we have not our subjects’ lives and estates
+at our mercy.  And where’s our absolute power? if we submit to the
+counsels of our vassals.  If we have not to satisfy our appetites,
+avarice and revenge, we want power to discharge the noblest ends of
+government.  These contemplative idiots would have us make choice of good
+officers, to keep the bad in order; which were a madness, in our
+condition.  Let them be complaisant, and no matter for any other merit or
+virtue.  A parcel of good offices, handsomely disposed among a pack of
+cheats and atheists, will make us a party another day; whereas all is
+lost that’s bestowed upon honest men, for they’re our enemies; speak
+truth then all of ye, and shame the devil; for the butcher fats his sheep
+only for the shambles.
+
+“I have said enough, I suppose, to stop your mouths, but here’s an orator
+will read you another-gates lecture of politics than any you have had
+yet, if you’ll give him the hearing.  Photinus, advance,” said Julian,
+“and speak your mind;” whereupon there appeared a brazen-faced fellow,
+with a hanging look and twenty other marks of a desperate villain who,
+with a hellish yell, and three or four wry mouths for a prologue, brake
+into his discourse.
+
+The wicked advice of one of Ptolomy’s courtiers, about the killing of
+Pompey: taken out of Lucan’s _Pharsalia_, Lib. 8.
+
+“Methinks, under favour (most renowned Ptolomy) we are now slipped into a
+debate, a little beside the business.  The question is whether Pompey
+should be delivered up to Cæsar, or no.  That is to say, whether in
+reason of state it ought to be done; and we are formalising the matter,
+whether in point of equity and justice it may be done.  Bodies politic
+have no souls, and never did any great prince turn a council of state
+into a court of conscience, but he repented it.  Kingdoms are to be
+governed by politicians, not by casuists; and there is nothing more
+contrary to the true interest of crowns and empires, than in public cases
+to make a scruple of private duties.  The argument is this: Pompey is in
+distress; and Ptolomy under an obligation, so that it were a violation of
+faith and hospitality not to relieve him.  Now give me leave to reason in
+the other way.  Pompey is forsaken, and persecuted by the Gods; Cæsar
+upon the heels of him, with victory and success.  Shall Ptolomy now ruin
+himself, to protect a fugitive, against both heaven and Cæsar!  I must
+confess, where honesty and profit are both of a side, ’tis well; but,
+where they disagree, the prince that does not quit his religion, for his
+convenience, falls into a direct conspiracy against himself.  He shall
+lose the hearts of his soldiery, and the reputation of his power.
+Whereas, on the contrary, the most hateful tyrant in the world shall be
+able to keep his head above water, let him but give a general licence to
+commit all sorts of wickedness; you’ll say ’tis impious, but I say, what
+if it be? who shall call you to account?  These deliberations are only
+for subjects that are under command, and not for sovereign princes whose
+will is a law.”
+
+          Exeat Aulâ
+    Qui volet esse pius,
+
+    He was never cut out
+    For a Court, that’s devout.
+
+“In fine, since either Pompey or Ptolomy must suffer, I am absolutely for
+the saving of Ptolomy, and the presenting of Pompey’s head, without any
+more ado, to Cæsar.  A dead dog will never bite.”
+
+Photinus had no sooner made an end, but Domitian appeared in a monstrous
+rage, and lugging of poor Suetonius after him like a bear to the stake.
+“There is not in nature,” says he, “so damned a generation of scribbling
+rogues as these historians.  We can neither be quiet for them, living nor
+dead: for they haunt us in our very graves; and when they have vented the
+humour and caprice of their own brains, that forsooth must be called, The
+Life of such an Emperor.  And, for an instance, I’ll show ye what this
+impertinent chronicler says of myself.  ‘He had squandered away his
+treasure,’ says he, ‘in expensive buildings, comedies, and donatives to
+the soldiers.’
+
+“Now would I fain know which way it could have been better employed.
+
+“In another place, he says, that ‘Domitian had some thoughts of easing
+himself in his military charges, by reducing the number; but that he
+durst not do, for fear some of his neighbours should put an affront upon
+him.  So that, to lick himself whole, he fell to raking and scraping
+whatever he could get, either from dead or living; and any rascal’s
+testimony was proof enough for a confiscation: for there needed no more
+to undo an honest man, than to tell a tale at court that such a one had
+spoken ill of the prince.’
+
+“Is this the way of treating majesty? what could this impudent pedant
+have said worse, if he had been speaking of a pick-pocket or a pirate?
+But princes and thieves are all one to them.
+
+“He says further, that ‘Domitian made seizure of several estates, without
+any sort of right whatsoever; and there went no more to his title than
+for a false witness to depose that he heard the defunct declare, before
+he died, that he made Cæsar his heir.  He set such a tax upon the Jews,
+that many of them denied their religion to avoid it; and I remember that,
+when I was a young fellow, I saw an old man of fourscore and ten taken
+upon suspicion by one of Domitian’s spies, and turned up in a public
+assembly, to see if he were circumcised.’
+
+“Be ye now judges, gentlemen of the Black Guard, if this be not a most
+intolerable indignity.  Am I to answer for the actions of my inferior
+officers?  It amazes me that my successors should ever endure these
+scandalous reports to be published, especially against a prince that had
+laid out so much money in repairing the libraries that were burnt.”
+
+“It is very true,” said Suetonius in a doleful tone, “and I have not
+forgotten to make mention of it to your honour.  But what will you say,
+if I show you, in a warrant under your hand, this execrable and impious
+blasphemy?  It is the command of your Lord and God.  And in fine, if I
+speak nothing but truth, where’s your cause of complaint?  I have written
+the Lives too of the great Julius Cæsar, and the divine Augustus, and the
+world will not say but I have done them right.  But for yourself, and
+such as you, that are effectually but so many incarnate and crowned
+plagues, what fault have I committed in setting before your eyes those
+tyrannies, which heaven and earth cannot but look upon with dread and
+horror?”
+
+This discourse of Suetonius was interrupted by the babbler, or Boutefeu,
+that rounded Lucifer in the ear, and told him, “Look ye, sir,” says he,
+pointing with his finger, “that limping devil there, that looks as if he
+were surbated with beating the hoof, has been abroad in the world, this
+twenty year, and is but just now come back again.”  “Come hither,
+sirrah,” cries Lucifer; and so the poor cur went wriggling and glotting
+up toward his prince.  “You are a fine rogue to be sent of an errand, are
+ye not?” says Lucifer, “to stay twenty year out, and come back again e’en
+as wise as ye went: what souls have ye brought now? or what news from
+t’other world?”  “Ha! your highness,” quoth the devil, “has too much
+honour and justice to condemn me unheard.  Wherefore be pleased to
+remember, that at my going out you gave me charge of a certain merchant;
+it cost me the first ten year of my time to make him a thief, and ten
+more to keep him from turning honest again, and restoring what he had
+stolen.”  “A fine fetch for a devil this, is it not?” cried Lucifer.
+“But hell is no more the hell it was when I knew it first, than chalk is
+cheese; and the devils nowadays are so damnedly insipid and dry, they’re
+hardly worth the roasting.  A senseless puppy to come back to me with a
+story of Waltham’s calf, that went nine mile to suck a bull.  But he’s
+not master of his trade yet.”  And with that Lucifer bade one of his
+officers take him away and put him to school again; “for I perceive he’s
+a rascal,” says he, “and he has e’en been roguing at a play-house, when
+he should have been at church.”  In that instant, from behind a little
+hill, a great many men came running as hard as they could drive after a
+company of women: the men crying out, “Stop, stop,” and the women crying
+for help.  Lucifer commanded them all to be seized, and asked what was
+the matter.  “Alas, alas!” cried one of the men, quite out of breath,
+“these carrions have made us fathers, though we never had children.”
+“Govern your tongue, sirrah,” cried a devil of honour, out of respect to
+the ladies, “and speak truth: for ’tis utterly impossible you should be
+fathers without children.”  “Pardon me,” said the fellow, “we were
+married men, and honest men and good house-keepers, and have born offices
+in the parish, and have children that call us fathers; but ’tis a strange
+thing, we have been abroad some of us by the seven year together; others,
+as long bed-rid; and so impotent, that the civilians would have put us
+_inter frigidos et maleficiatos_: and yet our wives have brought us every
+year a child, which we were such fools as to keep and bring up, and give
+ourselves to the devil at last to get them estates; out of a charitable
+persuasion (forsooth) they might yet be our own, though for a
+twelve-month together (perhaps) we never so much as examined whether our
+wives were fish or flesh.  But now since the mothers are dead, and the
+children grown up, we have found the tools that made them.  One has the
+coachman’s nose, another the gentleman-usher’s legs, a third a
+cousin-german’s eyes.  And some, we are to presume, conceived purely by
+strength of imagination, or else by the ears like weazels.”
+
+Thereupon appeared a little remnant of a man, a dapper Spaniard, with a
+kind of a besome-beard, and a voice not unlike the yapping of a foysting
+cur.  As he came near the company, he set up his throat, and called out,
+“Ah jade!” says he, “I shall now take ye to task, ye whore you, for
+making me father my negro’s bastard, and for the estate I settled upon
+him.  I did ever misdoubt foul play, but should never have dreamt of that
+ugly toad, when there was such choice of handsome, lusty young fellows
+about us; but it may be she had them too.  I cursed the monks many and
+many a time, I remember, to the pit of hell, heaven forgive me for’t; for
+the strumpet would be perpetually gadding abroad, under colour of going
+to confession, and in sooth I was never any great friend to penance and
+mortification.  And then would I be easing my mind ever and anon to this
+cursed Moor.  ‘I cannot imagine,’ said I, ‘where this mistress of thine
+should commit all the sins that she goes every hour of the day to confess
+at yonder monastery.’  And then would this dog-Moor answer me.  ‘Alas,
+good lady! I would e’en venture my soul with hers with all my heart; she
+spends all her time you see in holy duties.’  I was at that time so
+innocent, that I suspected nothing more than a pure respect and civility
+to my wife; but I have learnt better since, and that effectually his soul
+and hers were commonly ventured in the same bottom; yes, and their bodies
+too, as I perceive by their magpie issue, for the bastards take after
+both father and mother.”
+
+“So that at this rate,” cried the adopted fathers, “the husband of a
+whore has a pleasant time on’t.  First, he’s subjected to all the
+pukings, longings, and peevish importunities, that a breeding woman gives
+those about her till she’s laid; and then comes the squalling of the
+child, and the twittle-twattle-gossipings of the nurse and midwife, that
+must be well treated too, well lodged, and well paid.  ‘A sweet baby,’
+says one (to the jade the mother on’t) ‘’tis e’en as like the father as
+if he had spit it out on’s mouth; it has the very lips, the very eyes of
+him,’ when ’tis no more like him than an apple is like an oyster.  And,
+in conclusion, when we have borne all this, and twenty times more in
+t’other world with a Christian patience, we are hurried away to hell, and
+here we lie a company of damned cuckolds of us; and here we are like to
+lie, for ought I see, in _sæcula sæculorum_: which is very hard, and in
+truth out of all reason.”
+
+I cut this visit short, to see what news in a deep vault near at hand,
+where we heard a great bustle and contest betwixt divers souls and the
+devils.  There were the presumptuous, the revengeful, and the envious,
+gaping and crying out as they would break their hearts.  “Oh, that I
+could but be born again!” says one; “Oh, that I might back into the world
+again!” says another; “Oh, that I were but to die once more!” cries a
+third.  Insomuch that they put the devils out of all patience, with their
+impertinent and unprofitable wishes and exclamations.  “Hang yourselves,”
+cried they, “for a pack of cozening, bawling rascals: you live again? and
+be born again? and what if you might do’t a thousand times over?  You
+would only die at last a thousand times greater villains than now you
+are, and there would be no clearing hell of you with a dog-whip.
+However, to try you and make you know yourselves, we have commission to
+let you live again and return.  Up then ye varlets, go, be born again;
+get ye into the world again.  Away,” cried the devils, with a lusty lash
+at every word, and thrust hard to have got them out.  But the poor rogues
+hung an arse, and were struck with such a terror, to hear of living
+again, and returning, that they slunk into a corner, and lay as quiet
+upon’t, as lambs.
+
+At length, one of the company that seemed to have somewhat more brain and
+resolution than his fellows, entered very gravely upon the debate,
+whether they should go out or no.  “If I should now,” says he, “at my
+second birth, come into the world a bastard, the shame would be mine,
+though my parents committed the fault; and I should carry the scandal and
+the infamy of it to my grave.  Now put case, my mother should be honest,
+(for that’s not impossible) and that I came into the world, legitimate;
+how many follies, vices, and diseases are there that run in a blood!  Who
+knows, but I should be mad, or simple? swear, lie, cheat, whore; nay if I
+came off, with a little mortification of my carcase, as the stone, the
+scurvy, or the noble pox, I were a happy man.  But oh the lodging, the
+diet, and the cookery that I am to expect for a matter of nine months in
+my mother’s belly; and then the butter and beer that must be spent to
+sweeten me, when I change my quarter.  I must come crying into the world,
+and live in ignorance even of what life is till I die; and then as
+ignorant of death too, till ’tis passed.  I fancy my swaddling-clouts and
+blankets to be worse than my winding-sheet; my cradle represents my tomb.
+And then who knows, whether my nurse shall be found, or no?  She’ll
+over-lay me perhaps; leave me some four and twenty hours, it may be,
+without clean clouts, and a pin or two all the while, perchance, up to
+the hilts in my backside.  And then follows breeding of teeth, and worms;
+with all the gripes and disorders that are caused by unwholesome milk.
+These miseries are certain, and why should I run them over again?
+
+“If it happen that I pass the state of infancy, without the pox or
+measles, I must be then packed away to school, to get the itch, a scaled
+head, or a pair of kibed heels.  In winter, ’tis ten to one you find me
+with a snotty nose, and perpetually under the lash, if I either miss my
+lesson or go late to school.  So that hang him, for my part, that would
+be born again, for any thing I see yet.
+
+“When I come up toward man, the women will have me as sure as a gun, for
+they have a thousand ginnes and devices to catch wood-cocks; and if ever
+I come to set eye upon a lass that understands dress and raillery, I’m
+gone, if there were no more lads in Christendom.  But, for my part, I am
+as sick as a dog, of powdering, curling, and playing the ladybird.  I
+would not for all the world be in the shoemaker’s stocks, and choke
+myself over again in a straight doublet, only to have the ladies say,
+‘Look, what a delicate shape and foot that gentleman has.’  And I would
+take as little pleasure to spend six hours, of the four and twenty, in
+picking grey hairs out of my head or beard, or turning white into black.
+To stand half ravished in the contemplation of my own shadow; to dress
+fine, and go to church only to see handsome ladies; to correct the
+midnight air with ardent sighs and ejaculations; and to keep company with
+owls and bats, like a bird of evil omen; to walk the round of a mistress’
+lodging, and play at bo-peep at the corner of every street; to adore her
+imperfections, (or as the song says, — for her ugliness, and for her want
+of coin); to make bracelets of her locks, and truck a pearl necklace for
+a shoestring.  At this rate, I say, cursed again and again be he, for my
+part, that would live over again so wretched a life.
+
+“Being come now to write full man, if I have an estate how many cares,
+suits, and wrangles go along with it!  If I have none, what murmuring and
+regret at my misfortunes!  By this time, the sins of my youth are gotten
+into my bones; I grow sour and melancholy; nothing pleases me; I curse
+old age to ten thousand devils; and the youth which I can never recover
+in my veins, I endeavour to fetch out of the barbers’ shops, from
+perruques, razors, and patches, to conceal, or at least disguise all the
+marks and evidences of Nature in her decay.  Nay, when I shall have never
+an eye to see with nor a tooth left in my head, gouty legs, wind-mills in
+my crown, my nose running like a tap, and gravel in my reins by the
+bushel, then must I make oath that all this is nothing but mere accident,
+gotten by lying in the field, or the like, and out-face the truth in the
+very teeth of so many undeniable witnesses.  There is no plague
+comparable to this hypocrisy of the members.  To have an old fop shake
+his heels, when he’s ready to fall to pieces; and cry, these legs would
+make a shift yet to play with the best legs in the company; and then,
+with a lusty thump on’s breast, fetch ye up a hem, and cry, ‘Sound at
+heart, boy,’ and a thousand other fooleries of the like nature.  But all
+this is nothing to the misery of an old fellow in love, especially if he
+be put to gallant it against a company of young gamesters.  Oh the inward
+shame and vexation, to see himself scarce so much as neglected.  It
+happens sometimes that a jolly lady, for want of better entertainment,
+may content herself with one of these reverend fornicators, instead of a
+whetstone; but alack, alack! the poor man is weak though willing; and
+after a whole night spent in cold and frivolous pretences and excuses,
+away he goes with torments of rage and confusion about him, not to be
+expressed; and many a heavy curse is sent after him for keeping a poor
+lady from her natural rest to so little purpose.  How often must I be put
+to the blush too, when every old toast shall be calling me old
+acquaintance, and telling me, ‘Oh sir, ’tis many a fair day since you and
+I knew one another first.  I think ’twas in the four and thirtieth of the
+Queen, that we were school-fellows.  How the world’s altered since!’ etc.
+And then must my head be turned to a _memento mori_; my flesh dissolved
+into rheums; my skin withered and wrinkled; with a staff in my hand,
+knocking the earth at every trembling step, as if I called upon my grave
+to receive me; walking, like a moving phantosme; my life little more than
+a dream; my reins and bladder turned into a perfect quarry; and the
+urinal or pisspot my whole study.  My next heir watching, every minute,
+for the long-looked-for and happy hour of my departure; and in the
+meantime, I’m become the physician’s revenue, and the surgeon’s practice,
+with an apothecary’s shop in my guts; and every old jade calling me
+grandsire.  No, no; I’ll no more living again, I thank ye: one hell
+rather than two mothers.
+
+“Let us now consider the comforts of life, the humours and the manners.
+He that would be rich must play the thief or the cheat; he that would
+rise in the world must turn parasite, informer, or projecter.  He that
+marries ventures fair for the horn, either before or after.  There is no
+valour without swearing, quarrelling, or hectoring.  If ye are poor,
+nobody owns ye.  If rich, you’ll know nobody.  If you die young, ‘What
+pity it was,’ they’ll say, ‘that he should be cut off thus in his prime.’
+If old, ‘He was e’en past his best; there’s no great miss of him.’  If
+you are religious, and frequent the church and the sacrament, you’re an
+hypocrite; and without this, you’re an atheist or an heretic.  If you are
+gay and pleasant, you pass presently for a buffoon; and if pensive and
+reserved, you are taken to be sour and censorious.  Courtesy is called
+colloguing and currying of favour; downright honesty and plain-dealing is
+interpreted to be pride and ill manners.  This is the world; and for all
+that’s in’t I would not have it to go over again.  If any of ye, my
+masters,” said he to his camerades, “be of another opinion, hold up your
+hands.”  “No, no,” they cried all unanimously, “no more generation-work,
+I beseech ye; better the devils than the midwives.”
+
+After this came a testator, cursing and raving like a bedlam, that he had
+made his last will and testament.  “Ah villein!” said he, “for a man to
+murder himself as I have done!  If I had not sealed, I had not died.  Of
+all things, next a physician, deliver me from a testament.  It has killed
+more than the pestilence.  Oh miserable mortals, let the living take
+warning by the dead, and make no testaments.  It was my hard luck, first
+to put my life into the physician’s power, and then, by making my will,
+to sign the sentence of death upon myself, and my own execution.  ‘Put
+your soul and your estate in order,’ says the doctor, ‘for there’s no
+hope of life;’ and the word was no sooner out, but I was so wise and
+devout (forsooth) as to fall immediately upon the prologue of my will,
+with an _In nomine Domini_, Amen, etc.  And when I came to dispose of my
+goods and chattels I pronounced these bloody words (I would I had been
+tongue-tied when I did it), ‘I make and constitute my son, my sole
+executor.  _Item_, to my dear wife, I give and bequeath all my plays and
+romances, and all the furniture in the rooms upon the second storey.  To
+my very good friend T. B. my large tankard, for a remembrance.  To my
+foot-boy Robin, five pound to bind him prentice.  To Betty, that tended
+me in my sickness, my little caudle-cup.  To Mr. Doctor, my fair table
+diamond, for his care of me in my illness.’  After signing, and sealing,
+the ink was scarce dry upon the paper, but methought the earth opened as
+if it had been hungry to devour me.  My son and my legatees were
+presently casting it up, how many hours I might yet hold out.  If I
+called for the cordial julep, or a little of Dr. Gilbert’s water, my son
+was taking possession of my estate, my wife so busy about the beds and
+hangings that she could not intend it.  The boy and the wench could
+understand nothing but about their legacies.  My very good friend’s mind
+was wholly upon his tankard.  My kind Dr. I must confess took occasion,
+now and then, to handle my pulse, and see whether the diamond were of the
+right black water, or no.  If I asked him what I might eat, his answer
+was, ‘Anything, anything, e’en what you please yourself.’  At every groan
+I fetched, they were calling for their legacies, which they could not
+have till I was dead.
+
+“But if I were to begin the world again, I think I should make another
+kind of testament.  I would say: ‘A curse upon him that shall have my
+estate when I am dead, and may the first bit of bread he eats out on’t
+choke him.  The devil in hell take what I cannot carry away, and him too,
+that straggles for’t, if he can catch him.  If I die, let my boy Robin
+have the strappado, three hours a day, to be duly paid him during life.
+Let my wife die of the pip, or the mother (not a halfpenny matter which),
+but let her first live long enough to plague the damned doctor, and
+indite him for poisoning her poor husband.’  To speak sincerely, I can
+never forgive that dog-leech.  Was it not enough to make me sick when I
+was well, without making me dead when I was sick?  And not to rest there
+neither, but to persecute me in my grave too.  But, to say the truth,
+this is only neighbours’ fare; for all those fools that trust in them are
+served with the same sauce.  A vomit or a purge is as good a passport
+into the other world as a man would wish.  And then, when our heads are
+laid, ’tis never to be endured the scandals they cast upon our bodies and
+memories! ‘Heaven rest his soul,’ cries one, ‘he killed himself with a
+debauch.’  ‘How is’t possible,’ says another, ‘to cure a man that keeps
+no diet?’  ‘He was a madman,’ cries a third, ‘a mere sot, and would not
+be governed by his physician.  His body was as rotten as a pear, he had
+as many diseases as a horse, and it was not in the power of man to save
+him.  And truly ’twas well that his hour was come, for he had better a
+great deal die well than live on as he did.’  Thieves and murtherers that
+ye are, you yourselves are that hour ye talk of.  The physician is only
+death in a disguise, and brings his patient’s hour along with him.  Cruel
+people!  Is it not enough to take away a man’s life, and like common
+hangmen to be paid for’t when ye have done, but you must blast the honour
+too of those you have dispatched, to excuse your ignorance?  Let but the
+living follow my counsel, and write their testaments after this copy,
+they shall live long and happily, and not go out of the world at last
+like a rat with a straw in his arse (as a learned author has it) or be
+cut off in the flower of their days, by these counterfeit doctors of the
+faculty of the close-stool.”
+
+The dead man plied his discourse with so much gravity and earnestness,
+that Lucifer began to believe what he said.  But because all truths are
+not to be spoken, especially among the devils, where hardly any are
+admitted; and for fear of mischief, if the doctors should come to hear
+what had been said, Lucifer presently ordered the fellow to be gagged, or
+put in security for his good behaviour.
+
+His mouth was no sooner stopped but another was opened; and one of the
+damned came running cross the company, and so up and down, back and
+forward (like a cur that had lost his master) bawling as if he had been
+out of his wits, and crying out, “Oh! where am I?  Where am I?  I am
+abused, I am choused; what’s the meaning of all this?  Here are damning
+devils, tempting devils, and tormenting devils, but the devil a devil can
+I find of the devils that brought me hither; they have gotten away my
+devils; where are they?  Give me my devils again.”
+
+It might well make the company stare, to see a fellow hunting for devils
+in hell, where they swarm in legions.  But as he was in this hurry, a
+gouvernante caught him by the arm, and gave him a half turn and stopped
+him.  “Old lucky-bird,” says she, “if thou wantest devils here, where
+dost expect to find them?”  He knew her as soon as he saw her.  And “Art
+thou here old Beelzebub in a petticoat?” said he, “the very picture of
+Satan, the coupler of male and female, the buckle and thong of lechery,
+the multiplier of sin and the guide of sinners, the seasoner of rotten
+mutton, the interpretress betwixt whores and knaves, the preface to the
+remedy of love, and the prologue to the critical minute.  Speak, and
+without more ado, tell me, where are the devils and their dams that
+brought me hither?  These are none of them.  No, no; I am not such an
+awfe as to be trepanned and spirited away by devils with tails, horns,
+bristles, wings, that smell as if they had been smoked in a
+chimney-corner.  The devils that I look for are worse than these.  Where
+are the mothers that play the bawds to their own daughters? and the aunts
+that do as much for their nieces, and make them caper and sparkle like
+wild-fire?  The black-eyed girls that carry fire in their eyes, and
+strike as sure as a lance from the rest of a cavalier?  Where are the
+flatterers that speak nothing but pleasing things?  The make-bates and
+incendiaries, that are the very canker of human society?  Where are the
+story-mongers?  The masters of the faculty of lying? that report more
+than they hear, affirm more than they know, and swear more than they
+believe.  Those slanderous backbiters, that like vultures prey only upon
+carrion?  Where are the hypocrites that turn devotion into interest, and
+make a revenue of a commandment?  That pretend ecstasy when they are
+drunk, and utter the fumes and dreams of their luxury and tipple for
+revelations?  That make chapels of their parlours, preachments of their
+ordinary entertainments, and everything they do is a miracle.  They can
+divine all that’s told them, and raise people to life again; that
+counterfeit sick, when they should work, and give an honest man to the
+devil with a _Deo gratias_.  These are the devils I would be at; these
+are they that have damned me; look them out, and find them for me, ye
+impudent hag, or I shall be so bold as to search your French hood for
+them.”  And with that word he fell on upon the poor gouvernante, tore off
+her head-gear, and laid about him so furiously that there would have been
+no getting him off, if Lucifer had not made use of his absolute authority
+to quiet him.
+
+Immediately upon the composing of this fray we heard the shooting of bars
+and bolts, the opening of doors and hinges that creaked for want of
+grease, and a strange humming of a great number of people.  The first
+that appeared were a company of bold, talkative, and painted old women;
+but as bonny and gamesome, tickling and toying with one another, as if
+they had never seen thirteen; and carrying it out with an air of much
+satisfaction and content.  The babbler was somewhat scandalised at their
+behaviour, and told them how ill they did to be merry in hell; and
+several others admired it as much, and asked them the reason of it,
+considering their condition.  With that one of the gang, that was
+wretchedly thin and pale, and raised upon a pair of heels that made her
+legs longer than her body, told Lucifer, with great respect, that at
+their first coming they were as sad as it was possible for a company of
+damned old jades to be.  “But,” says she, “we were a little comforted
+when we heard of no other punishments here, than weeping and gnashing of
+teeth, and in some hope to come off upon reasonable terms; for we have
+not among us all so much as a drop of moisture in our bodies, nor a tooth
+in our heads.”  “Search them presently,” cried the intermeddler, “squeeze
+the balls of their eyes, and let their gums be examined, you’ll find
+snags, stumps, or roots; or enough of somewhat or other there to spoil
+the jest.”  Upon the scrutiny they were found so dry that they were good
+for nothing in the world but to serve for tinder or matches, and so they
+were disposed of into the devils’ tinder-boxes.
+
+While they were casing up the old women there came on a number of people
+of several sorts and qualities, that called out to the first they saw,
+“Pray’e gentlemen,” said they, “before we go any further, will ye direct
+us to the court of rewards?”  “How’s that,” cried one of the company, “I
+was afraid we had been in hell, but since you talk of rewards I hope ’tis
+but purgatory.”  “Good, good,” said the whole multitude, “you’ll quickly
+find where you are.”  “Purgatory!” cried the intermeddler, “you have left
+that up the hill there, upon the right hand.  This is hell, and a place
+of punishment; here’s no registry of rewards.”  “Then we are mistaken,”
+said he that spake first.  “How so?” cried the intermeddler.  “You shall
+hear,” said the other, “we were in the Other world entitled to the order
+of the squires of the pad, and borrowed now and then a small sum upon the
+King’s highway; we understood somewhat too of the cross-bite and the use
+of the frail dye.  Some of our conscientious and charitable friends would
+fain have drawn us off from the course we were in, and, to give them
+their due, bestowed a great deal of good counsel upon us to very little
+purpose; for we were in a pretty way of thriving, and had gotten a habit
+and could not leave it.  We asked them, ‘What would you have us do?
+Money we have none, and without it there’s no living; should we stay till
+it were brought, or came alone?  How would ye have a poor _individuum
+vagum_ to live? that has neither estate, office, master, nor friend to
+maintain him, and is quite out of his element unless he be either in a
+tavern, a bawdy-house, or a gaming ordinary.  Now, that’s the man that
+Providence has appointed to live by his wits.’  Our advisers saw there
+was no good to be done, and went their way, telling us that in the other
+world we should meet with our reward.
+
+“They would tell us some time, how base a thing it was to defame the
+house and abuse the bed of a friend.  Our answer was ready, ‘Well! and
+had we not better do it there where the house is open to us, the master
+and lady kind, the occasion fair and easy, than to run a caterwauling
+into a family where every servant in the house is a spy, and (perhaps) a
+fellow behind every door in the house with a dagger or pistol in his hand
+to entertain us.’  Upon this, our grave counsellors finding us so
+resolute, e’en gave us over, and told us as before, that in the other
+world we should meet with our reward.  Now taking this to be the other
+world these honest men told us of, we are inquiring after the rewards
+they promised us.”
+
+“Abominable scoundrels!” said an officer of justice, there at hand, “how
+many of your reprobated companions have squandered away their fortunes
+upon whores and dice, exposing not only their wives and children but many
+a noble family to a shameful and irreparable ruin; and let any man put in
+a word of wholesome advice, their answer is, ‘Tush, tush; our wives and
+children are in the hands of Providence; and let Him provide for the
+rooks, that feeds the ravens.’  Then was it told ye, you should find your
+reward in the other world; and the time is now come wherein ye shall
+receive it; up, up then, ye cursed spirits, and away with them.”  At
+which word a legion of devils fell on upon the miserable caitiffs, with
+whips and firebrands, and gave them their long-expected reward; and at
+every lash a voice was heard to say, “In the other world you shall
+receive your reward;” these wretches, in the meanwhile, damning and
+sinking themselves to the pit of hell, still, as if they had been upon
+earth, and vomiting their customary and execrable blasphemies.
+
+Just as this storm blew over there drew near a multitude of bailiffs,
+sergeants, Catchpoles, and other officers of prey, with the thieves’
+devil, bound hand and foot, and a foul accusation against him.  Whereupon
+Lucifer, with a fell countenance, took his seat in a flaming chair, and
+called his officers about him.  So soon as the prince had taken his
+place, a certain officer began his report.  “Here is before thee,” quoth
+he, “a devil, most mighty Lucifer, that stands charged with ignorance in
+his trade; and the shame of his quality and profession, instead of
+damning men, he has made it his business to save them.”  The word save
+put the court in such a rage, that they bit their lips till the blood
+started and the fire sparkled at their eyes; and Lucifer, turning about
+to his attorney, “Who would ever have imagined,” said he, “that so
+treacherous a rascal could have been harboured in my dominions?”  “It is
+most certain, my gracious lord,” replied the attorney, “that this devil
+has been very diligent in drawing people into thefts and pilferies, and
+then, when they come to be discovered, they are clapped up and hanged, or
+some mischief or other.  But still, before execution, the ordinary calls
+them to shrift; and many times the toy takes them in the head to confess
+and repent, and so they are saved.  Now this silly devil thinks, that
+when he has brought them to steal, murder, coin, and the like, he has
+done his part, and so he leaves them; whereas he should stick close to
+them in the prison, and be tempting of them to despair and make away
+themselves.  But when they are once left to the priest, he commonly
+brings them to a sight of their sins, and they ’scape.  Now this simple
+devil was not aware, it seems, that many a soul goes to heaven from the
+gallows, the wheel, and the faggot: and this failing has lost your
+Highness many a fair purchase.”  “Here’s enough,” cried the president,
+“and there needs no more charge against him.”  The poor devil thought it
+was high time to speak now, when they were just upon the point of passing
+his sentence; and so he cried out, “My lord,” said he, “I beseech you
+hear me; for though they say the devil is dead, it is not meant of your
+greatness.”  So there was a general silence, and thus he proceeded.
+
+“I cannot deny, my lord, but Tyburn is the way to paradise, and many a
+man goes to heaven from the gallows.  But if you will set those that are
+damned for condemning others, against those that are saved from the
+gallows, hell will be found no loser by me at the foot of the account.
+How many marshal’s-men, turn-keys, and keepers have I sent ye for letting
+a coiner give them the slip now and then, with his false money (always
+provided they leave better money instead on’t).  How many false witnesses
+and knights of the post, that would set their consciences like clocks to
+go faster or slower, according as they had more or less weight, and swear
+_ex tempore_, at all rates and prices!  How many solicitors, attorneys,
+and clerks, that would draw ye up a declaration or an indictment, so
+slyly, that I myself could hardly discover any error in’t; and yet, when
+it came to the test, it was as plain as the nose on a man’s face (that is
+to say again, provided they were well paid for the fashion).  How many
+jailers that would wink at an escape for a lusty bribe!  And how many
+attorneys that would give ye dispatch or delay thereafter, as they were
+greased!  Now, after all this, what does it signify, if one thief of a
+thousand comes to the gallows? he only suffers because he was poor, that
+there may be the better trading for the rich, and without any design in
+the world to suppress stealing.  Nay, it often falls out, that they that
+bring the malefactor to the gibbet are the worse criminals of the two.
+But they are never looked after; or, if they should be, they have tricks
+and fetches enough to bring themselves off; so that it fares in this
+case, as it did with him that had his house troubled with rats, and would
+needs take in a company of cats to destroy them: the rats would be
+nibbling at his cheese, his bacon, a crust of bread, and now and then a
+candle’s end; but when the cats came, down went a milk-bowl, away goes a
+brace of partridges or a couple of pigeons, and the poor man must content
+himself to go supperless to bed.  In the conclusion, the rats were
+troublesome, but the cats were intolerable.  And then there’s this in’t:
+Suppose one poor fellow hangs and goes to heaven: I do but give him in
+truck for two hundred, at least, that deserve to be hanged but ’scape and
+go to hell at last.  Beside, a thief upon a gibbet is as good as a
+roasted dog in a pigeon house; for ye shall immediately have two or three
+thousand witches about him, for snips of his halter, an eye-tooth, or a
+collop of his fat, which is of sovereign use in many of their charms.
+But, in fine, let me do what I will my services are not understood.  My
+successor, it may be, will discharge his duty better, and indeed I am
+very well content to lay down my commission; for (to say the truth) I am
+in years, and would gladly have a little rest now, in my old age, which I
+rather propose to myself in the service of some pretender than where I
+am.”
+
+Lucifer heard him with great patience, and, in the end, gave him all the
+satisfaction imaginable; strictly charging the evil spirits that had
+abused him to do so no more, upon hazard of pains corporal and spiritual;
+and they desired him, too, that he would not lay down his employment, for
+he was strong enough yet to do very good service in it.  But to think of
+easing himself, by going to a pretender, he’d find himself mistaken, for
+’twas a duty he’d never be able to endure.  “Well!” says he, “e’en what
+your Highness pleases.  But truly I thought a devil might have lived very
+comfortably in that condition; for he has no more to do, that I can see,
+than to keep his ears open, and learn his trade.  For put case it should
+be some pretender to a good office, or a fat bishopric (though the
+fathers and councils are against pretenders in this case) I fancy to
+myself all the pleasure and divertisement that may be.  It is as good as
+going to school, for these people teach the devils their A B C.  And all
+that we have to do is to sit still and learn.”
+
+The vision that followed this was the dæmon of tobacco, which I must
+confess did not a little surprise me.  I have indeed often said to
+myself, “Certainly these smokers are possessed;” but I could never swear
+it till now.  “I have,” said the devil, “by bringing this weed into
+Spain, revenged the Indians upon the Spaniards for all the massacres and
+butcheries they committed there, and done them more mischief than ever
+Colon, Cortes, Almero, Pizarro did in the Indies: by how much it is more
+honourable to die upon a sword’s point by gunshot, or at the mouth of a
+cannon, than for a man to snivel and sneeze himself into another world;
+or to go away in a meagrim or a spotted fever, perchance, which is the
+ordinary effect of this poisonous tobacco.  It is with tobacconists as
+’tis with demoniacs under an exorcism, they fume and vapour, but the
+devil sticks to them still.  Many there are that make a very idol of it;
+they admire, they adore it, tempting and persecuting all people to take
+it, and the bare mention of it puts them into an ecstasy.  In the smoke
+it is a probation for hell, where another day they must endure smoking;
+taken in powder, at the nose, it draws upon youth the incommodities of
+old age, in the perpetual annoyance of rheum and drivel.”
+
+The devil of subornation came next, which was a good-complexioned and a
+well-timbered devil, to my great amazement I must acknowledge, for I had
+never seen any devils till now but what were extreme ugly.  The air of
+his face was so familiar to me that methought I had seen it in a thousand
+several places; sometime under a veil, sometime open; now under one shape
+and then under another.  One while he called himself child’s-play;
+another while, kind entertainment; here, payment; there, restitution;
+and, in a third place, alms: but, in fine, I could never learn his right
+name.  I remember in some places I have heard him called inheritance,
+profit, good cheap, patrimony, gratitude.  Here he was called doctor;
+there, bachelor.  With the lawyers, solicitors, and attorneys, he passed
+under the name of right; and the confessors called him charity.
+
+He was well accompanied, and styled himself Satan’s lieutenant; but there
+was a devil of consequence that opposed him, might and main, and made
+this proclamation of himself.  “Be it known,” says he, “that I am the
+great embroiler and politic entangler of affairs.  The deluder of
+princes, the pretext of the unworthy, and the excuse of tyrants.  I can
+make black, white; and give what colour I please to the foulest actions
+in nature.  If I had a mind to overturn the world, and put all in a
+general confusion, I could do it; for I have it in my power to banish
+order and reason out of it; to turn sauciness and importunity into merit,
+example into necessity; to give law to success, authority to infamy, and
+credit to insolence.  I have the tongues of all counsellors at my girdle,
+and they shall speak neither more nor less than just as I please.  In
+short, that’s easy to me which others account impossible, and while I
+live ye need never fear either virtue, justice, or good government in the
+world.  This devil of subornation, that talks of his lieutenancy, what
+could he ever have done without me?  He’s a rascal that no person of
+quality would admit into his company, if I did not fit him with vizors
+and disguises.  Let him hold his tongue then, and know himself; and let
+me hear no more of those disputes about the lieutenancy of hell, for I
+have Lucifer’s broad seal to show for my title to’t.”
+
+“For my part,” cried another mutinous spirit, “I am one of those
+humble-minded devils that can content myself to hold the door, upon a
+good occasion; or knock under the table, and play at small game rather
+than stand out.  But few words among friends are best, and when I have
+spoken three or four, let him come up that lists.  I am then,” says he,
+“the devil interpreter, and my business is to gloss upon the text; in
+which case, the cuckolds are exceedingly beholden to me; for I have much
+to say for the honour of the horn.  How should a poor fellow that has a
+handsome wench to his wife, and never a penny to live on, hold up his
+head in the world, if it were not for that quality?  I have a pretty
+faculty in doing good offices for distressed ladies, at a time of need;
+and I make the whole sex sensible how great a folly and madness it is to
+neglect those sweet opportunities.  Among other secrets, I have found out
+a way to establish an office for thievery, where the officers shall be
+thieves and justify it when they have done.”  Here he stopped.
+
+There was a short silence, and then there appeared another devil of about
+a foot and a half long.  “I am,” says he, “a devil but of a small size,
+and perhaps one of the least in hell; and yet the door opens to me as
+well as to another, for I never come empty handed.”  “Why, what have you
+brought them?” says the intermeddler, and came up to him, “What have I
+brought?” quoth he, “I have brought an eternal talker and a finical
+flatterer; they are two pieces that were in high esteem in the cabinets
+of two great princes, and I have brought them for a present to Lucifer.”
+With that, Lucifer cast his eye upon them, and with a
+damned-verjuice-face, as if he had bitten a crab, “You do well,” says he,
+“to say ye had them at court; and I think you should do well to carry
+them thither again; for I had as lief have their room as their company.”
+
+After him followed another dwarf devil, complaining that he had been a
+matter of six years about so infamous a rascal, that there was no good to
+be done with him, for the bad as well as the better sort were scandalised
+at his conversation.  “A mighty piece of business,” cried the
+gouvernante.  “And could you not have gotten him a handsome office or
+employment?  That would have made him good for something, and you might
+have done his business.”
+
+In the meantime the babbler went whispering up and down and finding
+faults, till at length he came to a huge bundle of sleeping devils in a
+corner, that were fagotted up, and all mouldy and full of cobwebs, which
+he immediately gave notice of, and they cut the band to give them air.
+With much ado they waked them, and asked what devils they were, what they
+did there, and why they were not upon duty.  They fell a-yawning, and
+said that they were the devils of luxury: “But since the women have taken
+a fancy to prefer guinies and jacobusses before their modesty and honour,
+there has been no need of a devil in the case to tempt them; for ’tis but
+showing them the merry spankers, they’ll dare like larks, and fall down
+before ye, and then ye may e’en do what you will with them, and take them
+up in a purse-net.  Gold supplies all imperfections; it makes an angel of
+a crocodile, turns a fool into a philosopher, and a dressing-box well
+lined is worth twenty thousand devils.  So that there is no temptation
+like a present; and take them from top to bottom, the whole race of woman
+is frail, and one thread of pearl will do more with them than a million
+of fine stories.”
+
+Just as this devil made an end we heard another snorting; and ’twas well
+he did so, for we had trod upon his belly else.  He was laid hold of,
+upon suspicion that he slept dog-sleep, or rather the sleep of a
+contented cuckold, that would spoil no sport where he made none.  “I am,”
+says he, “the nuns’ devil, and for want of other employment I have been
+three days asleep here as you found me.  My mistresses are now choosing
+an abbess, and always when they are at that work I make holiday: for they
+are all devils themselves then; there is such canvassing, flattering,
+importuning, cajoling, making of parties; and in a word so general a
+confusion, that a devil among them would do more hurt than good.  Nay,
+the ambitious make it a point of honour upon such an occasion, to show
+that they can out-wit the devils.  And if ever hell should be in danger
+of a peace, it is my advice that you presently call in a convention of
+nuns to the election of an abbess, which would most certainly reduce it
+to its ancient state of sedition, mutiny, and confusion, and bring us all
+in effect to such a pass that we should hardly know one another.”
+
+Lucifer was very well pleased with the advice, and ordered it to be
+entered upon the register, as a sure expedient to suppress any disorders
+that might happen for the future to the disturbance of his government:
+after which he commanded the issuing out of a summons to all his
+companies and livery-men, who forthwith appeared in prodigious
+multitudes; and Lucifer with a hideous yell delivered himself most
+graciously as follows.
+
+
+
+THE DECREE OF LUCIFER
+
+
+“To our trusty and despairing legions, and well-beloved subjects, lying
+under the condemnation of perpetual darkness, that lived pensioners to
+sin, and had death for their pay-master, greeting.  This is to let you
+understand, that there are two devils, who pretend a claim to the honour
+of our lieutenancy; but we have absolutely refused to gratify either the
+one or the other, in that point, out of a singular affection and respect
+to our right trusty and well-beloved cousin, a certain she-devil that
+deserves it before all others.”
+
+At this the whole assembly fell to whispering and muttering, and staring
+one upon another, till at last Lucifer observing it bade them never
+trouble themselves to guess who it might be, but fetch good fortune to
+him, known otherwise by the name of Madam Prosperity, who presently
+appeared in the tail of the assembly, and with a proud and disdainful air
+marched up and planted herself before the degraded seraphim, who looked
+her wistly in the face, and then he on in the tone he first began.
+
+“It is our will, pleasure, and command, that next and immediately under
+our proper person, you pay all honour and respect to the Lady Prosperity,
+and obey her, as the most mighty and supreme governess of these our
+dominions.  Which titles and qualities we have conferred upon her, as due
+to her merit; for she hath damned more souls than all you together.  She
+it is that makes men cast off all fear of God and love of their
+neighbour.  She it is that makes men place their sovereign good in
+riches; that engages and entangles men’s minds in vanity; strikes them
+blind in their pleasures; loads them with treasure, and buries them in
+sin.  Where’s the tragedy that she has not played her part in’t?  Where’s
+the stability and wisdom that she has not staggered?  Where’s the folly
+that she has not improved and augmented?  She takes no counsel and fears
+no punishment.  She it is that furnishes matter for scandal, experience
+for story, that entertains the cruelty of tyrants, and bathes the
+executioners in innocent blood.  How many souls that lived innocent,
+while they were poor, have fallen into impiety and reprobation, so soon
+as ever they came to drink of the enchanted cup of prosperity!  Go to
+then, be obedient to her, we charge ye all, as to ourself; and know, that
+they that stand their ground against prosperity are none of your quarry.
+Let them e’en alone, for ’tis but time lost to attempt them.  Take
+example from that impertinent devil, that got leave to tempt Job; he
+persecuted him, beggared him, covered him all over with scabs and ulcers.
+Sot that he was! if he had understood his business, he would have gone
+another way to work, and begged leave to have multiplied riches upon him,
+and to have possessed him of health and pleasures.  That’s the trial; and
+how many are there that when they thrive in the world turn their backs
+upon Heaven, and never so much as name their Creator, but in oaths, and
+then too, without thinking on Him?  Their discourse is all of jollities,
+banquets, comedies, purchases, and the like.  Whereas the poor man has
+God perpetually both in his mouth and heart.  ‘Lord,’ says he, ‘be
+mindful of me, and have mercy upon me, for all my trust is in Thee.’
+Wherefore,” says Lucifer, redoubling his accursed clamour, “let it be
+published forthwith throughout all our territories, that calamities,
+troubles, and persecutions are our mortal enemies, for so we have found
+them upon experience; they are the dispensations of Providence, the
+blessings of the Almighty, to fit sinners for Himself, and they that
+suffer them are enrolled in the militia of heaven.
+
+“_Item_; For the better administration of our government, it is our will
+and pleasure, and we do strictly charge and command, that our devils give
+constant attendance in all courts of judicature; and they are hereby
+totally discharged from any further care of little pettifoggers,
+flatterers, and envious persons, for they are so well acquainted with
+hell road, that they’ll guide one another without the help of a devil to
+bring them hither.
+
+“_Item_; We do ordain and command that no devil presume for the future to
+entertain any confident, but profit; for that’s the harbinger that
+provides vice the most commodious quarter, even in the straitest
+consciences.
+
+“_Item_; We do ordain, as a matter of great importance to the
+conservation of our empire, that in what part soever of our dominions the
+devil of money shall vouchsafe to appear, all other devils there present
+shall rise, and, with a low reverence, present him the chair, in token of
+their submission to his power and authority.
+
+“_Item_; We do most expressly charge and command all our officers, as
+well civil as military, to employ their utmost diligence and industry,
+for the establishing a general peace throughout the world.  For that’s
+the time for wickedness to thrive in, and all sorts of vices to prosper
+and flourish—as luxury, gluttony, idleness, lying, slandering, gaming,
+and whoring; and, in a word, sin is upon the increase and goodness in the
+wane.  Whereas in a state of war, men are upon the exercise of valour and
+virtue; calling often upon Heaven, in the morning, for fear of being
+knocked on the head after dinner: and honest men and actions are
+rewarded.
+
+“_Item_; We do from this time forward discharge all our officers and
+agents whatsoever, from giving themselves any further trouble of tempting
+men and women to sins of incontinence, for as much as we find, upon
+experience, that adultery and fornication will never be left, till the
+old woman scratches the stool for her backside.  And though there may be
+several intervals of repentance, and some faint purposes of giving it
+over, yet the humour returns again with the next tide of blood, and
+concupiscence is as loyal a subject to us as any we have in our
+dominions.
+
+“_Item_; In consideration of the exemption aforesaid, by which means
+several poor devils are left without present employment; and forasmuch as
+there are many merchants and tradesmen in London, Paris, Madrid,
+Amsterdam, and elsewhere, up and down the world, that are very charitably
+disposed to relieve people in want, especially young heirs newly at age,
+and spendthrifts, that come to borrow money of them; but the times being
+dead, and little money stirring, all they can do is to furnish them with
+what the house affords; and if a hundred pound or two in commodity will
+do them any good, ’tis at their service (they say).  This the gallant
+takes up at an excessive rate, to sell again immediately for what he can
+get; and the merchant has his friend to take it off underhand, at a third
+part of the value (which is the way of helping men in distress).  Now out
+of a singular respect to the said merchants and tradesmen, and for their
+better encouragement, as also, to the end that the devils aforesaid may
+not run into lewd courses for want of business, we will and require that
+a legion of the said devils shall from time to time be continually aiding
+and assisting to the said merchants and tradesmen, in the quality of
+factors, to be relieved monthly by a fresh legion, or oftener if occasion
+shall require.
+
+“_Item_; We will and command that all our devils, of what degree or
+quality soever, do henceforth entertain a strict amity and correspondence
+with our trusty and well beloved the usurers, the revengeful, the
+envious, and all pretenders to great places and dignities; and, above all
+others, with the hypocrites, who are the most powerful impostors in
+nature, and so excellently skilled in their trade that they steal away
+people’s hearts and souls at the eyes and ears insensibly, and draw to
+themselves adoration and reward.
+
+“_Item_; We do further order and command, that all care possible be taken
+for the maintaining of blabs, informers, incendiaries, and parasites in
+all courts and palaces, for thence comes our harvest.
+
+“_Item_; That the babblers, tale-bearers, make-bates, and instruments of
+divorces and quarrels, be no longer called fanes, but bellows; in regard
+that they draw and inflame, without giving any allay or refreshment.
+
+“_Item_; That the intermeddlers be hereafter called and reputed the
+devils’ body-lice, because they fetch blood of those that feed and
+nourish them.”
+
+Lucifer then casting a sour look over his shoulder, and spying the
+gouvernante: “I’m of his mind,” quoth he, “that said, ‘Let God dispose of
+the Doüegnas (or gouvernantes) as He pleases; for I’m in no little
+trouble how to dispose of these confounded carrions.’”  Whereupon, the
+damned cried out, with one voice, “Oh, Lucifer! let it never be said that
+it rained Doüegnas in thy dominions.  Are we not miserable enough without
+this new plague of being baited by hags?”  “Ah! cursed Lucifer,” cried
+every one to himself, “stow them anywhere, so they come not near me.”
+And with that, they all clapped their tails between their legs, and drew
+in their horns, for fear of this new torment.  Lucifer, finding how the
+dread of the old women wrought upon the devils, contented himself, at the
+present, to let it pass only _in terrorem_; but withal he swore, by the
+honour of his imperial crown, and as he hoped to be saved, that what
+devil devil’s dam, or reprobate soever, should in time to come be found
+wanting to his duty and in the least degree disobedient to his laws and
+ordinances, all and every the said devil or devils, their dams and
+reprobates so offending, should be delivered up to the torture of the
+Doüegna, and tied muzzle to muzzle; so to remain _in sæcula sæculorum_,
+without relief or appeal, or any law, statute, or usage to the contrary
+notwithstanding.  “But in the meantime, cast them into that dry ditch,”
+says he, “that they may be ready for use upon any occasion.”
+
+Immediately, upon the pronouncing of this solemn decree, Lucifer retired
+to his cell, the weather cleared up, and the company dispersed in a
+fright, at so horrible a menace, and so went about their business: when a
+voice was heard out of the clouds, as the voice of an angel, saying, “He
+that rightly comprehends the morality of this discourse, shall never
+repent the reading of it.”
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                 THE END
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                               _Printed by_
+                         MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED,
+                               _Edinburgh_
+
+
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