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An essay by John Earle |
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A Meer Great Man |
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Title: A Meer Great Man Author: John Earle [More Titles by Earle] Is so much heraldry without honour, himself less real than his title. His virtue is, that he was his father's son, and all the expectation of him to beget another. A man that lives meerly to preserve another's memory, and let us know who died so many years ago. One of just as much use as his images, only he differs in this, that he can speak himself, and save the fellow of Westminster[1] a labour: and he remembers nothing better than what was out of his life. His grandfathers and their acts are his discourse, and he tells them with more glory than they did them; and it is well they did enough, or else he had wanted matter. His other studies are his sports and those vices that are fit for great men. Every vanity of his has his officer, and is a serious employment for his servants. He talks loud, and baudily, and scurvily as a part of state, and they hear him with reverence. All good qualities are below him, and especially learning, except some parcels of the chronicle and the writing of his name, which he learns to write not to be read. He is meerly of his servants' faction, and their instrument for their friends and enemies, and is always least thanked for his own courtesies. They that fool him most do most with him, and he little thinks how many laugh at him bare-head. No man is kept in ignorance more of himself and men, for he hears nought but flattery; and what is fit to be spoken, truth with so much preface that it loses itself. Thus he lives till his tomb be made ready, and is then a grave statue to posterity.
[1] The person who exhibits Westminster abbey. [The end] GO TO TOP OF SCREEN |