A PREMONITION or THE TITLE AND USE OF CHARACTERS.
Reader,--The divines of the old heathens were their moral philosophers.
These received the acts of an inbred law, in the Sinai of nature, and
delivered them with many expositions to the multitude. These were the
overseers of manners, correctors of vices, directors of lives, doctors
of virtue, which yet taught their people the body of their natural
divinity, not after one manner: while some spent themselves in deep
discourses of human felicity and the way to it in common, others thought
it best to apply the general precepts of goodness or decency to
particular conditions and persons. A third sort in a mean course betwixt
the two other, and compounded of them both, bestowed their time in
drawing out the true lineaments of every virtue and vice, so lively,
that who saw the medals might know the face; which art they
significantly termed Charactery. Their papers were so many tables, their
writings so many speaking pictures, or living images, whereby the ruder
multitude might even by their sense learn to know virtue and discern
what to detest. I am deceived if any course could be more likely to
prevail, for herein the gross conceit is led on with pleasure, and
informed while it feels nothing but delight; and if pictures have been
accounted the books of idiots, behold here the benefit of an image
without the offence. It is no shame for us to learn wit of heathens,
neither is it material in whose school we take out a good lesson. Yea,
it is more shame not to follow their good than not to lead them better.
As one, therefore, that in worthy examples hold imitation better than
invention, I have trod in their paths, but with an higher and wider
step, and out of their tablets have drawn these larger portraitures of
both sorts. More might be said, I deny not, of every virtue, of every
vice; I desired not to say all but enough. If thou do but read or like
these I have spent good hours ill; but if thou shalt hence abjure those
vices, which before thou thoughtest not ill-favoured, or fall in love
with any of these goodly faces of virtue, or shalt hence find where thou
hast any little touch of these evils, to clear thyself, or where any
defect in these graces to supply it, neither of us shall need to repent
of our labour.