Flattery is nothing but false friendship, fawning hypocrisy, dishonest civility, base merchandise of words, a plausible discord of the heart and lips. The flatterer is blear-eyed to ill, and cannot see vices; and his tongue walks ever in one track of unjust praises, and can no more tell how to discommend than to speak true. His speeches are full of wondering interjections, and all his titles are superlative, and both of them seldom ever but in presence. His base mind is well matched with a mercenary tongue, which is a willing slave to another man's ear; neither regardeth he how true, but how pleasing. His art is nothing but delightful cozenage, whose rules are smoothing and guarded with perjury; whose scope is to make men fools in teaching them to overvalue themselves, and to tickle his friends to death. This man is a porter of all good tales, and mends them in the carriage; one of Fame's best friends and his own, that helps to furnish her with those rumours that may advantage himself. Conscience hath no greater adversary, for when she is about to play her just part of accusation, he stops her mouth with good terms, and well-near strangleth her with shifts. Like that subtle fish, he turns himself into the colour of every stone for a booty. In himself he is nothing but what pleaseth his great one, whose virtues he cannot more extol than imitate his imperfections, that he may think his worst graceful. Let him say it is hot, he wipes his forehead and unbraceth himself; if cold, he shivers and calls for a warmer garment. When he walks with his friend he swears to him that no man else is looked at, no man talked of, and that whomsoever he vouchsafes to look on and nod to is graced enough; that he knows not his own worth, lest he should be too happy; and when he tells what others say in his praise, he interrupts himself modestly and dares not speak the rest; so his concealment is more insinuating than his speech. He hangs upon the lips which he admireth, as if they could let fall nothing but oracles, and finds occasion to cite some approved sentence under the name he honoureth; and when aught is nobly spoken, both his hands are little enough to bless him. Sometimes even in absence he extolleth his patron, where he may presume of safe conveyance to his ears; and in presence so whispereth his commendation to a common friend, that it may not be unheard where he meant it. He hath salves for every sore, to hide them, not to heal them; complexion for every face; sin hath not any more artificial broker or more impudent bawd. There is no vice that hath not from him his colour, his allurement; and his best service is either to further guiltiness or smother it. If he grant evil things inexpedient or crimes errors, he hath yielded much; either thy estate gives privilege of liberty or thy youth; or if neither, what if it be ill? yet it is pleasant. Honesty to him is nice singularity, repentance superstitious melancholy, gravity dulness, and all virtue an innocent conceit of the base-minded. In short, he is the moth of liberal men's coats, the earwig of the mighty, the bane of courts, a friend and a slave to the trencher, and good for nothing but to be a factor for the devil.
He is a religious man, and wears the time in his cloister, and, as the cloak of his doing nothing, pleads contemplation; yet is he no whit the leaner for his thoughts, no whit learneder. He takes no less care how to spend time than others how to gain by the expense; and when business importunes him, is more troubled to forethink what he must do, than another to effect it. Summer is out of his favour for nothing but long days that make no haste to their even. He loves still to have the sun witness of his rising, and lies long, more for lothness to dress him than will to sleep; and after some streaking and yawning, calls for dinner unwashed, which having digested with a sleep in his chair, he walks forth to the bench in the market-place, and looks for companions. Whomsoever he meets he stays with idle questions, and lingering discourse; how the days are lengthened, how kindly the weather is, how false the clock, how forward the spring, and ends ever with, What shall we do? It pleases him no less to hinder others than not to work himself. When all the people are gone from church, he is left sleeping in his seat alone. He enters bonds, and forfeits them by forgetting the day; and asks his neighbour when his own field was fallowed, whether the next piece of ground belong not to himself. His care is either none or too late. When winter is come, after some sharp visitations, he looks on his pile of wood, and asks how much was cropped the last spring. Necessity drives him to every action, and what he cannot avoid he will yet defer. Every change troubles him, although to the better, and his dulness counterfeits a kind of contentment. When he is warned on a jury, he had rather pay the mulct than appear. All but that which Nature will not permit he doth by a deputy, and counts it troublesome to do nothing, but to do anything yet more. He is witty in nothing but framing excuses to sit still, which if the occasion yield not he coineth with ease. There is no work that is not either dangerous or thankless, and whereof he foresees not the inconvenience and gainlessness before he enters; which if it be verified in event, his next idleness hath found a reason to patronize it. He had rather freeze than fetch wood, and chooses rather to steal than work; to beg than take pains to steal, and in many things to want than beg. He is so loth to leave his neighbour's fire, that he is fain to walk home in the dark; and if he be not looked to, wears out the night in the chimney-corner, or if not that, lies down in his clothes, to save two labours. He eats and prays himself asleep, and dreams of no other torment but work. This man is a standing pool, and cannot choose but gather corruption. He is descried amongst a thousand neighbours by a dry and nasty hand, that still savours of the sheet, a beard uncut, unkempt, an eye and ear yellow with their excretions, a coat shaken on, ragged, unbrushed, by linen and face striving whether shall excel in uncleanness. For body, he hath a swollen leg, a dusky and swinish eye, a blown cheek, a drawling tongue, an heavy foot, and is nothing but a colder earth moulded with standing water. To conclude, is a man in nothing but in speech and shape.
He is a servant to himself, yea, to his servant; and doth base homage to that which should be the worst drudge. A lifeless piece of earth is his master, yea his god, which he shrines in his coffer, and to which he sacrifices his heart. Every face of his coin is a new image, which he adores with the highest veneration; yet takes upon him to be protector of that he worshippeth, which he fears to keep and abhors to lose, not daring to trust either any other god or his own. Like a true chemist, he turns everything into silver, both what he should eat, and what he should wear; and that he keeps to look on, not to use. When he returns from his field, he asks, not without much rage, what became of the loose crust in his cupboard, and who hath rioted among his leeks. He never eats good meal but on his neighbour's trencher, and there he makes amends to his complaining stomach for his former and future fasts. He bids his neighbours to dinner, and when they have done, sends in a trencher for the shot. Once in a year, perhaps, he gives himself leave to feast, and for the time thinks no man more lavish; wherein he lists not to fetch his dishes from far, nor will be beholden to the shambles; his own provision shall furnish his board with an insensible cost, and when his guests are parted, talks how much every man devoured, and how many cups were emptied, and feeds his family with the mouldy remnants a month after. If his servant break but an earthen dish for want of light, he abates it out of his quarter's wages. He chips his bread, and sends it back to exchange for staler. He lets money, and sells time for a price, and will not be importuned either to prevent or defer his day; and in the meantime looks for secret gratuities, besides the main interest, which he sells and returns into the stock. He breeds of money to the third generation, neither hath it sooner any being, than he sets it to beget more. In all things he affects secrecy and propriety; he grudgeth his neighbour the water of his well, and next to stealing he hates borrowing. In his short and unquiet sleeps he dreams of thieves, and runs to the door and names more men than he hath. The least sheaf he ever culls out for tithe, and to rob God holds it the best pastime, the clearest gain. This man cries out above others of the prodigality of our times, and tells of the thrift of our forefathers: how that great prince thought himself royally attired, when he bestowed thirteen shillings and fourpence on half a suit. How one wedding gown served our grandmothers till they exchanged it for a winding-sheet; and praises plainness, not for less sin, but for less cost. For himself, he is still known by his forefather's coat, which he means with his blessing to bequeath to the many descents of his heirs. He neither would be poor, nor be accounted rich. No man complains so much of want, to avoid a subsidy; no man is so importunate in begging, so cruel in exaction; and when he most complains of want, he fears that which he complains to have. No way is indirect to wealth, whether of fraud or violence. Gain is his godliness, which if conscience go about to prejudice, and grow troublesome by exclaiming against, he is condemned for a common barretor. Like another Ahab, he is sick of the next field, and thinks he is ill-seated, while he dwells by neighbours. Shortly, his neighbours do not much more hate him, than he himself. He cares not (for no great advantage) to lose his friend, pine his body, damn his soul; and would despatch himself when corn falls, but that he is loth to cast away money on a cord.
All his humour rises up into the froth of ostentation, which if it once settle falls down into a narrow room. If the excess be in the understanding part, all his wit is in print; the press hath left his head empty, yea, not only what he had, but what he could borrow without leave. If his glory be in his devotion, he gives not an alms but on record; and if he have once done well, God hears of it often, for upon every unkindness he is ready to upbraid Him with merits. Over and above his own discharge, he hath some satisfactions to spare for the common treasure. He can fulfil the law with ease, and earn God with superfluity. If he hath bestowed but a little sum in the glazing, paving, parieting of God's house, you shall find it in the church window. Or if a more gallant humour possess him, he wears all his land on his back, and walking high, looks over his left shoulder, to see if the point of his rapier follow him with a grace. He is proud of another man's horse, and well mounted, thinks every man wrongs him that looks not at him. A bare head in the street doth him more good than a meal's meat. He swears big at an ordinary, and talks of the court with a sharp accent; neither vouchsafes to name any not honourable, nor those without some term of familiarity, and likes well to see the hearer look upon him amazedly, as if he said, How happy is this man that is so great with great ones! Under pretence of seeking for a scroll of news, he draws out an handful of letters endorsed with his own style to the height, and half reading every title, passes over the latter part with a murmur, not without signifying what lord sent this, what great lady the other, and for what suits; the last paper (as it happens) is his news from his honourable friend in the French court. In the midst of dinner, his lackey comes sweating in with a sealed note from his creditor, who now threatens a speedy arrest, and whispers the ill news in his master's ear, when he aloud names a counsellor of state, and professes to know the employment. The same messenger he calls with an imperious nod, and after expostulation, where he hath left his fellows, in his ear, sends him for some new spur-leathers or stockings by this time footed; and when he is gone half the room, recalls him, and sayeth aloud, It is no matter, let the greater bag alone till I come. And yet again calling him closer, whispers (so that all the table may hear), that if his crimson suit be ready against the day, the rest need no haste. He picks his teeth when his stomach is empty, and calls for pheasants at a common inn. You shall find him prizing the richest jewels and fairest horses, when his purse yields not money enough for earnest. He thrusts himself into the press before some great ladies, and loves to be seen near the head of a great train. His talk is how many mourners he furnished with gowns at his father's funeral, how many messes, how rich his coat is, and how ancient, how great his alliance; what challenges he hath made and answered; what exploits he did at Calais or Newport; and when he hath commended others' buildings, furnitures, suits, compares them with his own. When he hath undertaken to be the broker for some rich diamond, he wears it, and pulling off his glove to stroke up his hair, thinks no eye should have any other object. Entertaining his friend, he chides his cook for no better cheer, and names the dishes he meant and wants. To conclude, he is ever on the stage, and acts still a glorious part abroad, when no man carries a baser heart, no man is more sordid and careless at home. He is a Spanish soldier on an Italian theatre, a bladder full of wind, a skinful of words, a fool's wonder and a wise man's fool.
Presumption is nothing but hope out of his wits, an high house upon weak pillars. The presumptuous man loves to attempt great things, only because they are hard and rare. His actions are bold and venturous, and more full of hazard than use. He hoisteth sail in a tempest, and sayeth never any of his ancestors were drowned. He goes into an infected house, and says the plague dares not seize on noble blood. He runs on high battlements, gallops down steep hills, rides over narrow bridges, walks on weak ice, and never thinks, What if I fall? but, What if I run over and fall not? He is a confident alchemist, and braggeth that the womb of his furnace hath conceived a burden that will do all the world good; which yet he desires secretly borne, for fear of his own bondage. In the meantime his glass breaks, yet he upon better luting lays wagers of the success, and promiseth wedges beforehand to his friend. He saith, I will sin, and be sorry, and escape; either God will not see, or not be angry, or not punish it, or remit the measure. If I do well, He is just to reward; if ill, He is merciful to forgive. Thus his praises wrong God no less than his offence, and hurt himself no less than they wrong God. Any pattern is enough to encourage him. Show him the way where any foot hath trod, he dare follow, although he see no steps returning; what if a thousand have attempted, and miscarried, if but one hath prevailed it sufficeth. He suggests to himself false hopes of never too late, as if he could command either time or repentance, and dare defer the expectation of mercy, till betwixt the bridge and the water. Give him but where to set his foot, and he will remove the earth. He foreknows the mutations of states, the events of war, the temper of the seasons; either his old prophecy tells it him, or his stars. Yea, he is no stranger to the records of God's secret counsel, but he turns them over, and copies them out at pleasure. I know not whether in all his enterprises he show less fear or wisdom; no man promises himself more, no man more believes himself. I will go and sell, and return and purchase, and spend and leave my sons such estates: all which, if it succeed, he thanks himself; if not, he blames not himself. His purposes are measured, not by his ability, but his will; and his actions by his purposes. Lastly, he is ever credulous in assent, rash in undertaking, peremptory in resolving, witless in proceeding, and in his ending miserable, which is never other than either the laughter of the wise or the pity of fools.
The distrustful man hath his heart in his eyes or in his hand; nothing is sure to him but what he sees, what he handles. He is either very simple or very false, and therefore believes not others, because he knows how little himself is worthy of belief. In spiritual things, either God must leave a pawn with him or seek some other creditor. All absent things and unusual have no other but a conditional entertainment; they are strange, if true. If he see two neighbours whisper in his presence, he bids them speak out, and charges them to say no more than they can justify. When he hath committed a message to his servant, he sends a second after him to listen how it is delivered. He is his own secretary, and of his own counsel for what he hath, for what he purposeth. And when he tells over his bags, looks through the keyhole to see if he have any hidden witness, and asks aloud, Who is there? when no man hears him. He borrows money when he needs not, for fear lest others should borrow of him. He is ever timorous and cowardly, and asks every man's errand at the door ere he opens. After his first sleep he starts up and asks if the furthest gate were barred, and out of a fearful sweat calls up his servant and bolts the door after him, and then studies whether it were better to lie still and believe, or rise and see. Neither is his heart fuller of fears than his head of strange projects and far-fetched constructions. What means the state, think you, in such an action, and whither tends this course? Learn of me (if you know not) the ways of deep policies are secret, and full of unknown windings; that is their act, this will be their issue: so casting beyond the moon, he makes wise and just proceedings suspected. In all his predictions and imaginations he ever lights upon the worst; not what is most likely will fall out, but what is most ill. There is nothing that he takes not with the left hand; no text which his gloss corrupts not. Words, oaths, parchments, seals, are but broken reeds; these shall never deceive him, he loves no payments but real. If but one in an age have miscarried by a rare casualty, he misdoubts the same event. If but a tile fallen from an high roof have brained a passenger, or the breaking of a coach-wheel have endangered the burden, he swears he will keep home, or take him to his horse. He dares not come to church for fear of the crowd, nor spare the Sabbath's labour for fear of the want, nor come near the Parliament house, because it should have been blown up. What might have been affects him as much as what will be. Argue, vow, protest, swear, he hears thee, and believes himself. He is a sceptic, and dare hardly give credit to his senses, which he hath often arraigned of false intelligence. He so lives, as if he thought all the world were thieves, and were not sure whether himself were one. He is uncharitable in his censures, unquiet in his fears, bad enough always, but in his own opinion much worse than he is.
Ambition is a proud covetousness, a dry thirst of honour, the longing disease of reason, an aspiring and gallant madness. The ambitious climbs up high and perilous stairs, and never cares how to come down; the desire of rising hath swallowed up his fear of a fall. Having once cleaved like a burr to some great man's coat, he resolves not to be shaken off with any small indignities, and, finding his hold thoroughly fast, casts how to insinuate yet nearer. And therefore he is busy and servile in his endeavours to please, and all his officious respects turn home to himself. He can be at once a slave to command, an intelligencer to inform, a parasite to soothe and flatter, a champion to defend, an executioner to revenge anything for an advantage of favour. He hath projected a plot to rise, and woe be to the friend that stands in his way. He still haunteth the court, and his unquiet spirit haunteth him, which, having fetched him from the secure peace of his country rest, sets him new and impossible tasks, and, after many disappointments, encourages him to try the same sea in spite of his shipwrecks, and promise better success. A small hope gives him heart against great difficulties, and draws on new expense, new servility, persuading him like foolish boys to shoot away a second shaft, that he may find the first. He yieldeth, and now secure of the issue, applauds himself in that honour, which he still affecteth, still misseth; and, for the last of all trials, will rather bribe for a troublesome preferment than return void of a title. But now, when he finds himself desperately crossed, and at once spoiled both of advancement and hope, both of fruition and possibility, all his desire is turned into rage, his thirst is now only of revenge, his tongue sounds of nothing but detraction and slander. Now the place he fought for is base, his rival unworthy, his adversary injurious, officers corrupt, court infectious; and how well is he that may be his own man, his own master, that may live safely in a mean distance, at pleasure, free from starving, free from burning? But if his designs speed well, ere he be warm in that feat, his mind is possessed of an higher. What he hath is but a degree to what he would have. Now he scorneth what he formerly aspired to. His success doth not give him so much contentment as provocation; neither can he be at rest so long as he hath one, either to overlook, or to match, or to emulate him. When his country friend comes to visit him, he carries him up to the awful presence, and now in his sight, crowding nearer to the chair of state, desires to be looked on, desires to be spoken to by the greatest, and studies how to offer an occasion, lest he should seem unknown, unregarded; and if any gesture of the least grace fall happily upon him, he looks back upon his friend, lest he should carelessly let it pass, without a note; and what he wanteth in sense he supplies in history. His disposition is never but shamefully unthankful, for unless he have all he hath nothing. It must be a large draught, whereof he will not say that those few drops do not slake but inflame him. So still he thinks himself the worse for small favours. His wit so contrives the likely plots of his promotion, as if he would steal it away without God's knowledge, besides His will. Neither doth he ever look up, and consult in his forecasts with the supreme Moderator of all things, as one that thinks honour is ruled by fortune, and that heaven meddleth not with the disposing of these earthly lots; and therefore it is just with that wise God to defeat his fairest hopes, and to bring him to a loss in the hottest of his chase, and to cause honour to fly away so much the faster, by how much it is more eagerly pursued. Finally, he is an importunate suitor, a corrupt client, a violent undertaker, a smooth factor, but untrusty, a restless master of his own, a bladder puffed up with the wind of hope and self-love. He is in the common body as a mole in the earth, ever unquietly casting; and, in one word, is nothing but a confused heap of envy, pride, covetousness.
He ranges beyond his pale, and lives without compass. His expense is measured, not by ability, but will. His pleasures are immoderate, and not honest. A wanton eye, a liquorish tongue, a gamesome hand, have impoverished him. The vulgar sort call him bountiful, and applaud him when he spends; and recompense him with wishes when he gives, with pity when he wants. Neither can it be denied that he raught true liberality, but overwent it. No man could have lived more laudably, if, when he was at the best, he had stayed there. While he is present, none of the wealthier guests may pay aught to the shot without much vehemence, without danger of unkindness. Use hath made it unpleasant to him not to spend. He is in all things more ambitious of the title of good fellowship than of wisdom. When he looks into the wealthy chest of his father, his conceit suggests that it cannot be emptied; and while he takes out some deal every day, he perceives not any diminution; and when the heap is sensibly abated, yet still flatters himself with enough. One hand cozens the other, and the belly deceives both. He doth not so much bestow benefits as scatter them. True merit doth not carry them, but smoothness of adulation. His senses are too much his guides and his purveyors, and appetite is his steward. He is an impotent servant to his lusts, and knows not to govern either his mind or his purse. Improvidence is ever the companion of unthriftiness. This man cannot look beyond the present, and neither thinks nor cares what shall be, much less suspects what may be; and while he lavishes out his substance in superfluities, thinks he only knows what the world is worth, and that others overprize it. He feels poverty before he sees it, never complains till he be pinched with wants; never spares till the bottom, when it is too late either to spend or recover. He is every man's friend save his own, and then wrongs himself most when he courteth himself with most kindness. He vies time with the slothful, and it is a hard match whether chases away good hours to worse purpose, the one by doing nothing, or the other by idle pastime. He hath so dilated himself with the beams of prosperity that he lies open to all dangers, and cannot gather up himself, on just warning, to avoid a mischief. He were good for an almoner, ill for a steward. Finally, he is the living tomb of his forefathers, of his posterity; and when he hath swallowed both, is more empty than before he devoured them.
He feeds on others' evils, and hath no disease but his neighbour's welfare. Whatsoever God do for him, he cannot be happy with company; and if he were put to choose whether he would rather have equals in a common felicity, or superiors in misery, he would demur upon the election. His eye casts out too much, and never returns home, but to make comparisons with another's good. He is an ill prizer of foreign commodity; worse of his own, for that he rates too high, this under value. You shall have him ever inquiring into the estates of his equals and betters, wherein he is not more desirous to hear all than loth to hear anything over good; and if just report relate aught better than he would, he redoubles the question, as being hard to believe what he likes not, and hopes yet, if that be averred again to his grief, that there is somewhat concealed in the relation, which, if it were known, would argue the commended party miserable, and blemish him with secret shame. He is ready to quarrel with God, because the next field is fairer grown, and angrily calculates his cost, and time, and tillage. Whom he dares not openly backbite, 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 thorn-hedge covered with nettles, a peevish interpreter of good things, and no other than a lean and pale carcase quickened with a fiend.
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 Maenander'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."
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 characters--a Herald, 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 Coolie in 1638, the eighth in 1650. Other 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.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 book[2]included an account of Bishop Earle himself, a list of his writings, publication for the first time of some 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."
Is a man in a small letter, yet the best copy of Adam before he tasted of Eve or the apple; and he is happy whose small practice in the world can only write this character. He is nature's fresh picture newly drawn in oil, which time, and much handling, dims and defaces. His soul is yet a white paper[3]unscribbled with observations of the world, wherewith, at length, it becomes a blurred note-book. He is purely happy, because he knows no evil, nor hath made means by sin to be acquainted with misery. He arrives not at the mischief of being wise, nor endures evils to come, by foreseeing them. He kisses and loves all, and, when the smart of the rod is past, smiles on his beater. Nature and his parents alike dandle him, and tice him on with a bait of sugar to a draught of wormwood. He plays yet, like a young prentice the first day, and is not come to his task of melancholy.[4][All the language he speaks yet is tears, and they serve him well enough to express his necessity.] His hardest labour is his tongue, as if he were loath to use so deceitful an organ; and he is best company with it when he can but prattle. We laugh at his foolish sports, but his game is our earnest; and his drums, rattles, and hobby-horses, but the emblems and mocking of man's business. His father hath writ him as his own little story, wherein he reads those days of his life that he cannot remember, and sighs to see what innocence he hath out-lived. The elder he grows, he is a stair lower from God; and, like his first father, much worse in his breeches.[5]He is the Christian's example, and the old man's relapse; the one imitates his pureness, and the other falls into his simplicity. Could he put off his body with his little coat, he had got eternity without a burden, and exchanged but one heaven for another.
Is a bird not yet fledged, that hath hopped out of his nest to be chirping on a hedge, and will be straggling abroad at what peril soever. His backwardness in the university hath set him thus forward; for had he not truanted there, he had not been so hasty a divine. His small standing, and time, hath made him a proficient only in boldness, out of which, and his table-book, he is furnished for a preacher. His collections of study are the notes of sermons, which, taken up at St. Mary's,[6]he utters in the country: and if he write brachigraphy,[7]his stock is so much the better. His writing is more than his reading, for he reads only what he gets without book. Thus accomplished he comes down to his friends, and his first salutation is grace and peace out of the pulpit. His prayer is conceited, and no man remembers his college more at large,[8]The pace of his sermon is a full career, and he runs wildly over hill and dale, till the clock stop him. The labour of it is chiefly in his lungs; and the only thing he has madein[9]it himself, is the faces. He takes on against the pope without mercy, and has a jest still in lavender for Bellarmine: yet he preaches heresy, if it comes in his way, though with a mind, I must needs say, very orthodox. His action is all passion, and his speech interjections. He has an excellent faculty in bemoaning the people, and spits with a very good grace. [His stile is compounded of twenty several men's, only his body imitates some one extraordinary.] He will not draw his handkercher out of his place, nor blow his nose without discretion. His commendation is, that he never looks upon book; and indeed he was never used to it. He preaches but once a year, though twice on Sunday; for the stuff is still the same, only the dressing a little altered: he has more tricks with a sermon, than a tailor with an old cloak, to turn it, and piece it, and at last quite disguise it with a new preface. If he have waded farther in his profession, and would show reading of his own, his authors are postils, and his school-divinity a catechism. His fashion and demure habit gets him in with some town-precisian, and makes him a guest on Friday nights. You shall know him by his narrow velvet cape, and serge facing; and his ruff, next his hair the shortest thing about him. The companion of his walk is some zealous tradesman, whom he astonishes with strange points, which they both understand alike. His friends and much painfulness may prefer him to thirty pounds a year, and this means to a chambermaid; with whom we leave him now in the bonds of wedlock:--next Sunday you shall have him again.
Is one that knows the burthen of his calling, and hath studied to make his shoulders sufficient; for which he hath not been hasty to launch forth of his port, the university, but expected the ballast of learning, and the wind of opportunity. Divinity is not the beginning but the end of his studies; to which he takes the ordinary stair, and makes the arts his way. He counts it not profaneness to be polished with human reading, or to smooth his way by Aristotle to school-divinity. He has sounded both religions, and anchored in the best, and is a protestant out of judgment, not faction; not because his country, but his reason is on this side. The ministry is his choice, not refuge, and yet the pulpit not his itch, but fear. His discourse is substance, not all rhetoric, and he utters more things than words. His speech is not helped with inforced action, but the matter acts itself. He shoots all his meditations at one butt; and beats upon his text, not the cushion; making his hearers, not the pulpit, groan. In citing of popish errors, he cuts them with arguments, not cudgels them with barren invectives; and labours more to shew the truth of his cause than the spleen. His sermon is limited by the method, not the hourglass; and his devotion goes along with him out of the pulpit. He comes not up thrice a week, because he would not be idle; nor talks three hours together, because he would not talk nothing: but his tongue preaches at fit times, and his conversation is the every day's exercise. In matters of ceremony, he is not ceremonious, but thinks he owes that reverence to the Church to bow his judgment to it, and make more conscience of schism, than a surplice. He esteems the Church hierarchy as the Church's glory, and however we jar with Rome, would not have our confusion distinguish us. In simoniacal purchases he thinks his soul goes in the bargain, and is loath to come by promotion so dear: yet his worth at length advances him, and the price of his own merit buys him a living. He is no base grater of his tithes, and will not wrangle for the odd egg. The lawyer is the only man he hinders, by whom he is spited for taking up quarrels. He is a main pillar of our church, though not yet dean or canon, and his life our religion's best apology. His death is the last sermon, where, in the pulpit of his bed, he instructs men to die by his example.[10]
His practice is some business at bedsides, and his speculation an urinal: he is distinguished from an empiric, by a round velvet cap and doctor's gown, yet no man takes degrees more superfluously, for he is doctor howsoever. He is sworn to Galen and Hippocrates, as university men to their statutes, though they never saw them; and his discourse is all aphorisms, though his reading be only Alexis of Piedmont,[11]or the Regiment of Health.[12]The best cure he has done is upon his own purse, which from a lean sickliness he hath made lusty, and in flesh. His learning consists much in reckoning up the hard names of diseases, and the superscriptions of gallipots in his apothecary's shop, which are ranked in his shelves and the doctor's memory. He is, indeed, only languaged in diseases, and speaks Greek many times when he knows not. If he have been but a bystander at some desperate recovery, he is slandered with it though he be guiltless; and this breeds his reputation, and that his practice, for his skill is merely opinion. Of all odours he likes best the smell of urine, and holds Vespasian's[13]rule, that no gain is unsavory. If you send this once to him you must resolve to be sick howsoever, for he will never leave examining your water, till he has shaked it into disease:[14]then follows a writ to his drugger in a strange tongue, which he understands, though he cannot construe. If he see you himself, his presence is the worst visitation: for if he cannot heal your sickness, he will be sure to help it. He translates his apothecary's shop into your chamber, and the very windows and benches must take physic. He tells you your malady in Greek, though it be but a cold, or head-ache; which by good endeavour and diligence he may bring to some moment indeed. His most unfaithful act is, that he leaves a man gasping, and his pretence is, death and he have a quarrel and must not meet; but his fear is, lest the carcase should bleed.[15]Anatomies, and other spectacles of mortality, have hardened him, and he is no more struck with a funeral than a grave-maker. Noblemen use him for a director of their stomach, and the ladies for wantonness,[16]especially if he be a proper man. If he be single, he is in league with his she-apothecary; and because it is the physician, the husband is patient. If he have leisure to be idle (that is to study), he has a smatch at alchemy, and is sick of the philosopher's stone; a disease uncurable, but by an abundant phlebotomy of the purse. His two main opposites are a mountebank and a good woman, and he never shews his learning so much as in an invective against them and their boxes. In conclusion, he is a sucking consumption, and a very brother to the worms, for they are both ingendered out of man's corruption.