A CHARACTER OF A DIURNAL-MAKER  
By J. C.  
LONDON, Printed in the Year, 1657.   

THE CHARACTER OF A DIURNAL-MAKER.  
A DIVRNAL-Maker is the Sub-almoner of History, Queen Mabb's Register; one, whom by the same figure that a North-Country Pedlar is a Merchantman, you may style an Author: It is the like overreach of language, when every thin tinder-cloaked Quack must be called a Doctor; when a Clumsy Cobbler usurps the attribute of our English Peers, and is vamped a Translator, list him a Writer and you smother Geoffry in swabberslops, the very name of Dabbler oversets him, he is swallowed up in the praise like Sir Samuel Luke in a great Saddle, nothing to be seen but the giddy Feather in his Crown. They call him a Mercury, but he becomes the Epithet; like the little Nergo mounted on the Elephant, just such another blot-rampant. He has not stuff sufficient for the reproach of a Scribbler, but it hangs about him like an oldwives skin, when the flesh hath forsaken her, lank and lose. He defames a good title as well as most of our modern Noblemen, those Wens of greatness, the body politics most peccant humours, blistered into Lords. He hath so raw-boned a Being, that however you render him, he rubs it out, and makes rags of the expression. The silly Countryman (who seeing an Ape in a scarlet coat, blest his young worship, and gave his Landlord joy of the hopes of his house) did not slander his Compliment with worse application, than he that names this shred an Historian. To call him an Historian, is to Knight a Mandrake, 'tis to view him through a prespective, and by that gross Hyperbole to give the reputation of an Engineer, to a maker of Mousetraps. Such an Historian would hardly pass muster with a Scotch Stationer in a sieve full of Ballads and godly Books. He would not serve for the breast plate of a begging Grecian. The most cramped Compendium that the age hath seen since all learning was torn into ends, outstrips him by the head: I have heard of puppets that could prattle in a Play, but never saw of their writings before. There goes a report of the Holland women, that together with their children, they are delivered of a Sooterkin; not unlike to a Rat, which some imagine to be the Offspring of the Stooves: I know not what ignis fatuus adulterates the Press, but it seems much after that fashion, else how could this Vermin think to be a Twin to a legitimate Writer, when those weekly fragments shall pass for History? let the poor man's box be entitled the Exchequer, and the almsbasket a Magazine. Not a worm that gnaws on the dull scalp of voluminous Hollinshed, but at every meal devoured more Chronicle, than his Tribe amounts to. A marginal note of William Prinne would serve for a winding sheet for that man's works, like thick skinned fruits are all rind, fit for nothing but the Author's fare, to be pared in a Pillory.  
The Cook, who served up the Dwarf in a Pie, (to contain the frolic) might have lapped up such an Historian as this in the bill of fate. He is the first tincture and rudiment of a Writer, dipped as yet in the preparative blue, like an Almanac well-willer. He is the Cadet of a Pamphleteere, the Pedee of a Romancer. He is the Embryo of a History, slinked before maturity. How should he record the issues of time, who is himself an Abortive? I will not say but he may pass for a historian in Gerbiers' Academy, he is much of size of those knotgrass Professors; What a pitiful Seminary was there projected yet suitable enough to the present University's, those dry Nurses which the providence of the age has so fully reformed that they are turned Reformadoes. But that's no matter, the meaner the better. It is a maxim observable in these days, that the only way to win the game is to play petty john's. Of this number is the Esquire of the quill; for he hath the grudging of History, and some yawnings accordingly: Writing is a disease in him, and holds like a quotidian, so 'tis his infirmity that makes him an Author. As Mahomet was beholding to the falling-sickness to vouch him a Prophet. That nice Artificer, who filled a chain so thin and light that a flea could trail it, (as if he had worked short hand, and taught his tools to cipher) did but contrive an Emblem for this skip-jack, and his slight productions.  
Methinks the Turk should licence Diurnals, because he prohibits learning and books. A Library of Diurnals is a wardrobe of frippery, 'tis a just Idea of a Limbo of the Infants. I saw one once that could write with his toes, by the same token I could have wished he had worn his copies for socks, 'tis he without doubt from whom the Diurnals derive their pedigree, and they have a birthright accordingly, being shuffled out at the bed's feet of History. To what infinite numbers an Historian would multiply, should he crumble into Elves of this profession? Legioned Pimme, whose flesh bred such a world of Executors, as being made of the row of a Herring, of nothing else but compacted Nits, did not disband his body in more variety. To supply this smallness they are fain to join forces, so they are not singly, but as the custom is in a croaking Committee; they tug at the Pen, like slaves at the Oar, a whole bank together, they writ in the posture that the Swedes gave fire in, over one another's heads. It is said there is more of them go to a suit of , than to a Britannicus; In this Polygamy the Cloats breed, and cannot determine whose issue is lawfully begotten.  
And here I think it were not amiss to take a particular how he is accoutred, and so do by him, as he in his Siquiss for the wall-eyed mare, or the crop fleabitten; give you the narkes of the Beast. I begin with his head, which is ever in the Clours, as if the nightcap should make Affidabit, that the brain was pregnant. To what purpose doth the Pia Mater lie in so dully, in her white formallityes, sure she hath hard labour; for the brows have squeezed for it, as you may perceive by his buttered bongrace, that film of a dimicaster, 'tis so thin and unctuous, that the Sunbeams mistake it for a vapour, and are like to cap him; so 'tis right Heliotrope, it creaks in the shine, and flappes in the shade, What ever it be, I wish it were able to call in his ears; there's no proportion betwixt that head and appurtenances; those of all Lungs are no more fit for that small Noddle of the circumcision, than brass bosses for a Geneva Bible. In what a puzzling neutrality is the poor soul that moves betwixt two such ponderous byasses. His collar is wedged with a piece of peeping linen, by which he means a band, 'tis the forlorn of his shirt crawling out of his neck, indeed it were time that his shirt were jogging, for it has served an apprenticeship and (as apprentices use) it hath learned his trade too, to which effect 'tis marching to the Paper Mill, and the next week sets up for itself in the shape of a Pamphle. His gloves are the shave of his hands, for he casts his skin like a canceled parchment, the itch represents the broken seals. His Boots are the Legacies of two black Jacks, and till he pawned the silver that the Jacks were tipped with, it was a pretty mode of boot-hose-tops. For the rest of his habit, he is a perfect Seaman, a kind of Interpawlin, he being hanged about with his course composition, those pole-dames papers.  
But I must draw to an end, for every Character is an Anatomy Lecture, and it fares with me in this of the Diurnall-maker, as with him that reads on a begged Malefactor; my subject smells before I have gone half thorough him: for a parting blow, then, the word Historian imports a sage and solemn Author, one that curls his brow with a sullen gravity, like a Bull-necked Presbyter, since the Army hath got him off his jurisdiction, who Presbyter-like sweeps his breast with a reverend beard, full of native mosse-troopers. Not such a squirting scribe as this that's troubled with the Rickets; and makes penny worths of History. The Colledge-Treasury, that never had in bank above a Harry groat, shut up there in a melancholy solitude, like one that is kept to keep possession, had as good evidence to show for his title, as he for an Historian so if he needs will be a Historian, he is not cited in the Sterling acception, but after the rate of blue caps reckoning, an Historian Scot Now a Scotchmans' tongue runs high Fullam's, their is a Cheat in his Ideome; for the sense ebbs from the bold expression, like the Citizen's Gallon, which the drawer interprets but half a pint. In sum, a Diurnall-maker is the antemark of an Historian, he differs from him as a Drill from a man or (if you had rather have it in the Saint's gibberish) as a Hinter doth from a Holderforth.  
FINIS.