Complete. From the “Profane State.”

A BARRATOR is a horse-leech that only sucks the corrupted blood of the law. He trades only in tricks and quirks; his highway is in bypaths, and he loveth a cavil better than an argument, an evasion than an answer. There are two kinds of them; either such as fight themselves, or are trumpeters in a battle to set on others. The former is a professed dueler in the law that will challenge any, and in all suit combats be either principal or second.

  References and compositions he hates as bad as a hangman hates a pardon. Had he been a scholar, he would have maintained all paradoxes; if a chirurgeon, he would never have cured a wound, but always kept it raw; if a soldier, he would have been excellent at a siege, nothing but ejectio firma would out him.

  He is half starved in the lent of a long vacation for want of employment,—save only that he brews work to broach in term-time. I find one so much delighted in law sport that when Louis, the King of France, offered to ease him of a number of suits, he earnestly besought his Highness to leave him some twenty or thirty behind, wherewith he might merrily pass away the time.

  He hath this property of an honest man that his word is as good as his bond; for he will pick the lock of the strongest conveyance, or creep out at the lattice of a word. Wherefore he counts to enter common with others as good as his own several; for he will so vex his partners that they had rather forego their right than undergo a suit with him. As for the trumpeter barrator, He falls in with all his neighbors that fall out, and spurs them on to go to law. A gentleman, who in a duel was rather scratched than wounded, sent for a chirurgeon, who, having opened the wound, charged the man with all speed to fetch such a salve from such a place in his study. “Why,” said the gentleman, “is the hurt so dangerous?” “Oh, yes,” answered the chirurgeon, “if he return not in posthaste the wound will cure itself, and so I shall lose my fee.” Thus the barrator posts to the house of his neighbors, lest the sparks of their small discords should go out before he brings them fuel, and so he be broken by their making up. Surely, he loves not to have the bells rung in a peal, but he likes it rather when they are jangled backward, himself having kindled the fire of dissension amongst his neighbors.

  He lives till his clothes have as many rents as himself hath made dissensions. I wonder any should be of this trade when none ever thrived on it; paying dear rates for their counsels for bringing many cracked titles, they are fain to fill up their gaping chinks with the more gold.

  But I have done with this wrangling companion, half afraid to meddle with him longer, lest he should commence a suit against me for describing him.

  The reader may easily perceive how this “Book of the Profane State” would swell to a great proportion, should we therein character all kinds of vicious persons which stand in opposition to those which are good. But the pains may well be spared, seeing that rectum est index sui et obliqui; and the lustre of the good formerly described will sufficiently discover the enormity of those which are otherwise.