Microcosmography Part 35

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 a.s.sembly 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 t.i.tle of Earle's book that the phrase of Menenius Agrippa in Coriola.n.u.s.--"The _Map_ of my Microcosm" actually occurs as a t.i.tle 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 ill.u.s.trates 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 ma.s.s 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 cla.s.ses, "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 t.i.tles of books of characters, as ill.u.s.trating the range of this cla.s.s 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."

{When coffee once was vended here, Prefatory {The Alc'ran shortly did appear, verses. {... reformers were such widgeons, {New liquors brought in new religions.

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."

"This indigested vomit of the sea Fell to the Dutch by just propriety."

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 n.o.ble cavalier characterized," "& a rebellious caviller cauterized," 1644 _or_ 5. An answer to Wither's Campo Musae. 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 Bl.u.s.ter, a seaman, travel from Billingsgate to Gravesend." 1650.

9. "The interpreter," 1622, deals with "three princ.i.p.all terms of state--a puritan, a Protestant, a papist."

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

11. [Greek: ta diapheronta]; 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 d.a.m.nify 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 Pa.s.sions, 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 ill.u.s.trated in two pa.s.sages 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[EI] In a later hand.

[EJ] Arcana in margin.

[EK] Th. in margin, _i.e._, Th[omas].

[EL] In a later hand.

[EM] In the later hand.

[EN] A fellow of Merton with Earle. His testimony to Earle is quoted by Bliss. Anthony Wood says of him, "that when he lost his most beloved Lord Falkland, at Newbury Fight, he travelled as a tutor, and upon a freight that the Church of England would terminate through the endeavours of the peevish and restless Presbyterians, began to think of settling himself in the Church of Rome." He recanted his errors publicly at Rome in 1646.

[EO] Poetical?

[EP] This epithet with Clarendon's "wary and cultivated" must be set against what Clarendon tells us of his "negligence in dress, habit and mien." Earle can never have been awkward. His courtesy was born with him, and he can never have needed (like "the downright scholar") "brushing over with good company."