your best medicines for the worms." This, we may suppose, was a
mortifying return of those pains and proceedings Jack had laboured
in so long, and finding how directly opposite all his endeavours had
answered to the sole end and intention which he had proposed to
himself, how could it avoid having terrible effects upon a head and
heart so furnished as his? However, the poor remainders of his coat
bore all the punishment. The orient sun never entered upon his
diurnal progress without missing a piece of it. He hired a tailor
to stitch up the collar so close that it was ready to choke him, and
squeezed out his eyes at such a rate as one could see nothing but
the white. What little was left of the main substance of the coat
he rubbed every day for two hours against a rough-cast wall, in
order to grind away the remnants of lace and embroidery, but at the
same time went on with so much violence that he proceeded a heathen
philosopher. Yet after all he could do of this kind, the success
continued still to disappoint his expectation, for as it is the
nature of rags to bear a kind of mock resemblance to finery, there
being a sort of fluttering appearance in both, which is not to be
distinguished at a distance in the dark or by short-sighted eyes, so
in those junctures it fared with Jack and his tatters, that they
offered to the first view a ridiculous flaunting, which, assisting
the resemblance in person and air, thwarted all his projects of
separation, and left so near a similitude between them as frequently
deceived the very disciples and followers of both . . . Desunt
nonnulla, . . .

The old Sclavonian proverb said well that it is with men as with
asses; whoever would keep them fast must find a very good hold at
their ears. Yet I think we may affirm, and it hath been verified by
repeated experience, that -