nor wound with a direct censure, he strikes smoothly with an over cold praise; and when he sees that he must either maliciously impugn the just praise of another (which were unsafe), or approve it by assent, he yieldeth; but shows withal that his means were such, both by nature and education, that he could not, without much neglect, be less commendable. So his happiness shall be made the colour of detraction. When an wholesome law is propounded, he crosseth it either by open or close opposition, not for any incommodity or inexpedience, but because it proceeded from any mouth besides his own. And it must be a cause rarely plausible that will not admit some probable contradiction. When his equal should rise to honour, he strives against it unseen, and rather with much cost suborneth great adversaries; and when he sees his resistance vain, he can give an hollow gratulation in presence, but in secret disparages that advancement. Either the man is unfit for the place, or the place for the man; or if fit, yet less gainful, or more common than opinion; whereto he adds that himself might have had the same dignity upon better terms, and refused it. He is witty in devising suggestions to bring his rival out of love into suspicion. If he be courteous, he is seditiously popular; if bountiful, he binds over his clients to a faction; if successful in war, he is dangerous in peace; if wealthy, he lays up for a day; if powerful, nothing wants but opportunity of rebellion. His submission is ambitious hypocrisy; his religion, politic insinuation; no action is safe from a jealous construction. When he receives a good report of him whom he emulates, he saith, "Fame is partial, and is wont to blanche mischiefs;" and pleaseth himself with hope to find it worse; and if ill-will have dispersed any more spiteful narration, he lays hold on that, against all witnesses, and broacheth that rumour for truest because worst; and when he sees him perfectly miserable, he can at once pity him, and rejoice. What himself cannot do, others shall not; he hath gained well if he have hindered the success of what he would have done, and could not. He conceals his best skill, not so as it may not be known that he knows it, but so as it may not be learned, because he would have the world miss

him. He attained to a foreign medicine by the secret legacy of a dying empiric, whereof he will leave no heir lest the praise shall be divided. Finally, he is an enemy to God's favours, if they fall beside himself; the best nurse of ill-fame, a man of the worst diet, for he consumes himself, and delights in pining; a thornhedge covered with nettles, a peevish interpreter of good things, and no other than a lean and pale carcase quickened with a fiend.

JOHN STEPHENS,

The younger, a lawyer of Lincoln's Inn, published in 1615 "Satyrical Essayes, Characters, and others, or accurate and quick Descriptions fitted to the life of their Subjects." He had published two years before a play called "Cinthia's Revenge, or Manander's Extasie," which Langbaine described as one of the longest he had ever read, and the most tedious. Somebody seems to have attacked him and his Characters. A second edition, in 1631, was entitled "New Essays and Characters, with a new Satyre in defence of the Common Law, and Lawyers: mixt with Reproofe against their enemy Ignoramus."

JOHN EARLE

Is the next of our Character writers. His "Microcosmography, or a Piece of the World discovered, in Essays and Characters," was first printed in 1628. John Earle was born in the city of York, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, probably in the year 1601. His father, who was Registrar of the Archbishop's Court, sent him to Oxford in 1619, and he was said to be eighteen years old when he matriculated, that year, as a commoner at Christchurch. He graduated as Master of Arts in 1624. He was a Fellow of Merton, and wrote in his younger days several occasional poems that won credit before he published anonymously, still as an Oxford man, when he was about twenty-seven years old, his famous Characters. But he remembered York when adding to their title that they were newly composed for the northern part of this Kingdom." This first edition contained fifty-four characters, which precede the others in the following collection. In the next year, 1629, the book reached a fifth edition, printed for Robert Allot, in which the number of the characters was increased to seventy-six. Two more charactersHerald, and a Suspicious or Jealous Man—were added in the sixth edition, which was printed for Allot in 1633. The seventh edition was printed for Andrew Cooke in 1638, the eighth in 1650. editions followed in 1669, 1676, 1732, and at Salisbury in 1786. In 1811 the little book was edited carefully by Dr. Philip Bliss, and it was edited again by Professor Edward Arber in 1868, in his valuable series of English Reprints.

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Other

John Earle, after the production of his "Microcosmography," wrote in April 1630 a short poem upon the death of William, third Earl of Pembroke, son of Sidney's sister. The third Earl's younger brother Philip succeeded as fourth Earl, and was Chancellor of the University of Oxford. He was then, or thereafter became, Earle's patron, and made him his chaplain. About the same time, in 1631, Earle acted as proctor of the University. In 1639 the Earl of

Pembroke presented John Earle to the living of Bishopston in Wiltshire, as successor to Chillingworth. Pembroke being Lord Chamberlain was entitled also to a residence at Court for his chaplain, and thus Earle was brought under the immediate notice of Charles I., who appointed him to be his own chaplain, and made him tutor to Prince Charles in 1641, when Dr. Brian Duppa, the preceding tutor, had been made Bishop of Salisbury. In 1642 Earle proceeded to the degree of D.D. In 1643 he was elected Chancellor of the Cathedral at Salisbury, but he was presently deprived by the Parliament of that office, and of his living at Bishopston. He then lived in retirement abroad, made a translation into Latin of Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity," which his servants negligently used, after his death, as waste paper, and of the "Eikon Basilike," which was published in 1649. After the Restoration, Dr. Earle was made Dean of Westminster; then, in 1662, Bishop of Worcester. He was translated to Salisbury in 1663, died in November 1665, and was buried near the altar in Merton College Church.

Earle was a man so gentle and liberal, that while Clarendon described him as "among the few excellent men who never had and never could have an enemy," Baxter wrote in the margin of a kindly letter from him, "O, that they were all such!" and Calamy described him as a man that could do good against evil, forgive much out of a charitable heart." The Parliament, even just before depriving him as a malignant, had put him to the trouble of declining its nomination as one of the Westminster Assembly of Divines. As a Bishop in the early days of Charles the Second he did all he could to oppose the persecuting spirit of the first Conventicle Act and of the Five Mile Act.

Dr. Philip Bliss, who died in 1857, after a life marked by many services to English Literature, chose Bishop Earle's "Characters" for one of his earlier studies, published in 1811, when his own age was twenty-four. His book1 included an account of Bishop Earle himself, a list of his writings, publication for the first time of some Microcosmography; or, a Piece of the World discovered; in Essays and Characters. By John Earle, D.D. of Christchurch and Merton College, Oxford, and Bishop of Salisbury. A new edition, to which are added Notes and Appendix, by Philip Bliss, Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford."

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of his early verses, his correspondence with Baxter, and a Chronological List of Books of Characters from 1567 to 1700, which was the first contribution to a study of this feature in our Seventeenth Century Literature. Bliss took his text of Earle from the edition of 1732, collated with the first impression in 1628. As the Characters which now follow are given with Bliss's text and notes, I add what the editor himself says of his method. The variations of the 1732 text from the first impressions in 1628 are thus distinguished: "Those words or passages which have been added since the first edition are contained between brackets [and printed in the common type]; those which have received some alteration are printed in italic; and the passages, as they stand in the first edition, are always given in a note."