householders, yeoman's sons; inquire me out contracted bachelors, such as
have been asked twice on the banns; such a commodity of warm slaves, as had
as life hear the devil as a drum; such as fear the report of a culverin
worse than a struck deer or a hurt wild duck. I pressed me none but such
toasts in butter, with hearts in their breasts no bigger than pins' heads;
and they bought out their services; and now my whole charge consists of
slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth, where the glutton's dogs
licked his sores; discarded, unjust serving-men, younger sons to younger
brothers, revolted tapsters, and hostlers trade-fallen, the cankers of a
calm world and a long peace; and such have I to fill up the rooms of them
that have bought out their services, that you would think, that I had an
hundred and fifty tattered prodigals, lately come from swine-keeping, from
eating draff and husks. A mad fellow met me on the way, and told me I had
unloaded all the gibbets, and pressed the dead bodies. No eye hath seen
such scarecrows. I'll not march through Coventry with them, that's flat.
Nay, and the villains march wide betwixt the legs, as if--they had gyves
on; for, indeed I had the most of them out of prison. There's but a shirt
and a half in all my company; and the half-shirt it is two napkins tacked
together, and thrown over the shoulders like a herald's coat without
sleeves; and the shirt, to say the truth, stolen from my host of St.
Albans, or the red-nosed innkeeper of Daintry. But that's all one; they'll
find linen enough on every hedge.
Shakespeare.


CXXXV.

SOLILOQUY ON CHARACTER.

As young as I am, I have observed these three swashers. I am boy to them