the more intelligent merchants do jeer him, the vulgar do admire him, holding his novels oracular; and these are usually sent for tokens or intermissive courtesies betwixt city and country. He holds most constantly one form or method of discourse. He retains some military words of art, which he shoots at random ; no matter where they hit, they cannot wound any. He ever leaves some passages doubtful, as if they were some more intimate secrecies of state, closing his sentence abruptly with-hereafter you shall hear more. Which words, I conceive, he only useth as baits, to make the appetite of the reader more eager in his next week's pursuit for a more satisfying labour. Some general-erring relations he picks up, as crumbs or fragments, from a frequented ordinary; of which shreds he shapes a coat to fit any credulous fool that will wear it. You shall never observe him make any reply in places of public concourse; he ingenuously acknowledges himself to be more bounden to the happiness of a retentive memory, than either ability of tongue or pregnancy of conceit. He carries his table-book still about with him, but dares not pull it out publicly. Yet no sooner is the table drawn than he turns notary, by which means he recovers the charge of his ordinary. Paul's is his walk in winter, Moorfields in summer, where the whole discipline, designs, projects, and exploits of the States, Netherlands, Poland, Switzer, Crimchan and all, are within the compass of one quadrangle walk most judiciously and punctually discovered. But long he must not walk, lest he make his news-press stand. Thanks to his good invention, he can collect much out of a very little; no matter though more experienced judgments disprove him, he is anonymous, and that will secure him. To make his reports more credible or (which he and his stationer only aims at) more vendible, in the relation of every occurrence he renders you the day of the month; and to approve himself a scholar, he annexeth these Latin parcels, or parcel-gilt sentences, veteri stylo, novo stylo. Palisados, parapets, counter-scarps, forts, fortresses, rampiers, bulwarks, are his usual dialect. He writes as if he would do some mischief, yet the charge of his shot is but paper. He will sometimes start in his sleep, as one affrighted

with visions, which I can impute to no other cause but to the terrible skirmishes which he discoursed of in the daytime. He has now tied himself apprentice to the trade of minting, and must weekly perform his task, or (beside the loss which accrues to himself) he disappoints a number of no small fools, whose discourse, discipline, and discretion is drilled from his stateservice. These you shall know by their Monday's morning question, a little before exchange time: Stationer, have you any news? Which they no sooner purchase than peruse; and, early by next morning (lest their country friend should be deprived of the benefit of so rich a prize), they freely vent the substance of it, with some illustrations, if their understanding can furnish them that way. He would make you believe that he were known to some foreign intelligence, but I hold him the wisest man that hath the least faith to believe him. For his relations he stands resolute, whether they become approved or evinced for untruths ; which if they be, he has contracted with his face never to blush for the matter. He holds especial concurrence with two philosophical sects, though he be ignorant of the tenets of either: in the collection of his observations he is peripatetical, for he walks circularly; in the digestion of his relations he is stoical, and sits regularly. He has an alphabetical table of all the chief commanders, generals, leaders, provincial towns, rivers, ports, creeks, with other fitting materials to furnish his imaginary building. Whisperings, mutterings, and bare suppositions are sufficient grounds for the authority of his relations. It is strange to see with what greediness this airy chameleon, being all lungs and wind, will swallow a receipt of news, as if it were physical; yea, with what frontless insinuation he will screw himself into the acquaintance of some knowing intelligencers, who, trying the cask by his hollow sound, do familiarly gull him. I am of opinion, were all his voluminous centuries of fabulous relations compiled, they would vie in number with the Iliads of many fore-running ages. You shall many times find in his gazettas, pasquils, and corrantos miserable distractions: here a city taken by force long before it be besieged; there a country laid waste before ever the

enemy entered. He many times tortures his readers with impertinencies, yet are these the tolerablest passages throughout all his discourse. He is the very landscape of our age. He is all air; his ear always open to all reports, which, how incredible soever, must pass for current and find vent, purposely to get him current money and delude the vulgar. Yet our best comfort is, his chimeras live not long; a week is the longest in the city, and after their arrival, little longer in the country, which past they melt like butter, or match a pipe, and so burn. But indeed, most commonly it is the height of their ambition to aspire to the employment of stopping mustard-pots, or wrapping up pepper, powder, staves-aker, &c., which done, they expire. Now for his habit, Wapping and Long Lane will give him his character. He honours nothing with a more endeared observance, nor hugs ought with more intimacy, than antiquity, which he expresseth even in his clothes. I have known some love fish best that smelled of the pannier; and the like humour reigns in him, for he loves that apparel best that has a taste of the broker. Some have held him for a scholar, but trust me such are in a palpable error, for he never yet understood so much Latin as to construe Gallo-Belgicus. For his library (his own continuations excepted), it consists of very few or no books. He holds himself highly engaged to his invention if it can purchase him victuals; for authors, he never converseth with them, unless they walk in Paul's. For his discourse it is ordinary, yet he will make you a terrible repetition of desperate commanders, unheard-of exploits, intermixing withal his own personal service. But this is not in all companies, for his experience hath sufficiently informed him in this principle—that as nothing works more on the simple than things strange and incredibly rare, so nothing discovers his weakness more among the knowing and judicious than to insist, by way of discourse, on reports above conceit. Amongst these, therefore, he is as mute as a fish. But now imagine his lamp (if

he be worth one) to be nearly burnt out, his inventing genius wearied and footsore with ranging over so many unknown regions, and himself wasted with the fruitless expense of much paper,

T

resigning his place of weekly collections to another, whom, in hope of some little share, he has to his stationer recommended, while he lives either poorly respected or dies miserably suspended. The rest I end with his own close :-Next week you shall hear

more.

The other characters in "Whimzies" were an Almanac-maker, a Ballad-monger, a Decoy, an Exchange-man, a Forester, a Gamester, an Hospital-man, a Jailer, a Keeper, a Launderer, a Metal-man, a Neater, an Ostler, a Postmaster, a Quest-man, a Ruffian, a Sailor, a Traveller, an Under-Sheriff, a WineSoaker, a Xantippean, a Jealous Neighbour, a Zealous Brother. The collection was enlarged by addition under separate title-page of "A Cater-Character, thrown out of a box by an Experienced Gamester," which gave Characters of an Apparitor, a Painter, a Pedlar, and a Piper. The author added also some lines "vpon the Birthday of his sonne Iohn," beginning

"God blesse thee, Iohn,

And make thee such an one
That I may joy

In calling thee my son.

Thou art my ninth,

And by it I divine

That thou shalt live

To love the Muses Nine."

JOHN MILTON,

when he was at college, ventured down among the Character-writers in his two pieces on the University Carrier. Thomas Hobson had been for sixty years carrier between Cambridge and the Bull Inn, Bishopsgate Street, London. He was a very well-known Cambridge character. Steele, in No. 509 of the "Spectator," ascribed to him the origin of the proverbial phrase, Hobson's Choice. "Being a man of great ability and invention, and one that saw where there might good profit arise, though the duller men overlooked it, this ingenious man was the first in this island who let out hackneyhorses." [That is a mistake, but never mind.] "He lived in Cambridge; and, observing that the scholars rid hard, his manner was to keep a large stable of horses, with boots, bridles, and whips, to furnish the gentlemen at once, without going from college to college to borrow. I say, Mr. Hobson kept a stable of forty good cattle, always ready and fit for travelling; but, when a man came for a horse, he was led into the stable, where there was great choice; but he obliged him to take the horse which stood next the stable door; so that every customer was alike well served according to his chance, and every horse ridden with the same justice—from whence it became a proverb, when what ought to be your election was forced upon you, to say 'Hobson's Choice!'"

In the spring of 1630 the Plague in Cambridge caused colleges to be closed, and among other precautions against spread of infection, Hobson the Carrier was forbidden to go to and fro between Cambridge and London. At the end of the year, after six or seven months of forced inaction, Hobson sickened; and he died on the first of January, at the age of eighty-six, leaving his family amply provided for, and money for the maintenance of the town conduit. At the Bull Inn in London there used to be a portrait of him with a money-bag under his arm.

Character-writing being in fashion many a character of the