himself a-groaning, like the famous board upon application of a red-hot iron.

He would stand in the turning of a street, and, calling to those who passed by, would cry to one, Worthy sir, do me the honour of a good slap in the chaps.* To another, Honest friend, pray favour me with a handsome kick on the arse: Madam, shall I entreat a small box on the ear from your ladyship's fair hands? Noble captain, lend a reasonable thwack, for the love of God, with that cane of yours over these poor shoulders. And when he had, by such earnest solicitations, made a shift to procure a basting sufficient to swell up his fancy and his sides, he would return home extremely comforted, and full of terrible accounts of what he had undergone for the public good. Observe this stroke, (said he, shewing his bare shoulders,) a plaguy janizary gave it me this very morning at seven o'clock, as, with much ado, I was driving off the great Turk. Neighbours, mind, this broken head deserves a plaster : had poor Jack been tender of his noddle, you would have seen the Pope and the French king, long before this time of day, among your wives and your warehouses. Dear Christians, the great Mogul was come as far as Whitechapel, and you may thank these poor sides, that he hath not (God bless us!) already swallowed up man, woman, and child.

It was highly worth observing the singular effects of that aversion,t or antipathy, which Jack and his

*The fanatics have always had a way of affecting to run into persecution, and count vast merit upon every little hardship they suffer.-H.

The papists and fanatics, though they appear the most averse against each other, yet bear a near resemblance in many things, as hath been observed by learned men.-Original.

Ibid. The agreement of our dissenters and the papists, in that which Bishop Stillingfleet called the fanaticism of the Church of

brother Peter seemed, even to an affectation, to bear against each other. Peter had lately done some rogueries, that forced him to abscond; and he seldom ventured to stir out before night, for fear of bailiffs. Their lodgings were at the two most distant parts of the town from each other: and whenever their occasions or humours called them abroad, they would make choice of the oddest unlikely times, and most uncouth rounds, they could invent, that they might be sure to avoid one another: yet, after all this, it was their perpetual fortune to meet. The reason of which is easy enough to apprehend; for, the phrensy and the spleen of both having the same foundation, we may look upon them as two pair of compasses, equally extended, and the fixed foot of each remaining in the same centre; which, though moving contrary ways at first, will be sure to encounter somewhere or other in the circumference. Besides, it was among the great misfortunes of Jack, to bear a huge personal resemblance with his brother Peter. Their humour and dispositions were not only the same, but there was a close analogy in their shape and size, and their mien. Insomuch, as nothing was more frequent than for a bailiff to seize Jack by the shoulder, and cry, Mr. Peter, you are the king's prisoner. Or, at other times, for one of Peter's nearest friends to accost Jack with open arms, Dear Peter, I am glad to see thee, pray send me one of 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

Rome, is ludicrously described, for several pages together by Jack's likeness to Peter, and their being often mistaken for each other, and their frequent meeting when they least intended it.-W. WOTTON.

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.

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Desunt nonnulla.

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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, that it has been verified by repeated experience, that,

Effugiet tamen hæc sceleratus vincula Proteus.

It is good, therefore, to read the maxims of our ancestors, with great allowances to times and persons: for, if we look into primitive records, we shall find, that no revolutions have been so great, or so frequent, as those of human ears. In former days, there was a curious invention to catch and keep them; which, I think, we may justly reckon among the artes perdita; and how can it be otherwise, when, in the latter centuries, the very species is not only diminished to a very lamentable degree, but the poor remainder is also degenerated so far as to mock our skilfullest tenure? For, if the only slitting of one ear in a stag has been found sufficient to propagate the defect through a whole forest, why should we wonder at the greatest consequences, from so many loppings and mutilations, to which the ears of our fathers, and our own, have been of late so much exposed? It is true, indeed, that while this island of ours was under the dominion of grace, many endeavours were made to improve the growth of ears once more among us. The proportion of largeness was not only looked upon as an ornament of the outward man, but as a type of grace in the inward. Besides, it is held by naturalists, that, if there be a protuberancy of parts, in the superior region of the body, as in the ears and nose, there must be a parity also in the inferior: and, therefore, in that truly pious age, the males in every assembly, according as they were gifted, appeared very forward in exposing their ears to view, and the regions about them; because Hippocrates tells us, that, when the vein behind the ear happens to be cut, a man becomes a eunuch; and the females were nothing backwarder in beholding and edifying by them:

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* Lib. de aëre, locis, et aquis.

whereof those who had already used the means, looked about them with great concern, in hopes of conceiving a suitable offspring by such a prospect: others, who stood candidates for benevolence, found there a plentiful choice, and were sure to fix upon such as discovered the largest ears, that the breed might not dwindle between them. Lastly, the devouter sisters, who looked upon all extraordinary dilatations of that member as protrusions of zeal, or spiritual excrescencies, were sure to honour every head they sat upon, as if they had been marks of grace; *but especially that of the preacher, whose ears were usually of the prime magnitude; which, upon that account, he was very frequent and exact in exposing with all advantages to the people; in his rhetorical paroxysms turning sometimes to hold forth the one, and sometimes to hold forth the other from which custom, the whole operation of preaching is to this very day, among their professors, styled by the phrase of holding forth.

Such was the progress of the saints for advancing the size of that member; and it is thought the success would have been every way answerable, if, in process of time, a cruel king had not arisen,† who raised a bloody persecution against all ears above a certain standard: upon which, some were glad to hide their flourishing sprouts in a black border, others crept wholly under a periwig; some were slit, others cropped, and a great number sliced off to the stumps. But of this more hereafter in my general history of ears; which I design very speedily to bestow upon the public,

From this brief survey of the falling state of ears

* As if they had been cloven tongues.-Ed. 1.

This was King Charles the Second, who, at his restoration, turned out all the dissenting teachers that would not conform.-H.