John Earle

LONDON:
Printed by William Stansbury, for
Robert Allot, 1628.

[W. H. Allnutt, in a MS. note inserted in the Bodleian copy of Arber's Reprint of the Characters, states that Arber has mistaken the order of priority of the three 1628 edd. Arber places the ed. with the above title-page second, and that of which the title is copied on p. 330, third. The second ed., called by Arber the first, is not in the Bodleian.]

The last written page of the Durham MS. has by way of Colophon

Finis.
Decemberanno Do
This 14thmini
day1627.

"This little volume in calf binding, about 12mo size, is doubtless one of those referred to by Ed. Blount in his address to the Reader. The MS. is written in an exceedingly neat and small hand on the pages of the previously bound book, with margin lines ruled in red. At the top of the first page is written in a different hand, 'Edw. Blunt, Author.' The MS. contains 46 Characters in all, and is free from some evident blunders in the first printed copies, as if they had been done from dictation."

This MS. in the Durham Cathedral Library is entered in the catalogue (of the Hunter MSS.) as "Characters by Edward Blunt," and dated "about 1636," the date in the MS. having been overlooked.

Dr. Fowler in Notes and Queries, Nov. 4th, 1871.

EARLE'S MICROCOSMOGRAPHY.

C has "Newly composed for the Northerne parts of this Kingdome."

F. Madan, Sub-Librarian Bodleian Library,

February 11th, 1897.

This table was compiled for me most kindly by Mr. Madan. It answers the question, what editions Bliss knew of at various times.

The following passage from Evelyn's Diary adds one more testimony to Earle. Nov. 30th, 1662. "Invited by the Deane of Westminster (Dr. Earle) to his consecration dinner and ceremony on his being made Bishop of Worcester. Dr. Bolton preached in the Abbey Church—then followed the consecration.... After this was one of the most plentiful and magnificent dinners that in my life I ever saw. It cost neere £600.... Here were the Judges, Nobility, Clergy, and gentlemen innumerable, this Bishop being universally belov'd for his sweete and gentle disposition. He was author of those characters which go under the name of Blount. He translated his late Majesty's Icon into Latine, was Clerk of his Closet, Chaplaine, Deane of Westminster, and yet a most humble, meeke, but cheerful man, an excellent scholar,[EY] and rare preacher. I had the honour to be loved by him. He married me at Paris, during his Majesties and the Churches exile. When I tooke leave of him he brought me to the Cloysters in his episcopal habit." He elsewhere speaks of "going to St. Germans to desire of Dr. Earle," then in attendance at the Prince of Wales' Court, that he would marry him "at the chapel of his Majesty's Resident at the Court of France," June 10th, 1647. A sermon of Earle's, "my deare friend now Deane of Westminster" is mentioned on Christmas Day 1660. It was one "condoling the breache made in the public joy by the lamented death of the Princess of Orange." My attention was drawn to these passages by a friend who claims descent from Bishop Earle—Mr. W. B. Alt, of New College, Oxford.

A testimony from another hand[EZ] is quoted in Bliss's annotated copy. "How well he understood the world in his younger days appears by his smart characters; how little he valued it was seen in the careless indifference of his holy contemplative life."

In Burnet's History of his own Times we are told that Charles II. "who had a secret pleasure in finding out anything that lessened a man esteemed eminent for piety, yet had a value for him (Earle) beyond all the men of his order." (See Arber's Reprint.) On the other hand the Parliament in 1645 had named him as one to be summoned to the Assembly of Divines, but he declined to come.[FA]

In 1654 there was printed at the Hague an Elzevir volume—"morum exemplar," Latin characters by one Louis du Moulin. He aspires he says in the preface to be the Virgil or Seneca to Earle's Theocritus or Menander.

This is his testimony to the characters.

"Et sane salivam primum mihi movit vester Earles cujus characteribus, non puto quicquam exstare vel severius ubi seria tractat, vel festivius quands innoxie jocatur: ant pictorem unquam penicillo propius ad nativam speciem expressisse hominis vultus, quam ille ejus mores patria lingua descripserit."

It may be of interest to mention in connection with the title of Earle's book that the phrase of Menenius Agrippa in Coriolanus.—"The Map of my Microcosm" actually occurs as a title of a book of characters by H. Broune, 1642, the alternative description being "a morall description of man newly compiled into Essays.

Bliss's MS. book illustrates what I have said in the preface of the change in the character-sketch. The essay and the pamphlet gradually usurp the place of social studies. The great mass of the "characters" of the last half of the seventeenth century are political or religious. On the other hand, while the only prose character in Bliss of the sixteenth century deals with the criminal classes, "a discoverie of ten English leapers verie noisome and hurtfull to the Church and Commonwealth," quoted in his MS. notebook, mixes such characters with "the Simoniacke," "the murmurer," "the covetous man." The date is 1592. (The Tincker of Torvey (1630) also exhibits this mixture.)

It may be worth while to add a few titles of books of characters, as illustrating the range of this class of literature, or as being in themselves interesting. They are from Bliss's own notes in his own copy of his book or in the MS. note book before referred to.

1. "The Coffee-House—a character."

2. Also a character of coffee and coffee-houses. "It was first brought into England when the palats of the English were as fanaticall as their brains.... The Englishman will be a la mode de France. With the barbarous Indian he smooks tobacco: with the Turk he drinks coffee."

3. News from the new Exchange. The commonwealth of ladies. Printed in the year of women with out Grace, 1650.

4. There are many countries characterized—Italy, Spain, Holland, Scotland. 'Holland' is in verse. It bears out Earle's contemptuous references to the Dutch. It is here called "The offscouring of the British land."

1672. [It will be found among Marvell's satires, but Bliss does not mention this.]

5. "Scotland characteriz'd: in a letter to a young gentleman to dissuade him from an intended journey thither, 1701."

6. "The noble cavalier characterized," "& a rebellious caviller cauterized," 1644 or 5. An answer to Wither's Campo MusÆ. A vigorous preface says—"To begin roundly, soundly, and profoundly, the Cavalier is a gentleman." By John Taylor.

7. Lucifer's Lacky: the true character of a dissembling Brownist, 1641.

8. "The Tincker of Torvey: a scholler, a cobler, a tincker, a smith; with Bluster, a seaman, travel from Billingsgate to Gravesend." 1650.

9. "The interpreter," 1622, deals with "three principall terms of state—a puritan, a Protestant, a papist."

10. "The Joviall Crew; or the Devill turn'd Ranter." 1651.

11. ta d?afe???ta; or divine characters, in two parts, will have an interest for Bristol readers; it is "by that late burning and shining lamp, Master Samuel Crook, B.D., late Pastor of Wrington in Somerset, who being dead yet speaketh." 1658.

12. "A character of the Religion and manners of Phanatiques in Generall," 1660, includes in the list "Seekers and Enthusiasts." The last sounds strange as a species.

13. "The character of an Ignoramus Doctor," 1681, recalls The Microcosmography.

14. The captive Captain, or the restrained Cavalier," 1665, also, in part, suggests Earle. "Of a Prison," "The anatomy of a Jayler," "The lean Prisoner," "The restrained Cavalier and his melancholy."

15. Bliss also mentions "The character of a learned man," and gives some choice extracts. "Our sottish and idle enthusiasts are to be reproved who call learning but a splendidum peccatum." "Alexander commanded his soldiers neither to damnify Pindarus, the poet, nor any of his family."

16. "A wandering Jew telling fortunes to Englishmen." 1640.

17. "The spiritual navigators bound for the Holy Land." 1615.

18. "The picture of a modern Whig: a dialogue between Whiglove and Double, at Tom's Coffee-House." 1715.

19. In 1671 "Le vice ridicule" appeared. A sort of translation of Earle's characters.

20. Pictures of Passions, Fancies, and Affections, poetically deciphered in variety of characters (no date).

21. Characters of gentlemen that have put in to the Ladies Invention. This begins—"A little Beau of the city strain."

22. Characters of several ingenious designing gentlewomen, who have lately put in to the Ladies Invention, which is intended to be drawn as soon as full. (There is no date to either of these.)

One or two extracts may be added from Anthony Wood.

"Lord Falkland, when he became one of the gentlemen of His Majesty's Privy Chamber, had frequent retirements to Great Tew and sometimes to Oxon, for the company of and conversation with learned and witty men. William Chillingworth (author of the Religion of Protestants), Joh. Earle,[FB] Charles Gataker (son of Thomas Gataker [the Editor of Marcus Aurelius] and Anthony Wood thinks Chaplain to Lord Falkland); Thomas Triplet, a very witty man of Christ Church; Hugh Cressey, and others.[FC] Cressey wrote a number of theological works, and in one of them occurs the testimony to Earle given in Bliss."

The saturnine Anthony Wood is amusingly illustrated in two passages from his notice of Earle. "John Earle received his first being in this vain and transitory world within the city of York.... His elegy on Beaumont was printed at the end of the quarto edition of Beaumont's poems—put out with a poetical epistle before them, subscribed by a Presbyterian bookbinder—afterwards an informer to the Court of Sequestration ... and a beggar defunct in prison"! In the notice of Morley he tells us that "his banishment was made less tedious to him by the company of Dr. Joh. Earle, his dearest friend." It is sad to find that the translation of Hooker which was "to make the learned of all nations happy" was "utterly destroyed"—the loose papers being taken by the servants after Earle's death "to light their fires or else to put under their bread and pies." This translation "was Earle's entertainment during a part of his exile at Cologne." See the Bodleian letters quoted in Arber's Reprint. To that Reprint I have been much indebted for help of various kinds.

My warmest thanks are due to Professor Rowley, of University College, Bristol, whom I have constantly consulted while preparing this issue of Dr. Bliss's edition. If one may be allowed a slight twist of a Shakspearian phrase, I would say of such help as his—"Ripeness is all." It is this quality that makes one at least of Professor Rowley's friends so grateful and so importunate.

S. T. I.
Clifton, April, 1897.