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 noble 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
Bluster, a seaman, travel from Billingsgate to Gravesend." 1650.
9. "The interpreter," 1622, deals with "three principall terms of state--a
puritan, a Protestant, a papist."
10. "The Joviall Crew; or the Devill turn'd Ranter." 1651.
11. [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 damnify Pindarus, the poet, nor any of his family."
16. "A wandering Jew telling fortunes to Englishmen." 1640.
17. "The spiritual navigators bound for the Holy Land." 1615.
18. "The picture of a modern Whig: a dialogue between Whiglove and Double,
at Tom's Coffee-House." 1715.
19. In 1671 "Le vice ridicule" appeared. A sort of translation of Earle's
characters.
20. Pictures of Passions, Fancies, and Affections, poetically deciphered
in variety of characters (no date).
21. Characters of gentlemen that have put in to the Ladies Invention. This
begins--"A little Beau of the city strain."
22. Characters of several ingenious designing gentlewomen, who have lately
put in to the Ladies Invention, which is intended to be drawn as soon as
full. (There is no date to either of these.)
One or two extracts may be added from Anthony Wood.
"Lord Falkland, when he became one of the gentlemen of His Majesty's Privy
Chamber, had frequent retirements to Great Tew and sometimes to Oxon, for
the company of and conversation with learned and witty men. William
Chillingworth (author of the Religion of Protestants), Joh. Earle,[FB]
Charles Gataker (son of Thomas Gataker [the Editor of Marcus Aurelius] and
Anthony Wood thinks Chaplain to Lord Falkland); Thomas Triplet, a very
witty man of Christ Church; Hugh Cressey, and others.[FC] Cressey wrote a
number of theological works, and in one of them occurs the testimony to
Earle given in Bliss."
The saturnine Anthony Wood is amusingly illustrated in two passages from
his notice of Earle. "John Earle received his first being in this vain and
transitory world within the city of York.... His elegy on Beaumont was
printed at the end of the quarto edition of Beaumont's poems--put out with
a poetical epistle before them, subscribed by a _Presbyterian
bookbinder_--afterwards an informer to the Court of Sequestration ... _and
a beggar defunct in prison_"! In the notice of Morley he tells us that
"his banishment was made less tedious to him by the company of Dr. Joh.
Earle, his dearest friend." It is sad to find that the translation of
Hooker which was "to make the learned of all nations happy" was "utterly
destroyed"--the loose papers being taken by the servants after Earle's
death "to light their fires or else to put under their bread and pies."
This translation "was Earle's entertainment during a part of his exile at
Cologne." See the Bodleian letters quoted in Arber's Reprint. To that
Reprint I have been much indebted for help of various kinds.
My warmest thanks are due to Professor Rowley, of University College,
Bristol, whom I have constantly consulted while preparing this issue of
Dr. Bliss's edition. If one may be allowed a slight twist of a
Shakspearian phrase, I would say of such help as his--"Ripeness is all."
It is this quality that makes one at least of Professor Rowley's friends
so grateful and so importunate.
S. T. I.
Clifton, April, 1897.
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."
[EQ] Memoirs, vol. I, p. 81, ed. C. Firth.
[ER] I ought to say that Mr. Madan, who was kind enough to look at my
copy, does not think many of the notes are in Bliss's hand-writing.
[ES] "More care, attention, accuracy and valuable enlargement from an
inexhaustible stock of materials has rarely been witnessed than in the
editorial labours of Dr. Bliss."--Dibdin, speaking of Bliss's edition of
the Athenae Oxonienses.
[ET] Cowper's Letters, June 12th, 1782.
[EU] Some of the MS. notes in my copy are the same as those in the printed
volume.
[EV] To Bliss's notice of {Blount Blunt}; it may be added that "Pericles"
was printed for him in 1609; and the first edition of Marlow's "Hero and
Leander" in 1598 ["printed for Edward Blunt by Adam Islip" (Philemon
Holland's printer)]. Marlow's "First Book of Lucan" (1600) has a humorous
and complimentary dedication to Blunt from another bookseller, Thomas
Thorpe. See "Earlier History of English Bookselling." (Sampson and Low.)
[EW] The second folio Shakespeare (1632) was printed for him.
[EX] The 1613 edition of Hero and Leander was printed by W. Stansby for
Ed. Blunt. He also published some of Ben Jonson's works.
[EY] Sir Henry Savile, Provost of Eton, and editor of the famous
Chrysostom, recognised Earle's scholarship. "When a young scholar was
recommended to him for a good witt,--Out upon him! I'll have nothing to do
with him--he would say, give me the plodding student. If I would look for
witts, I would go to Newgate--There be the witts! and John Earle was the
only scholar that ever he took as recommended for a witt."--_Aubrey._
[EZ] David Lloyd, "Memoirs," 1668, folio.
[FA] "The very Parliament naming him as worthy ... though he thought not
it worthy of him."--_Ib._
[FB] Aubrey calls him "an ingeniose young gent, but no writer."
[FC] "Ben Jonson, Edmund Waller, Esq., Mr. Th. Hobbes, and all the
excellent witts of that peaceable time."--_Aubrey._