E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross - "Mount Music"

Hilaire Belloc - "The Historic Thames"

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Various - "Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Dec. 20, 1890"

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The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 written by Charles Lamb

C >> Charles Lamb >> The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4




No, Sir, for none of these things; but an appetite, in its coarsest
and least metaphorical sense,--an appetite for _food_.

The exorbitances of my arrowroot and pappish days I cannot go back
far enough to remember; only I have been told that my mother's
constitution not admitting of my being nursed at home, the woman who
had the care of me for that purpose used to make most extravagant
demands for my pretended excesses in that kind; which my parents,
rather than believe anything unpleasant of me, chose to impute to the
known covetousness and mercenary disposition of that sort of people.
This blindness continued on their part after I was sent for home, up
to the period when it was thought proper, on account of my advanced
age, that I should mix with other boys more unreservedly than I had
hitherto done. I was accordingly sent to boarding-school.

Here the melancholy truth became too apparent to be disguised. The
prying republic of which a great school consists soon found me out:
there was no shifting the blame any longer upon other people's
shoulders,--no good-natured maid to take upon herself the enormities
of which I stood accused in the article of bread and butter, besides
the crying sin of stolen ends of puddings, and cold pies strangely
missing. The truth was but too manifest in my looks,--in the evident
signs of inanition which I exhibited after the fullest meals, in
spite of the double allowance which my master was privately
instructed by my kind parents to give me. The sense of the
ridiculous, which is but too much alive in grown persons, is tenfold
more active and alert in boys. Once detected, I was the constant butt
of their arrows,--the mark against which every puny leveller directed
his little shaft of scorn. The very Graduses and Thesauruses were
raked for phrases to pelt me with by the tiny pedants. Ventri
natus--Ventri deditus,--Vesana gula,--Escarum gurges,--Dapibus
indulgens,--Non dans fraena gulae,-Sectans lautae fercula mensae,
resounded wheresoever I passed. I led a weary life, suffering the
penalties of guilt for that which was no crime, but only following
the blameless dictates of nature. The remembrance of those childish
reproaches haunts me yet oftentimes in my dreams. My school-days come
again, and the horror I used to feel, when in some silent corner,
retired from the notice of my unfeeling playfellows, I have sat to
mumble the solitary slice of gingerbread allotted me by the bounty of
considerate friends, and have ached at heart because I could not
spare a portion of it, as I saw other boys do, to some favorite boy;
for if I know my own heart, I was never selfish,--never possessed a
luxury which I did not hasten to communicate to others; but my food,
alas! was none; it was an indispensable necessary; I could as soon
have spared the blood in my veins, as have parted that with my
companions.

Well, no one stage of suffering lasts forever: we should grow
reconciled to it at length, I suppose, if it did. The miseries of my
school-days had their end; I was once more restored to the paternal
dwelling. The affectionate solicitude of my parents was directed to
the good-natured purpose of concealing, even from myself, the
infirmity which haunted me. I was continually told that I was
growing, and the appetite I displayed was humanely represented as
being nothing more than a symptom and an effect of that. I used even
to be complimented upon it. But this temporary fiction could not
endure above a year or two. I ceased to grow, but, alas! I did not
cease my demands for alimentary sustenance.

Those times are long since past, and with them have ceased to exist
the fond concealment--the indulgent blindness--the delicate
overlooking--the compassionate fiction. I and my infirmity are left
exposed and bare to the broad, unwinking eye of the world, which
nothing can elude. My meals are scanned, my mouthfuls weighed in a
balance; that which appetite demands is set down to the account of
gluttony--a sin which my whole soul abhors--nay, which Nature herself
has put it out of my power to commit. I am constitutionally
disenabled from that vice; for how can he be guilty of excess who
never can get enough? Let them cease, then, to watch my plate; and
leave off their ungracious comparisons of it to the seven baskets of
fragments, and the supernaturally replenished cup of old Baucis: and
be thankful that their more phlegmatic stomachs, not their virtue,
have saved them from the like reproaches. I do not see that any of
them desist from eating till the holy rage of hunger, as some one
calls it, is supplied. Alas! I am doomed to stop short of that
continence.

What am I to do? I am by disposition inclined to conviviality and the
social meal. I am no gourmand: I require no dainties: I should
despise the board of Heliogabalus, except for its long sitting. Those
vivacious, long-continued meals of the latter Romans, indeed, I
justly envy; but the kind of fare which the Curii and Dentati put up
with, I could be content with. Dentatus I have been called, among
other unsavory jests. Doublemeal is another name which my
acquaintance have palmed upon me, for an innocent piece of policy
which I put in practice for some time without being found out; which
was--going the round of my friends, beginning with the most primitive
feeders among them, who take their dinner about one o'clock, and so
successively dropping in upon the next and the next, till by the time
I got among my more fashionable intimates, whose hour was six or
seven, I have nearly made up the body of a just and complete meal (as
I reckon it), without taking more than one dinner (as they account of
dinners) at one person's house. Since I have been found out, I
endeavor to make up by a damper, as I call it, at home, before I go
out. But, alas! with me, increase of appetite truly grows by what it
feeds on. What is peculiarly offensive to me at those dinner-parties
is, the senseless custom of cheese, and the dessert afterwards. I
have a rational antipathy to the former; and for fruit, and those
other vain vegetable substitutes for meat (meat, the only legitimate
aliment for human creatures since the Flood, as I take it to be
deduced from that permission, or ordinance rather, given to Noah and
his descendants), I hold them in perfect contempt. Hay for horses. I
remember a pretty apologue, which Mandeville tells, very much to this
purpose, in his Fable of the Bees:--He brings in a Lion arguing with
a Merchant, who had ventured to expostulate with this king of beasts
upon his violent methods of feeding. The Lion thus retorts:--"Savage
I am, but no creature can be called cruel but what either by malice
or insensibility extinguishes his natural pity. The Lion was born
without compassion: we follow the instinct of our nature; the gods
have appointed us to live upon the waste and spoil of other animals,
and as long as we can meet with dead ones, we never hunt after the
living; 'tis only man, mischievous man, that can make death a sport.
Nature taught your stomach to crave nothing but vegetables.--(Under
favor of the Lion, if he meant to assert this universally of mankind,
it is not true. However, what he says presently is very
sensible.)--Your violent fondness to change, and greater eagerness
after novelties, have prompted you to the destruction of animals
without justice or necessity. The Lion has a ferment within him, that
consumes the toughest skin and hardest bones, as well as the flesh of
all animals without exception. Your squeamish stomach, in which the
digestive heat is weak and inconsiderable, won't so much as admit of
the most tender parts of them, unless above half the concoction has
been performed by artificial fire beforehand; and yet what animal
have you spared, to satisfy the caprices of a languid appetite?
Languid, I say; for what is man's hunger if compared with the Lion's?
Yours, when it is at the worst, makes you faint; mine makes me mad:
oft have I tried with roots and herbs to allay the violence of it,
but in vain: nothing but large quantities of flesh can any ways
appease it."--Allowing for the Lion not having a prophetic instinct
to take in every lusus naturae that, was possible of the human
appetite, he was, generally speaking, in the right; and the Merchant
was so impressed with his argument that, we are told, he replied not,
but fainted away. O, Mr. Reflector, that I were not obliged to add,
that the creature who thus argues was but a type of me! Miserable
man! _I am that Lion!_ "Oft have I tried with roots and herbs to
allay that violence, but in vain; nothing but----."

Those tales which are renewed as often as the editors of papers want
to fill up a space in their unfeeling columns, of great
eaters,--people that devour whole geese and legs of mutton _for
wagers_,--are sometimes attempted to be drawn to a parallel with my
case. This wilful confounding of motives and circumstances, which
make all the difference of moral or immoral in actions, just suits
the sort of talent which some of my acquaintance pride themselves
upon. _Wagers_!--I thank Heaven, I was never mercenary, nor could
consent to prostitute a gift (though but a left-handed one) of
nature, to the enlarging of my worldly substance; prudent as the
necessities, which that fatal gift have involved me in, might have
made such a prostitution to appear in the eyes of an indelicate
world.

Rather let me say, that to the satisfaction of that talent which was
given me, I have been content to sacrifice no common expectations;
for such I had from an old lady, a near relation of our family, in
whose good graces I had the fortune to stand, till one fatal
evening----. You have seen, Mr. Reflector, if you have ever passed
your time much in country towns, the kind of suppers which elderly
ladies in those places have lying _in petto_ in an adjoining parlor,
next to that where they are entertaining their periodically invited
coevals with cards and muffins. The cloth is usually spread some
half-hour before the final rubber is decided, whence they adjourn to
sup upon what may emphatically be called _nothing_ ;--a sliver of
ham, purposely contrived to be transparent to show the china-dish
through it, neighboring a slip of invisible brawn, which abuts upon
something they call a tartlet, as that is bravely supported by an
atom of marmalade, flanked in its turn by a grain of potted beef,
with a power of such dishlings, _minims of hospitality_, spread in
defiance of human nature, or rather with an utter ignorance of what
it demands. Being engaged at one of these card-parties, I was obliged
to go a little before _supper-time_ (as they facetiously called the
point of time in which they are taking these shadowy refections), and
the old lady, with a sort of fear shining through the smile of
courteous hospitality that beamed in her countenance, begged me to
step into the next room and take something before I went out in the
cold,--a proposal which lay not in my nature to deny. Indignant at
the airy prospect I saw before me, I set to, and in a trice
dispatched the whole meal intended for eleven persons,--fish, flesh,
fowl, pastry,--to the sprigs of garnishing parsley, and the last
fearful custard that quaked upon the board. I need not describe the
consternation, when in due time the dowagers adjourned from their
cards. Where was the supper?--and the servants' answer, Mr. ---- had
eat it all.--That freak, however, jested me out of a good three
hundred pounds a year, which I afterwards was informed for a
certainty the old lady meant to leave me. I mention it not in
illustration of the unhappy faculty which I am possessed of; for any
unlucky wag of a school-boy, with a tolerable appetite, could have
done as much without feeling any hurt after it,--only that you may
judge whether I am a man likely to set my talent to sale, or to
require the pitiful stimulus of a wager.

I have read in Pliny, or in some author of that stamp, of a reptile
in Africa, whose venom is of that hot, destructive quality, that
wheresoever it fastens its tooth, the whole substance of the animal
that has been bitten in a few seconds is reduced to dust, crumbles
away, and absolutely disappears: it is called, from this quality, the
Annihilator. Why am I forced to seek, in all the most prodigious and
portentous facts of Natural History, for creatures typical of myself?
_I am that snake, that Annihilator:_ "wherever I fasten, in a few
seconds----."

O happy sick men, that are groaning under the want of that very
thing, the excess of which is my torment! O fortunate, too fortunate,
if you knew your happiness, invalids! What would I not give to
exchange this fierce concoctive and digestive heat,--this rabid fury
which vexes me, which tears and torments me,--for your quiet,
mortified, hermit-like, subdued, and sanctified stomachs, your cool,
chastened inclinations and coy desires for food!

To what unhappy figuration of the parts intestine I owe this
unnatural craving, I must leave to the anatomists and the physicians
to determine: they, like the rest of the world, have doubtless their
eye upon me; and as I have been cut up alive by the sarcasms of my
friends, so I shudder when I contemplate the probability that this
animal frame, when its restless appetites shall have ceased their
importunity, may be cut up also (horrible suggestion!) to determine
in what system of solids or fluids this original sin of my
constitution lay lurking. What work will they make with their acids
and alkalines, their serums and coagulums, effervescences, viscous
matter, bile, chyle, and acrimonious juices, to explain that cause
which Nature, who willed the effect to punish me for my sins, may no
less have determined to keep in the dark from them, to punish them
for their presumption!

You may ask, Mr. Reflector, to what purpose is my appeal to you; what
can you do for me? Alas! I know too well that my case is out of the
reach of advice,--out of the reach of consolation. But it is some
relief to the wounded heart to impart its tale of misery; and some of
my acquaintance, who may read my case in your pages under a borrowed
name, may be induced to give it a more humane consideration than I
could ever yet obtain from them under my own. Make them, if possible,
to _reflect_, that an original peculiarity of constitution is no
crime; that not that which goes into the mouth desecrates a man, but
that which comes out of it,--such as sarcasm, bitter jests, mocks and
taunts, and ill-natured observations; and let them consider, if there
be such things (which we have all heard of) as Pious Treachery,
Innocent Adultery, &c., whether there may not be also such a thing as
Innocent Gluttony.

I shall only subscribe myself,

Your afflicted servant,

EDAX.




CURIOUS FRAGMENTS,

EXTRACTED FROM A COMMONPLACE-BOOK,

WHICH BELONGED TO ROBERT BURTON, THE FAMOUS AUTHOR OF THE
ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY.

* * * * *

EXTRACT I.

I, Democritus Junior, have put my finishing pen to a tractate _De
Melancholia_, this day, December 5, 1620. First, I blesse the
Trinity, which hath given me health to prosecute my worthlesse
studies thus far, and make supplication, with a _Laus Deo_, if in any
case these my poor labours may be found instrumental to weede out
black melancholy, carking cares, harte-grief, from the mind of man.
_Sed hoc magis volo quam expecto._

I turn now to my book, _i nunc liber, goe forth, my brave Anatomy,
child of my brain-sweat_, and yee, _candidi lectores_, lo! here I
give him up to you, even do with him what you please, my masters.
Some, I suppose, will applaud, commend, cry him up (these are my
friends), hee is a _flos rarus_, forsooth, a nonesuch, a Phoenix
(concerning whom see _Plinius_ and _Mandeuille_, though _Fienus de
Monstris_ doubteth at large of such a bird, whom _Montaltus_
confuting argueth to have been a man _malae scrupulositatis_, of a
weak and cowardlie faith: _Christopherus a Vega_ is with him in
this). Others again will blame, hiss, reprehende in many things, cry
down altogether my collections, for crude, inept, putid, _post coenam
scripta, Coryate could write better upon a full meal_, verbose,
inerudite, and not sufficiently abounding in authorities, _dogmata_,
sentences of learneder writers which have been before me, when as
that first-named sort clean otherwise judge of my labours to bee
nothing else but a _messe of opinions_, a vortex attracting
indiscriminate, gold, pearls, hay, straw, wood, excrement, an
exchange, tavern, marte, for foreigners to congregate, Danes, Swedes,
Hollanders, Lombards, so many strange faces, dresses, salutations,
languages, all which _Wolfius_ behelde with great content upon the
Venetian Rialto, as he describes diffusedly in his book the World's
Epitome, which _Sannazar_ so bepraiseth, _e contra_ our Polydore can
see nothing in it; they call me singular, a pedant, fantastic, words
of reproach in this age, which is all too neoterick and light for my
humour.

One cometh to me sighing, complaining. He expected universal remedies
in my Anatomy; so many cures as there are distemperatures among men.
I have not put his affection in my cases. Hear you his case. My fine
Sir is a lover, an _inamorata_, a Pyramus, a Romeo; he walks seven
years disconsolate, moping, because he cannot enjoy his miss,
_insanus amor_ is his melancholy, the man is mad; _delirat_, he
dotes; all this while his Glycera is rude, spiteful, not to be
entreated, churlish, spits at him, yet exceeding fair, gentle eyes
(which is a beauty), hair lustrous and _smiling_, the trope is none
of mine, _AEneas Sylvius_ hath _crines ridentes_--in conclusion she is
wedded to his rival, a boore, a _Corydon_, a rustic, _omnino ignarus,
he can scarce construe Corderius_, yet haughty, fantastic,
_opiniatre_. The lover travels, goes into foreign parts,
peregrinates, _amoris ergo_, sees manners, customs, not English,
converses with pilgrims, lying travellers, monks, hermits, those
cattle, pedlars, travelling gentry, _Egyptians_, natural wonders,
unicorns (though _Aldobrandus_ will have them to be figments),
satyrs, semi-viri, apes, monkeys, baboons, curiosities artificial,
_pyramides_, Virgilius his tombe, relicks, bones, which are nothing
but ivory as _Melancthon_ judges, though _Cornutus_ leaneth to think
them bones of dogs, cats, (why not men?) which subtill priests vouch
to have been saints, martyrs, _heu Pietas!_ By that time he has ended
his course, _fugit hora_, seven other years are expired, gone by,
time is he should return, he taketh ship for Britaine, much desired
of his friends, _favebant venti, Neptune is curteis_, after some
weekes at sea he landeth, rides post to town, greets his family,
kinsmen, _compotores, those jokers his friends that were wont to
tipple with him at alehouses_; these wonder now to see the change,
_quantum mutatus, the man is quite another thing_, he is
disenthralled, manumitted, he wonders what so bewitched him, he can
now both see, hear, smell, handle, converse with his mistress, single
by reason of the death of his rival, a widow having children, grown
willing, prompt, amorous, showing no such great dislike to second
nuptials, he might have her for asking, no such thing, his mind is
changed, he loathes his former meat, had liever eat ratsbane,
aconite, his humour is to die a bachelour; marke the conclusion. In
this humour of celibate seven other years are consumed in idleness,
sloth, world's pleasures, which fatigate, satiate, induce wearinesse,
vapours, _taedium vitae:_ When upon a day, behold a wonder, _redit
Amor_, the man is as sick as ever, he is commenced lover upon the old
stock, walks with his hand thrust in his bosom for negligence, moping
he leans his head, face yellow, beard flowing and incomposite, eyes
sunken, _anhelus, breath wheezy and asthmatical, by reason of
over-much sighing:_ society he abhors, solitude is but a hell, what
shall he doe? all this while his mistresse is forward, coming,
_amantissima, ready to jump at once into his mouth_, her he hateth,
feels disgust when she is but mentioned, thinks her ugly, old, a
painted Jesabeel, Alecto, Megara, and Tisiphone all at once, a
Corinthian Lais, a strumpet, only not handsome; that which he
affecteth so much, that which drives him mad, distracted, phrenetic,
beside himself, is no beauty which lives, nothing _in rerum natura_
(so he might entertain a hope of a cure), but something _which is
not_, can never be, a certain _fantastic opinion_ or _notional image_
of his mistresse, _that which she was_, and that which hee thought
her to be, in former times, how beautiful! torments him, frets him,
follows him, makes him that he wishes to die.

This Caprichio, _Sir Humourous_, hee cometh to me to be cured. I
counsel marriage with his mistresse, according to Hippocrates his
method, together with milk-diet, herbs, aloes, and wild parsley, good
in such cases, though Avicenna preferreth some sorts of wild fowl,
teals, widgeons, beccaficos, which men in Sussex eat. He flies out in
a passion, ho! ho; and falls to calling me names, dizzard, ass,
lunatic, moper, Bedlamite, Pseudo-Democritus. I smile in his face,
bidding him be patient, tranquil, to no purpose, he still rages: I
think this man must fetch his remedies from Utopia, Fairy Land,
Islands in the Moone, &c.


EXTRACT II.

* * * * * Much disputacyons of fierce wits amongst themselves, in
logomachies, subtile controversies, many dry blows given on either
side, contentions of learned men, or such as would be so thought, as
_Bodinus de Periodis_ saith of such an one, _arrident amici ridet
mundus_, in English, this man his cronies they cocker him up, they
flatter him, he would fayne appear somebody, meanwhile the world
thinks him no better than a dizzard, a ninny, a sophist. * *

* * * Philosophy running mad, madness philosophizing, much
idle-learned inquiries, what truth is? and no issue, fruit, of all
these noises, only huge books are written, and who is the wiser? * *
* * * Men sitting in the Doctor's chair, we marvel how they got there
being _homines intellectus pulverulenti_ as _Trincauellius_ notes;
they care not so they may raise a dust to smother the eyes of their
oppugners; _homines parvulissimi_, as _Lemnius_, whom _Alcuin_ herein
taxeth of a crude Latinism; dwarfs, minims, the least little men,
these spend their time, and it is odds but they lose their time and
wits too into the bargain, chasing of nimble and retiring Truth: Her
they prosecute, her still they worship, _libant_, they make
libations, spilling the wine as those old Romans in their
sacrificials, _Cerealia, May games:_ Truth is the game all these hunt
after, to the extreme perturbacyon and drying up of the moistures
_humidum radicale exsiccant_, as _Galen_, in his counsel to one of
these wear-wits, brain-moppers, spunges saith. * * * and for all this
_nunquam metam attingunt_, and how should they? they bowle awry,
shooting beside the marke; whereas it should appear, that _Truth
absolute_ on this planet of ours is scarcely to be found, but in her
stede _Queene Opinion_ predominates, governs, whose shifting and ever
mutable _Lampas_, me seemeth, is man's destinie to follow, she
praecurseth, she guideth him, before his uncapable eyes she frisketh
her tender lights, which entertayne the child-man, untill what time
his sight be strong to endure the vision of _Very Truth_, which is in
the heavens, the vision beatifical, as _Anianus_ expounds in his
argument against certain mad wits which helde God to be corporeous;
these were dizzards, fools, _gothamites_. * * * * but and if _Very
Truth_ be extant indeede on earth, as some hold she it is which
actuates men's deeds, purposes, ye may in vaine look for her in the
learned universities, halls, colleges. Truth is no Doctoresse, she
takes no degrees at Paris or Oxford, amongst great clerks,
disputants, subtile Aristotles, men _nodosi ingenii, able to take
Lully by the chin_, but oftentimes to such an one as myself, an
_Idiota_ or common person, _no great things_, melancholizing in woods
where waters are, quiet places by rivers, fountains, whereas the
silly man expecting no such matter, thinketh only how best to
delectate and refresh his mynde continually with _Natura_ her
pleasaunt scenes, woods, water-falls, or Art her statelie gardens,
parks, terraces, _Belvideres_, on a sudden the goddesse herself
_Truth_ has appeared, with a shyning lyghte, and a sparklyng
countenance, so as yee may not be able lightly to resist her. * * * *


EXTRACT III.

This morning, May 2, 1662, having first broken my fast upon eggs and
cooling salades, mallows, water-cresses, those herbes, according to
_Villanovus_ his prescription, who disallows the use of meat in a
morning as gross, fat, hebetant, _feral_, altogether fitter for wild
beasts than men, _e contra_ commendeth this herb-diete for gentle,
humane, active, conducing to contemplation in most men, I betook
myselfe to the nearest fields. (Being in London I commonly dwell in
the _suburbes_, as airiest, quietest, _loci musis propriores_, free
from noises of caroches, waggons, mechanick and base workes,
workshoppes, also sights, pageants, spectacles of outlandish birds,
fishes, crocodiles, _Indians_, mermaids; adde quarrels, fightings,
wranglings of the common sort, _plebs_, the rabble, duelloes with
fists, proper to this island, at which the stiletto'd and secrete
_Italian_ laughs.) Withdrawing myselfe from these buzzing and
illiterate vanities, with a _bezo las manos_ to the city, I begin to
inhale, draw in, snuff up, as horses _dilatis naribus_ snort the
fresh aires, with exceeding great delight, when suddenly there
crosses me a procession, sad, heavy, dolourous, tristfull,
melancholick, able to change mirth into dolour, and overcast a
clearer atmosphere than possibly the neighbourhoods of so great a
citty can afford. An old man, a poore man deceased, is borne on men's
shoulders to a poore buriall, without solemnities of hearse,
mourners, plumes, _mutae personae, those personate actors that will
weep if yee shew them a piece of silver;_ none of those customed
civilities of children, kinsfolk, _dependants_, following the coffin;
he died a poore man, his friends _accessores opum_, _those cronies of
his that stuck by him so long as he had a penny_, now leave him,
forsake him, shun him, desert him; they think it much to follow his
putrid and stinking carcase to the grave; his children, if he had
any, for commonly the case stands thus, this poore man his son dies
before him, he survives, poore, indigent, base, dejected, miserable,
&c., or if he have any which survive him, _sua negotia agunt_, they
mind their own business, forsooth, cannot, will not, find time,
leisure, _inclination, extremum munus perficere_, to follow to the
pit their old indulgent father, which loved them, stroked them,
caressed them, cockering them up, _quantum potuit_, as farre as his
means extended, while they were babes, chits, _minims_, hee may rot
in his grave, lie stinking in the sun _for them_, have no buriall at
all, they care not. _O nefas!_ Chiefly I noted the coffin to have
been _without a pall_, nothing but a few planks, of cheapest wood
that could be had, _naked_, having none of the ordinary _symptomata_
of a funerall, those _locularii_ which bare the body having on
diversely coloured coats, _and none black:_ (one of these reported
the deceased to have been an almsman seven yeares, a pauper,
harboured and fed in the workhouse of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, to
whose proper burying-ground he was now going for interment.) All
which when I behelde, hardly I refrained from weeping, and
incontinently I fell to musing: "If this man had been rich, a
_Croesus_, a _Crassus_, _or as rich as Whittington_, what pompe,
charge, lavish cost, expenditure, of rich buriall,
_ceremoniall-obsequies_, _obsequious ceremonies_, had been thought
too good for such an one; what store of panegyricks, elogies, funeral
orations, &c., some beggarly poetaster, worthy to be beaten for his
ill rimes, crying him up, hee was rich, generous, bountiful, polite,
learned, a _Maecenas_, while as in very deede he was nothing lesse:
what weeping, sighing, sorrowing, honing, complaining, kinsmen,
friends, relatives, fourtieth cousins, poor relatives, lamenting for
the deceased; hypocriticall heirs, sobbing, striking their breasts
(they care not if he had died a year ago); so many clients,
dependants, flatterers, _parasites, cunning Gnathoes_, tramping on
foot after the hearse, all their care is, who shall stand fairest
with the successour; he mean time (like enough) spurns them from him,
spits at them, treads them under his foot, will have nought to do
with any such cattle. I think him in the right: _Hoec sunt majora
gravitate Heracliti. These follies are enough to give crying
Heraclitus a fit of the spleene._"