fore 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[1], or antipathy, which Jack and his 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
- ↑ The papists and fanaticks, though they appear the most averse against each other, yet bear a near resemblance in many things, as hath been observed by learned men.
Ibid. The agreement of our dissenters and the papists, in that which bishop Stillingfleet called, the fanaticism of the church of 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.
