Part 81

C has "Newly composed for the Northerne parts of this Kingdome."

F. MADAN, Sub-Librarian Bodleian Library, February 11th, 1897.

This table was compiled for me most kindly by Mr. MADAN. It answers the question, what editions Bliss knew of at various times.

The following passage from Evelyn's Diary adds one more testimony to Earle. Nov. 30th, 1662. "Invited by the Deane of Westminster (Dr. Earle) to his consecration dinner and ceremony on his being made Bishop of Worcester. Dr. Bolton preached in the Abbey Church--then followed the consecration.... After this was one of the most plentiful and magnificent dinners that in my life I ever saw. It cost neere £600.... Here were the Judges, Nobility, Clergy, and gentlemen innumerable, this Bishop being universally belov'd for his sweete and gentle disposition. He was author of those characters which go under the name of Blount. He translated his late Majesty's Icon into Latine, was Clerk of his Closet, Chaplaine, Deane of Westminster, and yet a most humble, meeke, but cheerful man, an excellent scholar, and rare preacher. I had the honour to be loved by him. He married me at Paris, during his Majesties and the Churches exile. When I tooke leave of him he brought me to the Cloysters in his episcopal habit." He elsewhere speaks of "going to St. Germans to desire of Dr. Earle," then in attendance at the Prince of Wales' Court, that he would marry him "at the chapel of his Majesty's Resident at the Court of France," June 10th, 1647. A sermon of Earle's, "my deare friend now Deane of Westminster" is mentioned on Christmas Day 1660. It was one "condoling the breache made in the public joy by the lamented death of the Princess of Orange." My attention was drawn to these passages by a friend who claims descent from Bishop Earle--Mr. W. B. Alt, of New College, Oxford.

A testimony from another hand is quoted in Bliss's annotated copy. "How well he understood the world in his younger days appears by his smart characters; how little he valued it was seen in the careless indifference of his holy contemplative life."

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 Assembly of Divines, but he declined to come.

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 title of Earle's book that the phrase of Menenius Agrippa in Coriolanus.--"The Map of my Microcosm" actually occurs as a title 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 illustrates 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 mass 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 classes, "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 titles of books of characters, as illustrating the range of this class 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 noble cavalier characterized," "& a rebellious caviller cauterized," 1644 or 5. An answer to Wither's Campo Musæ. 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.