Part 4

"So infinite a fancy, bound in by a most logical ratiocination."--Clarendon (of Lord Falkland).

Clarendon.

"A great cherisher of good parts ... and if he found men clouded with poverty, or want, a most liberal and bountiful patron."--Clarendon, ib.

Clarendon, ib.

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."

Is this from Pliny's Letters? "Totum patrem mira similitudine exscripserat."--Lib. V. xvi.

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.

Perhaps the simile in Æn. viii. 408 and one or two other places would justify us in calling this also Virgilian, as, indeed, one may call most good things.

Clarendon--his character of Lord Falkland.

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!"

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?

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."

"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."

Quintilian uses it of Thucydides.

The "She precise hypocrite" is a striking example--one of Earle's most humorous pieces.

cf. also "The plain country fellow."

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!"

Professor Jebb, preface to "The Characters of Theophrastus."

Anthony Wood.

Professor Jebb.

Professor Jebb justly replies to Hallam that if La Bruyère 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.

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