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MICROCOSMOGRAPHY;
OR,
A Piece of the World discovered;
IN
ESSAYS AND CHARACTERS.
MICROCOSMOGRAPHY;
OR,
A PIECE OF THE WORLD
DISCOVERED;
IN
ESSAYS AND CHARACTERS
By JOHN EARLE, D.D.
_A Reprint of Dr. Bliss's Edition of 1811._
WITH A PREFACE AND SUPPLEMENTARY
APPENDIX
By S. T. IRWIN.
Bristol:
PUBLISHED BY W. CROFTON HEMMONS.
London:
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO., LTD.
TO THE MEMORY
OF THE REVEREND DAVID WRIGHT,
"THE GRAVE DIVINE" OF THESE PAGES,
WHOSE NAME WILL LIVE IN BRISTOL
AS LONG AS MEN CARE FOR BEAUTY OF CHARACTER,
RICHNESS OF THOUGHT, OR DISTINCTION OF SPEECH,
THIS BRISTOL REPRINT IS INSCRIBED.
"From the contagion of the world's slow stain
He was secure."
PREFACE.
It may be reasonably asked why Dr. Bliss's[A] edition of the
Microcosmography should require a preface, and the answer is that it does
not require one. It would be difficult to have a more scholarly, more
adequate, more self-sufficing edition of a favourite book. Almost
everything that helps the elucidation of the text, almost everything about
Bishop Earle that could heighten our affection for him (there is nothing
known to his disparagement) is to be found here.[B] And affection for the
editor is conciliated by the way. It is not only his standard of
equipment that secures this--a standard that might have satisfied Mark
Pattison[C]--but also the painstaking love revealed in it, which, like
every other true love, whether of men or books, will not give of that
which costs it nothing. And, as a further title to our regard, Dr. Bliss
is amusing at his own expense, and compares himself to Earle's "critic,"
who swells books into folios with his comments. Not that this humorous
self-depreciation is to be pressed; for, unlike that critic, he is no
"troublesome vexer of the dead."
But though there is no need of a preface, I have two excuses for writing
one.
The first is that I was asked to do it by my friend Mr. Frank George, of
Bristol, who wished to see the book reprinted; and the second is the old
_professio pietatis_, which seemed to Tacitus a sufficient defence of the
Agricola, and may perhaps be allowed to serve humbler people as well. What
Earle says of men is no less true of books: "Acquaintance is the first
draught of a friend. Men take a degree in our respect till at last they
wholly possess us;" and the history of this possession must, in every
case, have a sort of interest, as long as it is not carried to the point
of demanding from others the superlatives we permit to ourselves. It is
sufficiently common for people to like the same book for different
reasons; and where an author has a secure place in English literature, his
shade, like the deity of Utopia, may be best pleased with a manifold and
various worship.[D]
The character of Earle, as drawn by Clarendon, is itself a guarantee for
his studies of character; and the fact that Lord Falkland was his chosen
friend is evidence of his possessing something of that sweet
reasonableness of temper for which his host was so remarkable. "He was
very dear" (we are told) "to the Lord Falkland, with whom he spent as much
time as he could make his own." Indeed, "Mr. Earles would frequently
profess that he had got more useful learning by his conversation at Tew
than he had at Oxford." Of Earle's conversation Clarendon says that it was
"so pleasant and delightful, so very innocent and so very facetious, that
no man's company was more desired and more loved." Walton, too, tells us
of his "innocent wisdom and sanctified learning"; and another witness
speaks of his "charitable heart," an epithet which is nobly borne out by
the correspondence between himself and Baxter printed in this volume.
This is no superfluous citation of testimony. Without it we might,
perhaps, have suspected, though not, I think, legitimately, something
almost of a cynical spirit in the severity of the punishment which he
deals out to the various disguises of vice and imposture, and in the
pitiless nakedness in which he leaves them. But there are even stronger
reasons for recalling contemporary verdicts pronounced on Earle as a man.
Hallam, in the "Literature of Europe,"[E] has a short notice of him, and
though it shews some appreciation of his ability, it contains a very
unworthy aspersion on his character. "The chapter on the sceptic," he
says, "is witty, but an insult to the honest searcher after truth, which
could only have come from one that was content to take up his own opinions
for ease or profit." If we accept all that is said of Earle's piety and
devotion, and give its proper weight to the very significant epithet
"innocent," used both by Walton and Clarendon, we shall, I think, be slow
to suspect his motive in attacking the sceptic. The honest doubter, it
must be remembered, was not the familiar--much less the
fashionable--figure he has become since, and it is very certain that Earle
described one type of sceptic both of his day and our own. That his sketch
may have done injustice to other types is likely enough; but that is no
reason for calling in question the sincerity of his opinions, or
attributing an interested orthodoxy to one whom Bunyan might have
christened Mr. Singleheart. The piety of the 17th Century was not disposed
to be gentle to sceptics. Even Bacon's enlightenment allows itself harsher
language on such subjects than any to be found in Earle. "None do refuse
to believe in a God save those for _whom it maketh that there were no
God_." And if Bacon is not thought a satisfactory witness, we have an
unimpeachable one very much nearer to our time. Dr. Johnson's occasional
strictures on sceptics are well-known, but his reputation for honest
thinking has never been impaired by their severity. Earle knew what
charity was, as the Baxter correspondence shows, and he has exposed in one
of his characters "the faith that has no room for it"; and if his own
faith needed further enlargement in the case of a sceptic,[F] some
enlargement of Hallam's charity might also have been looked for in
dealing with the earnestness of a militant piety.
The character-sketch is naturally a thing of limited scope. "Fine
portraiture,"[G] it has been said, "is not possible under such conditions
as it imposes. The traits, common to a class, cannot at the same time be
the accurate and intimate likeness of an individual. For this, a simple
enumeration of actions which such and such a man will do, is not enough. A
novelist takes a long series of connected actions, and even then he has to
interpret, to review from time to time whole stages of development." All
this is, no doubt, true, but the character-writers differ to a remarkable
extent in their individualising power--some of them achieving a high
degree of success, as is subsequently admitted in the case of Thackeray by
the writer just quoted. It may be noticed too, by the way, that great
novelists are not always equally successful in the character-sketch. One
is reminded of Johnson's phrase about Milton's inability "to carve heads
upon cherry stones" when one thinks of "Theophrastus Such" on the one
hand, and the almost unique position of George Eliot as a novelist on the
other. Less successful as she often is in lightness of touch when she has
to pause and interpret her story, she had not prepared us for such a
complete exhaustion of power as her attempt in this branch of literature
(apparently of the same genus, almost of the same species, as the novel)
reveals to her disappointed admirers. It may, at any rate, be said that
her failure is an instructive lesson in the literary division of labour,
and that these studies require a peculiar delicacy of organisation in the
observer, as well as a special gift of exposition.
"Dolus latet in generalibus" is a salutary warning, but the
character-writers, as a whole, have in most instances got creditably out
of the snare, while Earle, I think, has achieved something more. Besides
his humour and acuteness, besides even his profundity, I find in him an
exceptional power of individualizing. "The contemplative man," for
instance, belongs to a small class at all times; but it is only an
individual we have known, and known at rare intervals, of whose
Wordsworthian temper we are able to say that "Nature asks his approbation
as it were of her works and variety." Again, "the grave divine, who is not
yet dean or canon, though his life is our religion's best apology," reads
throughout like a personal experience. I at least so read it, or I should
not have borrowed from Earle for the dedication which stands at the head
of this preface. Yet such identifications are usually reserved for the
great novelist, whose highest art, as Macaulay says, is to "make the
inventions of one man seem like the recollections of another."
Some of Earle's readers appear to be chiefly impressed with his book as
furnishing "a picturesque idea of a period now remote, and as possessing
much of the affected quaintness of its age."[H] The picturesqueness I
find, and a good deal of quaintness; but the total impression is that of a
man who has got beyond words, ancient or modern, in his studies of human
nature--of one who, whether
"invectively he pierceth through
The body of the country, city, court;"
or is "anatomizing the wise man's folly," is as instructive a moralist in
the end of the nineteenth century as in the beginning of the seventeenth.
This, in a sense, is true of all great moralists, but the distinction of
Earle, as I understand it, is that his characters are so often really
people of our own day, with idiosyncracies that seem almost more
applicable to our own age than to his.
Society is almost a technical term to-day, susceptible, one would have
said, of refinements of difference infinitely more various than anything
that could have existed more than two hundred years ago; yet one cannot
but feel that this observer would have been fully equal to drawing our
microcosm as well as his own. Earle's is a penetrating observation which
is always fresh--so fresh that no archaism of phrase in him, and no cheery
optimism in ourselves, can disguise the fact that it is our weaknesses he
is probing, our motives he is discovering.
There are still with us "those well-behaved ghosts AEneas met with--friends
to talk with, and men to look on, but if he grasped them but air"--those
shadowy creatures that "wonder at your ill-breeding,[I] that cannot
distinguish between what is spoken and what is meant."
We are no strangers to "the fashionable respect which loves not deeper
mutualities, but though exceeding kind and friendly at your first
acquaintance, is at the twentieth meeting but friendly still"; or to that
similar temper which "nothing so much puts out as to trespass against the
genteel way." And, to go a stage lower, the formal man still survives,
whose "face is in so good a frame because he is not disjointed with other
meditations--who hath staid in the world to fill a number; and when he is
gone there wants one and there's an end."[J] He, to be sure, has no
conversation, and that is his discretion--but others display then as now a
bolder discretion, and in their talk "fly for sanctuary rather to nonsense
which few descry, than to nothing which all."
But literary conversation is not forgotten. It may be a stretch beyond
the power of a latter-day imagination to fancy a visitor proposing to
fascinate his company by some "scatterings of Seneca and Tacitus," or even
to think ourselves back to a time when these "were good for all
occasions." Yet, those who say "Chaucer[K] for our money above all our
English poets because the voice has gone so," (or had we better substitute
Browning?),[L] are still common enough examples of those who desire to
acquire inexpensively the reputation of good taste.
And there is another variety of modern artificiality which is not spared
in this book. For the many forms of busy idleness, the worship of
organisation and system, and all the other hindrances to life properly
so-called, which it has been the cherished labour of this age to
multiply, Earle would have had no reserve of patience. "The dull
physician," we are told, has no leisure _to be idle_, that is, to study.
"The grave divine," who has "studied to make his shoulders sufficient for
his burden, comes not up thrice a week into his pulpit because _he would
not be idle_"; whereas the commendation of the young raw preacher is that
"he speaks without book, and, indeed, he was never used to it."
We may justly boast of the superior humanity of our century; but few would
deny that the elaborate apparatus of modern philanthropy has too often
become an end in itself, and absorption in it a serious detriment to any
worthy preparation for the work of edifying. In the absence of leisure
pulpits will hardly furnish us with that "sincere erudition which can send
us clear and pure away unto a virtuous and happy life."[M] Nor is such a
loss compensated by an endless succession of services or even a whole
street of committee-rooms.
One would not, however, wish to rest in negations or dwell in the last
resort on Earle's critical attitude. One feels that the delightful house
at Tew did not spend all or even its best strength on criticism. Earle may
have there pursued the method of verification and studied his characters
in the flesh. Perhaps he saw there "the staid man," and duly appraised
this specimen of "nature's geometry";[N] while his obvious gifts as a
rational peace-maker, if not much needed in such a company, would not be
overlooked by Lord Falkland. "The good old man," too is a portrait so
strongly individualized that I cannot help thinking some very personal
experience went to the making of it--experience of a sort that was sure to
be revived at Tew, where "so good a relick of the old times" was not
likely to be wanting. It was a house, at any rate, for the "modest man" to
whom, as to the poet Cowper, public appearances were so many penances; for
though the world may not agree with Earle as to the degree in which this
quality sets off a man, there is no question of Lord Falkland's welcome of
the modest man, even if that grave divine "Mr. Earles," did not point out
this diffident guest as one who "had a piece of singularity," and, for all
his modesty, "scorned something."
And, as "the most polite and _accurate_ men of the University of
Oxford"[O] were to be met with at Tew, we may further hope that Earle
there watched the social mellowing of the "downright scholar whose mind
was too much taken up with his mind,"[P] and strove to carry out his own
recommendation, "practising him in men, and brushing him over with good
company."
Symposium is a word that has been much abused and vulgarised of late, but
something like its true Platonic sense must have been realised by the
company at Lord Falkland's, as they "examined and refined those grosser
propositions which laziness and consent made current in vulgar
conversation":[Q] for a more Platonic programme it would be difficult to
conceive. The pattern of the ideal republic is, we know, laid up somewhere
in the heavens; but the republic of letters so far as it was represented,
must have been as near the ideal in that house as it ever was on earth.
And in this ideal one of Earle's characters already mentioned was not only
a natural but a necessary element. "The contemplative man" is solitary, we
are told, in company, but he would not be so in this company. "Outward
show, the stream, the people," were not taken seriously at Lord
Falkland's; and the man who "can spell heaven out of earth" would be the
centre of a rare group--men upon whose fresh and eager appetites
conversation that was "mysterious and inward" could not easily pall.
Bishop Berkeley is one of the very few men who could answer with any
plausibility to this last character of Earle's. But the marvellous
amenity of his social gifts brings him a little closer to the kindly race
of men than Earle thinks is usual with the contemplative student. In every
other point it is an accurate piece of portraiture.[R] Nature might well
ask approbation of her works and variety from a man who was ever feeding
his noble curiosity and never satisfying it. He, too, made a "ladder of
his observations to climb to God." He, too, was "free from vice, because
he had no occasion to employ it." "Such gifts," said the turbulent Bishop
Atterbury of him, "I did not think had been the portion of any but
angels." After this it is no hyperbole to say, as Earle does of the
contemplative man, "He has learnt all can here be taught him, and comes
now to heaven to see more."
Though Clarendon does full justice to Earle's personal charm, he uses the
epithets "sharp and witty" to describe his published "discourses"; and the
piercing severity of his wit is illustrated everywhere in this book. It is
clear, however, from the sympathetic sketches that Earle's was no _nil
admirari_ doctrine, and that while he saw grave need on all hands for men
to clear their mind of cant, and their company of those who live by it, he
had great store of affection for all that is noble or noble in the making.
The "modest man" and the high-spirited man" are opposite types, but there
is in both the worthy pursuit and the high ideal. Moreover, the second of
those characters reveals a power of pathos which Earle might have
developed with more opportunity.[S] "The child" whom "his father has writ
as his own little story" is another indication of the same mood.
These sketches are full of suggestive melancholy--not the melancholy of
the misanthrope, but the true melancholy--the melancholy of
Virgil--_Invalidus etiamque tremens etiam inscius aevi._[T]
There is another character drawn with a most incisive pathos, though less
_Virgilian_[U] in its tone.
The poor man, "with whom even those that are not friends _for ends_ love
not a dearness," and who, "with a great deal of virtue, obtains of himself
not to hate men," is a pathetic figure, but he is something more. He is a
sermon on human weakness, not drawn as some Iago might have drawn it with
exultant mockery, but with the painful unflinching veracity of one who is
ashamed of himself and of his kind. When one thinks how often this
weakness is spoken of as if it were peculiar to the moneyed class or to
the uneducated, and how many people whom one knows act and think as if
poverty were a vice if not a crime, though they shrink from avowing it, so
unqualified an exposure indicates a conscience of no common sensitiveness.
Earle's wit and humour are deadly weapons, and it must be said that the
trades and professions are treated with scant indulgence. He can even
leave a mark like that of Junius when he has a mind. Thus the dull
physician is present at "some desperate recovery, and is slandered with
it, though he be guiltless"; and the attorney does not fear doomsday
because "he hopes he has a trick to reverse judgment!"
But though one would not ask on behalf of impostors or scoundrels for
suspension of sentence, one does wish for more than a single picture of
the young man "who sins to better his understanding." The companionship
of one who by his 34th year "had so much dispatched the business of life
that the oldest rarely attain to that knowledge and the youngest enter not
the world with more innocence,"[V] might have induced Earle to pourtray
more than the weaknesses of immature manhood.
We could not, however, have missed this or the other pictures of
characterless persons whether young or "having attained no proficiency by
their stay in the world." Inexperience may fail to recognise them and
suffer for it; or the gilding of rank and fashion may win for such persons
a name in society above that which they deserve, and the moralist is bound
to unmask them. These studies nevertheless are somewhat sombre;[W] and
there is something much lighter and pleasanter in his presentation of
some not unfamiliar phases of manners. There is the self-complacency that
deals with itself like a "truant reader skipping over the harsh places";
the frank discourtesy that finds something vicious in the conventions and
"circumstance" of good breeding; the patronising insolence[X] that "with
much ado seems to recover your name"; the egoism of discontent that "has
an accustomed tenderness not to be crossed in its fancy"; or lastly, that
affectation of reticence which is as modern as anything in the book,
though its illustrations look so remote. Where we meet with such a temper,
Earle's is still the right method--"we must deal with such a man as we do
with Hebrew letters, spell him backwards and read him!"
Despite all this searching analysis and the biting wit which accompanies
it, I cannot think the epithet cynical, which I have heard ascribed to
Earle, is defensible. There is a vast difference between recognising our
frailty which is a fact, and insisting that our nature is made up of
nothing else, which is not a fact. The severe critic and the cynic differ
chiefly in this: the first reports distressing facts, the second invents
disgraceful fictions; the one distrusts, the other insults our common
nature; and in doing justice to the possibilities of that nature, no one
has gone further than Earle in his "contemplative man."
Something may be said of Earle's style before this introduction is brought
to an end.
I do not think it is uniformly conspicuous[Y] for quaintness, or that
there is much that can be called affectation; though occasionally an
excess of brevity has proved too tempting, or the desire to individualize
runs away with him.
The following passages, taken at random from the Characters, seem to
contain phrases that we should be well content to use to-day if we had
thought of them.
_He sighs to see what innocence he hath outlived._
_We look on old age for his sake as a more reverent
thing._
_He has still something to distinguish him from a
gentleman, though his doublet cost more._
_It is discourtesy in you to believe him._
_An extraordinary man in ordinary things._
_His businesses with his friends are to visit them._
_The main ambition of his life is not to be
discredited._
_He preaches heresy if it comes in his way, though with
a mind I must needs say very orthodox._
These quotations have no very unfamiliar sound, nor much flavour of
archaism about them. And there are many more, surprisingly free from
conceits or other oddities, if we reflect that the book was written before
Dryden was born, or modern prose with its precision and balance even
thought of.
There is one very distinguishing mark set on Earle's characters, the
profundity of the analysis that accompanies the sketch. He lets us know
not only what the grave divine or the staid man looks like, but why they
are what they are, and all this without turning his sketch into an essay.
This mistake Bishop Hall is inclined to make, and Butler actually makes.
The author of Hudibras, it seems, would have been too fortunate had he
known where his own happiness lay--to wit in that "sting" of verse, which
Cowper says prose neither has nor can have.
When one compares the essay in its beginnings with the essay as we know it
to-day, it is not difficult to understand the change of form in the
character sketch. "The Character of a Trimmer"[Z] is a very powerful piece
of writing, containing some very fine things, but Halifax could not make
of it that finished piece of brevity which it would have become in Earle's
hands. Latin criticism has the right word for his work--"densus."[AA] We
could not pack the thinking closer if we wished. And yet if we do not
care to reason a type out, there are pictures enough unspoilt by
commentary.[AB] Earle has some of that delightful suddenness of
illustration which Selden makes so captivating in his Table-Talk. At once
we are made to see likeness or unlikeness, we hear no comment on it; since
the artist desires no more moral than is to be looked for in his art.
When on the other hand Earle makes more of the reason of the thing, he[AC]
is literally "swift and sententious"--he never takes the opportunity to
draw us into an instructive disquisition, or to assume airs of profundity.
And his passing hint as to the cause of what _we see_ no more injures any
picture he may draw than Coleridge's prose argument at the side of the
page destroys the imaginative spectacle in the Ancient Mariner.
Earle, it has been said, "is not so thoroughly at home with men of all
sorts and conditions as Overbury, who had probably seen far more of the
world."[AD] However relatively true this may be, Earle's book [published
1628] gives evidence of an experience of men as wide as it is intimate--an
experience little short of marvellous in a resident Fellow of
twenty-seven, whose younger years were chiefly distinguished for "oratory,
poetry, and witty fancies."[AE] (Perhaps his youth may account for some of
that excessive severity in handling follies which is occasionally
noticeable.) The article in the "Dictionary of National Biography" gives a
somewhat different impression of Earle as an observer. "The sketches
throw," it says, "_the greatest light_ upon the social condition of the
time." Now this is not possible for anyone to achieve whose vision
requires "the spectacles of books"; though with such help it is doubtless
possible to extend and improve on the observations of others, with human
nature as a constant quantity. But to be at home with one's contemporaries
and to record one's intimacy means to see with the eye as well as the
mind. The slow inductive method of personal contact is indispensable; and
no reasoning from first principles, no assimilating of secondhand
experience, with whatever touches of genius, can be mistaken for it.
It is not likely that the Registrar's house (his father's house) at York
added much to Earle's sketch-book; and we have to fall back on what
Clarendon says of his delightful conversation, and by implication, of his
delight in it. In the society of a University and in the life of a
University town there would be presented to an observer of his exceptional
penetration enough of the fusion or confusion of classes to furnish the
analytical powers with a tolerably wide field.
And Earle does not suffer by comparison with his rivals. "The concise
narrative manner"[AF] of Theophrastus, though in its way as humorously
informing as we find Plautus and Terence, and as we should have found the
New Comedy which they copied, leaves us a little cold from the looseness
or the connexion in the quasi-narrative: we rise a little unsatisfied from
the ingenious banquet of conversational scraps; we desire more. Overbury,
again, says less than Earle, and is more artificial in saying it. Butler
and Bishop Hall too directly suggest _the essay_[AG] and the sermon. In no
one of them is brevity so obviously the soul of wit as it is in Earle; no
one of them is so humorously thoughtful, so lucid in conception, so
striking in phrase.
When one has reckoned up all these gifts, and all that his friends and
contemporaries said of him, and remember also who and what these friends
were, one is not startled by the eulogistic epitaph in Merton College
Chapel; these words are as moving as they are strong:
Si nomen ejus necdum suboleat, Lector,
Nomen ejus ut pretiosa unguenta;
Johannes Earle Eboracensis.
But his own choicer Latin in the epitaph he wrote for the learned Peter
Heylin would serve no less well for himself; and the beautiful brevity of
its closing cadences has so much of the distinction of his English, and
puts so forcibly what Earle deserves to have said of him, that it may
fitly be the last word here:
Plura ejusmodi meditanti
mors indixit silentium:
ut sileatur
efficere non potest.
S.T.I.
Clifton, May, 1896.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] It came out in 1811. Forty-four years afterwards he wrote that in his
interleaved copy the list of Seventeenth Century Characters had increased
fourfold--good evidence of his affection for and interest in Earle's
Characters. Yet he despaired of anyone republishing a book so "common and
unimportant" (??). (See Arber's reprint of Earle.) It is to the credit of
Bristol that this pessimism has not been justified.
[B] Since writing this preface I have added a small supplementary
appendix; but there is nothing in it to require much qualification of the
opinion here expressed. It was hardly possible, as I gather, for Bliss to
have known of the Durham MS.
[C] Mr. John Morley has called Pattison's standard "the highest of our
time." Bliss's conception of an editor's duties is well illustrated in the
note on p. 73.
[D] "Varium ac multiplicem expetens cultum deus."--_Mori Utopia Lib. II._
[E] Vol. iii., pp. 153 and 154.
[F] Were the unorthodox opinions of Hobbes known to his friends as early
as 1647? If so, Earle could hardly have been very curious in scenting out
heresy, for Clarendon hopes Earle's intercession may secure for him a book
of Hobbes's. (See letters of Clarendon in Supplementary Appendix.)
[G] Professor Jebb, in his edition of The Characters of Theophrastus. I
rejoice to see that Professor Jebb assigns Earle a place of far more
distinction than is implied in the measured tribute of Hallam. His preface
furnishes lovers of Earle with just those reasoned opinions with which
instinctive attraction desires to justify itself; and I take this
opportunity of acknowledging my great obligations to it.
[H] Hallam. The same tone is taken in the article on Earle in the
"Encyclopaedia Britannica."
[I] Mr. Bridges indeed, ("Achilles in Scyros"), finds that this character
has been always with us, and gives it a place in the Heroic Age. The
passage has almost the note of Troilus and Cressida:--
"My invitation, Sir,
Was but my seal of full denial, a challenge
For honor's eye not to be taken up.
Your master hath slipped in manners."
[J] We may compare Matthew Arnold's travelling companion ("Essays in
Criticism," 1st Edition, Preface), who was so nervous about railway
murders, and who refused to be consoled by being reminded that though the
worst should happen, there would still be the old crush at the corner of
Fenchurch Street, and that he would not be missed: "the great mundane
movement would still go on!"
[K] Chaucer could hardly have been well-known in 1811, or Dr. Bliss would
scarcely have quoted in full the most familiar character in his Prologue;
but I could not find courage to excise, or lay a profane hand on any of
his notes.
[L] It is, perhaps, superfluous to say that no disrespect is intended to
the Author of the "Ring and the Book"; but it would be difficult to find
another poet who has had so many of the equivocal tributes of fashion.
[M] Sir Thomas Browne, "Christian Morals."
[N] "So infinite a fancy, bound in by a most logical
ratiocination."--_Clarendon (of Lord Falkland)._
[O] Clarendon.
[P] "A great cherisher of good parts ... and if he found men clouded with
poverty, or want, a most liberal and bountiful patron."--_Clarendon, ib._
[Q] Clarendon, _ib._
[R] Between Earle himself and Berkeley there is much resemblance. Of
Berkeley too it would have been said--"a person certainly of the sweetest
and most obliging nature that lived in our age"; and this resemblance
extends beyond their social gifts or their cast of mind, even to their
language. Earle's "vulgar-spirited" man, with whom "to thrive is to do
well," recalls a famous passage in the Siris.
"He that hath not thought much about God, the human soul, and the _summum
bonum_, may indeed be a _thriving_ earth-worm, but he will make a sorry
patriot, and a sorry statesman."
[S] Is this from Pliny's Letters? "Totum patrem mira similitudine
exscripserat."--_Lib._ V. xvi.
[T] One may recall, too, the famous words of the Sophoclean Ajax to his
son in connection with Earle's phrases. "He is not come to his task of
melancholy," "he arrives not at the mischief of being wise," read like a
free translation of Soph. Ajax, II. 554 and 555.
[U] Perhaps the simile in AEn. viii. 408 and one or two other places would
justify us in calling this also Virgilian, as, indeed, one may call most
good things.
[V] Clarendon--his character of Lord Falkland.
[W] There are certain things not at all sombre applicable not only to our
day, but to our _hour_, _e.g._ "the poet (I regret to say he is 'a pot
poet,') now much employed in commendations of our navy"; or this, "His
father sent him to the University, because he heard there were the best
fencing and dancing schools there." If we substitute athletics of some
kind, we have a very modern reason for the existence of such things as
Universities accepted as sound by both parents and children. _cf._ too Dr.
Bliss's note on the serving-man, and its quotation, "An' a man have not
skill in the hawking and hunting languages nowadays, I'll not give a rush
for him!"
[X] _cf._ Falconbridge in "King John":
"And if his name be George I'll call him Peter,
For new-made honour doth forget men's names."
It is this character which was the occasion of the most delightful of all
stories of absence of mind, and though, doubtless, familiar to many, I
cannot resist repeating it. The poet Rogers was looking at a new picture
in the National Gallery in company with a friend. Rogers was soon
satisfied, but his friend was still absorbed. "I say," said Rogers, "_that
fellow_ [Earle's insolent man] was at Holland House again last night, and
he came up and asked me if my name was Rogers." "Yes," said the friend,
still intent on the picture, "_and was it_?
[Y] The article in the "Dictionary of National Biography" lays stress on
the freedom from conceits in Earle's few poems at a time when conceits
were universal. The lines on Sir John Burroughs contain a couplet which is
wonderfully close to Wordsworth's "Happy Warrior":
"His rage was tempered well, no fear could daunt
_His reason_, his _cold_ blood was valiant."
_cf._ "Who in the heat of conflict keeps _the law_
In _calmness_ made."
Earle's standard in poetry was high. "Dr. Earle would not allow Lord
Falkland to be a good poet though a Great Witt," yet many poets praised
his verses. Aubrey, who tells us of Earle's opinion, confirms it. "He
(Lord Falkland) writt not a smooth verse, but a great deal of sense."
[Z] "The Trimmer" is no doubt a political manifesto--but no retreat from
politics could have chastened Halifax's style into a resemblance to
Earle's; when the "Character" became a political weapon, its literary
identity was all but at an end. "The Trimmer" is commended by Macaulay in
his History, where it will be remembered he pays a tribute to its
"vivacity."
[AA] Quintilian uses it of Thucydides.
[AB] The "She precise hypocrite" is a striking example--one of Earle's
most humorous pieces.
_cf._ also "The plain country fellow."
[AC] The pictures, with the moral attached, are best seen in places: in
"The Tavern, the best theatre of natures"; in "The Bowl-alley, an emblem
of the world where some few justle in to the mistress fortune"; in Paul's
Walk, "where all inventions are emptied and not a few pockets!"
[AD] Professor Jebb, preface to "The Characters of Theophrastus."
[AE] Anthony Wood.
[AF] Professor Jebb.
[AG] Professor Jebb justly replies to Hallam that if La Bruyere is far
superior to Theophrastus the scope of the two writers makes the comparison
unfair. The difference between them may perhaps be expressed by saying
that an essay was the last thing that the master and the first thing that
the disciple was anxious to produce.
CONTENTS
OF THE
SUPPLEMENTARY APPENDIX.
(1) THE DURHAM MS.
In the Cathedral Library at Durham is a small bound volume which contains
forty-six of Earle's Characters, bearing date 1627[AH],--the date of the
first edition being 1628. I was enabled by the kindness of Dr. Greenwell,
the Librarian, to take it away and examine it at leisure; and the courtesy
of the University Librarian, Dr. Fowler, furnished me with an exact
collation of the MS. versions with the printed text[AI] of these
forty-six Characters, the original of the contributions made by him to
"Notes and Queries," and referred to in the "Dictionary of National
Biography."
(2) I have printed, besides, some other versions quoted by Bliss from "Dr.
Bright's MS.," and incorporated in his annotated copy of his own book.
These are often the same with those of the Durham MS. I should mention
that though this annotated copy is in the Bodleian Library, the
Sub-Librarian, Mr. Falconer Madan, "knows of no 'Bright MS.,'[AJ] nor
where Bliss's MS. with that name is." The copy in question contains so
much additional matter that I have added a few things from it, but my
space was necessarily limited; there is good evidence in it of Bliss's
statement that he had continued collecting materials for the book for
forty-four years after its publication. Moreover, in the "Bliss Sale
Catalogue" in the Bodleian there are some 530 books of Characters
(including duplicates). I am myself in possession, as I believe, of a copy
of Bliss's edition which belonged to himself, and which is annotated by
himself and Haslewood.[AK] It contains a castrated title-page (originally
Bliss suppressed his name) and a notice of the book in the "Monthly
Review" of 1812.
(3) I have added a few "testimonies" to Earle from Anthony Wood and
others.
(4) I have printed three letters from Clarendon to Earle from the
"Clarendon State Papers," with short extracts from two others; as well as
two letters of Earle's from the Bodleian Library--interesting rather as
personal relics than as containing anything very significant. All that
relates to its author will, I believe, be acceptable to lovers of the
"Cosmography."
For this additional matter, as well as for other help and counsel, I am
indebted to Mr. Charles Firth, of Balliol College, Oxford, whose learning
is always at the service of his friends, and who stands in no need of the
old injunction--"not to be reserved and caitiff in this part of goodness."
(5) From a notebook of Bliss's (in MS.) in my possession I have added a
few titles of Books of Characters.
I have retained in this Appendix the spelling I found. Bliss's text has,
with a few exceptions (possibly accidental), the modern spelling.
FOOTNOTES:
[AH] Dec. 14th, 1627. [At the end, by way of Colophon:] at the top of page
1, in a different hand, "Edw. Blunt Author." This MS. was obviously one of
"the _written copies_, passing severally from hand to hand, which grew at
length to be a pretty number in a little volume." (See Blount's Preface to
the Reader.)
[AI] As it appears in Arber's Reprint.
[AJ] The "Bright MS." was obviously later than that in the Durham
Cathedral Library, since it contained several Characters known to have
been added to the first edition.
[AK] Joseph Haslewood, Antiquary. One of the founders of the Roxburghe
Club.
MICROCOSMOGRAPHY;
OR
A Piece of the World discovered;
IN
ESSAYS AND CHARACTERS.
BY JOHN EARLE, D.D.
OF CHRIST-CHURCH AND MERTON COLLEGES, OXFORD,
AND BISHOP OF SALISBURY.
A NEW EDITION.
TO WHICH ARE ADDED,
NOTES AND AN APPENDIX,
BY PHILIP BLISS,
FELLOW OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD.
_LONDON:_
PRINTED FOR WHITE AND COCHRANE, FLEET-STREET;
AND
JOHN HARDING. ST. JAMES'S-STREET.
1811.
ADVERTISEMENT.
The present edition of Bishop Earle's Characters was undertaken from an
idea that they were well worthy of republication, and that the present
period, when the productions of our early English writers are sought after
with an avidity hitherto unexampled, would be the most favourable for
their appearance.
The text has been taken from the edition of 1732, collated with the first
impression in 1628. The variations from the latter 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.
For the Notes, Appendix, and Index, the editor is entirely answerable, and
although he is fully aware that many superfluities will be censured, many
omissions discovered, and many errors pointed out, he hopes that the
merits of the original author will, in a great measure, compensate for the
false judgment or neglect of his reviver.
_January_ 30, 1811.
THE PREFACE
[TO THE EDITION OF 1732[AL].]
This little book had six editions between 1628 and 1633, without any
author's name to recommend it: I have heard of an eighth in 1664. From
that of 33 this present edition is reprinted, without altering any thing
but the plain errors of the press, and the old pointing and spelling in
some places.
The language is generally easy, and proves our English tongue not to be so
very changeable as is commonly supposed; nay, sometimes the phrase seems a
little obscure, more by the mistakes of the printer than the distance of
time. Here and there we meet with a broad expression, and some characters
are far below others; nor is it to be expected that so great a variety of
portraits should all be drawn with equal excellence, though there are
scarce any without some masterly touches. The change of fashions
unavoidably casts a shade upon a few places, yet even those contain an
exact picture of the age wherein they were written, as the rest does of
mankind in general: for reflections founded upon nature will be just in
the main, as long as men are men, though the particular instances of vice
and folly may be diversified. Paul's Walk is now no more, but then good
company adjourn to coffee-houses, and, at the reasonable fine of two or
three pence, throw away as much of their precious time as they find
troublesome.
Perhaps these valuable essays may be as acceptable to the public now as
they were at first; both for the entertainment of those who are already
experienced in the ways of mankind, and for the information of others who
would know the world the best way, that is--without trying it[AM].
FOOTNOTES:
[AL] _London: Printed by E. Say, Anno Domini_ M.DCC.XXXII.
[AM] A short account of Earle, taken from the _Athenae Oxonienses_ is here
omitted.
ADVERTISEMENT
[TO THE EDITION OF 1786[AN].]
As this entertaining little book is become rather scarce, and is replete
with so much good sense and genuine humour, which, though in part adapted
to the times when it first appeared, seems, on the whole, by no means
inapplicable to any aera of mankind, the editor conceives that there needs
little apology for the republication. A farther inducement is, his having,
from very good authority, lately discovered[AO] that these _Characters_
(hitherto known only under the title of _Blount's_[AP]), were actually
drawn by the able pencil of JOHN EARLE, who was formerly bishop of Sarum,
having been translated to that see from Worcester, A.D. 1663, and died at
Oxford, 1665.
Isaac Walton, in his Life of Hooker, delineates the character of the said
venerable prelate.
It appears from Antony Wood's Athen. Oxon. under the Life of Bishop Earle,
that this book was first of all published at London in 1628, under the
name of "_Edward Blount_."
FOOTNOTES:
[AN] _"Microcosmography; or, a Piece of the World characterized; in Essays
and Characters. London, printed A.D. 1650. Salisbury, Reprinted and sold
by E. Easton, 1786. Sold also by G. and T. Wilkie, St. Paul's Church-yard,
London."_
[AO] I regret extremely that I am unable to put the reader in possession
of this very acute discoverer's name.
[AP] This mistake originated with Langbaine, who, in his account of Lilly,
calls Blount "a gentleman who has made himself known to the world by the
several pieces of his own writing, (as _Horae Subsecivae_, his
_Microcosmography_, &c.") _Dramatic Poets_, 8vo, 1691, p. 327.
EDITIONS OF "MICROCOSMOGRAPHY."
The first edition (of which the Bodleian possesses a copy, 8vo. P. 154.
Theol.) was printed with the following title: "_Microcosmographie: or, a
Peece of the World discovered; In Essayes and Characters. Newly composed
for the Northerne parts of this Kingdome. At London. Printed by W. S. for
Ed. Blount, 1628_." This contains only fifty-four characters[AQ], which in
the present edition are placed first. I am unable to speak of any
subsequent copy, till one in the following year, (1629), printed for
Robert Allot[AR], and called in the title "_The first edition much
enlarged_." This, as Mr. Henry Ellis kindly informs me, from a copy in the
British Museum, possesses seventy-six characters. The _sixth_ was printed
for Allot, in 1633, (_Bodl. Mar._ 441,) and has seventy-eight, the
additional ones being "a herald," and "a suspicious, or jealous man." The
_seventh_ appeared in 1638, for Andrew Crooke, agreeing precisely with the
sixth; and in 1650 the _eighth_. A copy of the latter is in the curious
library of Mr. Hill, and, as Mr. Park acquaints me, is without any
specific edition numbered in the title. I omit that noticed by the editor
of 1732, as printed in 1664, for if such a volume did exist, which I much
doubt, it was nothing more than a copy of the eighth with a new
title-page. In 1732 appeared the _ninth_, which was a reprint of the
_sixth_, executed with care and judgment. I have endeavoured in vain to
discover to whom we are indebted for this republication of bishop Earle's
curious volume, but it is probable that the person who undertook it, found
so little encouragement in his attempt to revive a taste for the
productions of our early writers, that he suffered his name to remain
unknown. Certain it is that the impression, probably not a large one, did
not sell speedily, as I have seen a copy, bearing date 1740, under the
name of "_The World display'd: or several Essays; consisting of the
various Characters and Passions of its principal Inhabitants_," &c.
London, printed for C. Ward, and R. Chandler. The edition printed at
Salisbury, in 1786, (which has only seventy-four characters,) with that
now offered to the public, close the list.
FOOTNOTES:
[AQ] Having never seen or been able to hear of any copy of the second,
third, or fourth editions, I am unable to point out when the additional
characters first appeared.
[AR] Robert Allot, better known as the editor of _England's Parnassus_,
appears to have succeeded Blount in several of his copy-rights, among
others, in that of Shakspeare, as the second edition (1632) was printed
for him.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
_Preface to the Reprint of 1897_ vii.
Advertisement to the present edition (1811) xlv.
Preface to the edition of 1732 xlvii.
Advertisement to the edition of 1786 xlix.
Editions of _Microcosmography_ li.
Blount's Preface to the Reader lix.
A child 1
A young raw preacher 4
A grave divine 8
A meer dull physician 11
An alderman 16
A discontented man 18
An antiquary 20
A younger brother 22
A meer formal man 25
A church papist 27
A self-conceited man 29
A too idly reserved man 31
A tavern 34
A shark 37
A carrier 40
A young man 42
An old college butler 45
An upstart country knight 48
An idle gallant 51
A constable 53
A downright scholar 54
A plain country fellow 57
A player 60
A detractor 63
A young gentleman of the university 65
A weak man 68
A tobacco-seller 70
A pot poet 71
A plausible man 74
A bowl-alley 76
The world's wise man 78
A surgeon 80
A contemplative man 82
A she precise hypocrite 84
A sceptick in religion 88
An attorney 93
A partial man 95
A trumpeter 97
A vulgar spirited man 98
A plodding student 101
Paul's walk 103
A cook 106
A bold forward man 108
A baker 111
A pretender to learning 112
A herald 115
The common singing-men in cathedral churches 116
A shop-keeper 118
A blunt man 119
A handsome hostess 122
A critic 123
A serjeant, or catch-pole 124
An university dun 126
A stayed man 128
[All from this character were added after the first edition.]
A modest man 131
A meer empty wit 134
A drunkard 136
A prison 138
A serving-man 140
An insolent man 142
Acquaintance 144
A meer complimental man 147
A poor fiddler 149
A meddling-man 151
A good old man 153
A flatterer 155
A high spirited man 158
A meer gull citizen 160
A lascivious man 165
A rash man 167
An affected man 169
A profane man 171
A coward 173
A sordid rich man 174
A meer great man 177
A poor man 179
An ordinary honest man 181
A suspicious, or jealous man 183
APPENDIX.
Some account of bishop Earle[AS] 186
Characters of bishop Earle 194