How very sure we should all be that Milton did not write these pieces, if he had not given them a place among his published works! Returning to the crowd of Character-writers we find in 1631, the year of Milton's writing upon Hobson,



WYE SALTONSTALL,

author of "Pictures Loquentes, or Pictures drawn forth in Characters. With a Poeme of a Maid" The poem of a Maid was, of course, suggested by the fact that Sir Thomas Overbury's Characters had joined to them the poem of a Wife. There was a second edition in 1635. Saltonstall's Characters were the World, an Old Man, a Woman, a Widow, a True Lover, a Country Bride, a Ploughman, a Melancholy Man, a Young Heir, a Scholar in the University, a Lawyers Clerk, a Townsman in Oxford, an Usurer, a Wandering Rogue, a Waterman, a Shepherd, a Jealous Man, a Chamberlain, a Maid, a Bailey, a Country Fair, a Country Ale-house, a Horse Race, a Farmer's Daughter, a Keeper, a Gentleman's House in the Country; to which he added in the second edition, a Fine Dame, a Country Dame, a Gardener, a Captain, a Poor Village, a Merry Man, a Scrivener, the Term, a Mower, a Happy Man, an Arrant Knave, and an Old Waiting Gentlewoman. This is one of his Characters as quoted by Philip Bliss in the Appendix to his edition of Earle—



THE TERM

Is a time when Justice keeps open court for all comers, while her sister Equity strives to mitigate the rigour of her positive sentence. It is called the term, because it does end and terminate business, or else because it is the Terminus ad quem, that is, the end of the countryman's journey, who comes up to the term, and with his hobnail shoes grinds the faces of the poor stones, and so returns again. It is the soul of the year, and makes it quick, which before was dead. Innkeepers gape for it as earnestly as shell-fish do for salt water after a low ebb. It sends forth new books into the world, and replenishes Paul's Walk with fresh company, where Quid novi? is their first salutation, and the weekly news their chief discourse. The taverns are painted against the term, and many a cause is argued there and tried at that bar, where you are adjudged to pay the costs and charges, and so dismissed with "welcome, gentlemen." Now the city puts her best side outward, and a new play at the Blackfriars is attended on with coaches. It keeps watermen from sinking, and helps them with many a fare voyage to Westminster. Tour choice beauties come up to it only to see and be seen, and to learn the newest fashion, and for some other recreations. Now many that have been long sick and crazy begins to stir and walk abroad, especially if some young prodigals come to town, who bring more money than wit. Lastly, the term is the joy of the city, a dear friend to countrymen, and is never more welcome than after a long vacation.

We have also, in 1632, "London and Country Carbonadoed and Quartered into Several Characters" by Donald Lupton; in 1633, the "Character of a Gentleman" appended to Brathwaif's "English Gentleman;" in 1634, "A strange Metamorphosis of Man, transformed into a Wilderness, Deciphered in Characters" of which this is a specimen:—



THE HORSE

Is a creature made, as it were, in wax. When Nature first framed him, she took a secret complacence in her work. He is even her masterpiece in irrational things, borrowing somewhat of all things to set him forth. For example, his slick bay coat he took from the chestnut; his neck from the rainbow, which perhaps make him rain so well. His mane belike he took from Pegasus, making him a hobby to make this a complete jennet, which mane he wears so curled, much after the women's fashions now-a-days;—this I am sure of, howsoever, it becomes them, [and] it sets forth our jennet well. His legs he borrowed of the hart, with his swiftness, which makes him a true courser indeed. The stars in his forehead he fetched from heaven, which will not be much missed, there being so many. The little head he hath, broad breast, fat buttock, and thick tail are properly his own, for he knew not where to get him better. If you tell him of the horns he wants to make him most complete, he scorns the motion, and sets them at his heel. He is well shod, especially in the upper leather, for as for his soles, they are much at reparation, and often fain to be removed. Nature seems to have spent an apprenticeship of years to make you such a one, for it is full seven years ere he comes to this perfection, and be fit for the saddle: for then (as we), it seems to come to the years of discretion, when he will show a kind of rational judgment with him, and if you set an expert rider on his back, you shall see how sensible they will talk together, as master and scholar. When he shall be no sooner mounted and planted in the seat, with the reins in one hand, a switch in the other, and speaking with his spurs in the horse's flanks, a language he well understands, but he shall prance, curvet, and dance the canaries half an hour together in compass of a bushel, and yet still, as he thinks, get some ground, shaking the goodly plume on his head with a comely pride. This will our Bucephalus do in the lists: but when he comes abroad into the fields, he will play the country gentleman as truly, as before the knight in tournament. If the game be up once, and the hounds in chase, you shall see how he will prick up his ears straight, and tickle at the sport as much as his rider shall, and laugh so loud, that if there be many of them, they will even drown the rural harmony of the dogs. When he travels, of all inns he loves best the sign of the silver bell, because likely there he fares best, especially if he come the first and get the prize. He carries his ears upright, nor seldom ever lets them fall till they be cropped off, and after that, as in despite, will never wear them more. His tail is so essential to him, that if he lose it once he is no longer a horse, but ever styled a curtali. To conclude, he is a blade of Vulcan's forging, made for Mars of the best metal, and the post of Fame to carry her tidings through the world, who, if he knew his own strength, would shrewdly put for the monarchy of our wilderness.

* * * * *

_Then there-were separate Characters, as "of a Projector" (1642); "of an Oxford Incendiary" (1645); and in 1664, "A New Anatomic, or Character of a Christian or Roundhead, expressing his Description, Excellenrie, Happiness, and Innocencie. Wherein may appear how far this blind World is mistaken in their unjust Censures of him." Several Characters were included in Lord North's "Forest of Varieties" published in 1645. Fourteen Characters, some of individual persons, were in the "Characters and Elegies, by Sir Francis Wortley, Knight and Baronet" published in 1646. The author was son of Sir Richard Wortley of Wortley in Yorkshire. He was a good royalist, was taken prisoner in the civil wars, and wrote his Characters in the Tower. They were these:—The Character of his Roy all Majestie; the Character of the Queene's Majestie; the Hopeful Prince; a true Character of the illustrious James, Duke of York; the Character of a Noble General; a true English Protestant; an Antinomian, or Anabaptistical Independent; a Jesuit; the true Character of a Northern Lady, as she is Wife, Mother, and Sister; the Politique Neuter; the Citie Paragon; a Sharking Committee-man; Britannicus his Pedigree —afatall Prediction of his end; and last, the Phoenix of the Court.

In 1646, T. F., who is named by interlineation on his title-page among the King's Pamphlets, T. Ford, servant to Mr. Sam. Man, produced the "Times Anatomized, in several Characters." These were: A Good King, Rebellion, an Honest Subject, an Hypocritical Convert of the Times, a Soldier of Fortune, a Discontented Person, an Ambitious Man, the Vulgar, Error, Truth, a Self-seeker, Pamphlets, an Envious Man, True Valour, Time, a Neuter, a Turn-Coat, a Moderate Man, a Corrupt Committee-man, a Sectary, War, Peace, a Drunkard, a Novice, Preacher, a Scandalous Preacher, a Grave Divine, a Self-Conceited Man, Religion, Death. This is T. Ford's Character of Pamphlets—_



PAMPHLETS

Are the weekly almanacs, showing what weather is in the state, which, like the doves of Aleppo, carry news to every part of the kingdom. They are the silent traitors that affront majesty, and abuse all authority, under the colour of an imprimatur. Ubiquitary flies that have of late so blistered the ears of all men, that they cannot endure the solid truth. The echoes, whereby what is done in part of the kingdom, is heard all over. They are like the mushrooms, sprung up in a night, and dead in a day; and such is the greediness of men's natures (in these Athenian days) of new, that they will rather feign than want it.

So the tide ran on. In 1647 there was "The Character of an Agitator," and also John Cleveland's Character of a London Diurnal.



JOHN CLEVELAND,

The Cavalier poet, born at Loitghborough in Leicestershire in 1613, son of an usher in a free school there, was sent to Milton's College, Christ's, at Cambridge in 1627, when he was fifteen years old. Milton had gone to Christ's two years before, but at the age of seventeen. Cleveland left Christ's College in 1631, when he took his B.A. degree, and went to St. John's, of which he was elected a Fellow in March 1634. He proceeded M.A. in 1634, and studied afterwards both law and physics, living for nine years at Cambridge. John Cleveland was ejected from his position as Fellow and Tutor by the Parliamentary visitors in February 1645 (new style), and was sent to Newark as judge advocate under Sir Richard Willis, the Governor. After the surrender at Newark, Cleveland depended upon friendship of cavaliers who gave him hospitality for his witty companionship, and the good scholarship that made him valuable as a tutor to their sons, Cleveland, who lives among our poets, wrote in the first days of his trouble these three prose Characters:—



THE CHARACTER OF A COUNTRY COMMITTEE-MAN, WITH THE EAR-MARK. OF A SEQUESTRATOR.

A committee-man by his name should be one that is possessed, there is number enough in it to make an epithet for legion. He is persona in concreto (to borrow the solecism of a modern statesman). You may translate it by the Red Bull phrase, and speak as properly, Enter seven devils solus. It is a well-trussed title that contains both the number and the beast; for a committee-man is a noun of multitude, he must be spelled with figures, like Antichrist wrapped in a pair-royal of sixes. Thus the name is as monstrous as the man, a complex notion of the same lineage with accumulative treason. For his office it is the Heptarchy, or England's fritters; it is the broken meat of a crumbling prince, only the royalty is greater; for it is here, as in the miracle of loaves, the voider exceeds the bill of fare. The Pope and he ring the changes; here is the plurality of crowns to one head, join them together and there is a harmony in discord. The triple-headed turnkey of heaven with the triple-headed porter of hell. A committee-man is the relics of regal government, but, like holy relics, he outbulks the substance whereof he is a remnant. There is a score of kings in a committee, as in the relics of the cross there is the number of twenty. This is the giant with the hundred hands that wields the sceptre; the tyrannical bead-roll by which the kingdom prays backward, and at every curse drops a committee-man. Let Charles be waived whose condescending clemency aggravates the defection, and make Nero the question, better a Nero than a committee. There is less execution by a single bullet than by case-shot.

Now a committee-man is a parti-coloured officer. He must be drawn like Janus with cross and pile in his countenance, as he relates to the soldiers or faces about to his fleecing the country. Look upon him martially, and he is a justice of war, one that hath bound his Dalton up in buff, and will needs be of the Quorum to the best commanders. He is one of Mars his lay-elders; he shares in the government, though a Nonconformist to his bleeding rubric. He is the like sectary in arms, as the Platonic is in love, keeps a fluttering in discourse, but proves a haggard in the action. He is not of the soldiers and yet of his flock. It is an emblem of the golden age (and such indeed he makes it to him) when so tame a pigeon may converse with vultures. Methinks a committee hanging about a governor, and bandileers dangling about a furred alderman, have an anagram resemblance. There is no syntax between a cap of maintenance and a helmet. Who ever knew an enemy routed by a grand jury and a Billa vera? It is a left-handed garrison where their authority perches; but the more preposterous the more in fashion, the right hand fights while the left rules the reins. The truth is, the soldier and the gentleman are like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, one fights at all adventures to purchase the other the government of the island. A committee-man properly should be the governor's mattress to fit his truckle, and to new string him with sinews of war; for his chief use is to raise assessments in the neighbouring wapentake.

The country people being like an Irish cow that will not give down her milk unless she see her calf before her, hence it is he is the garrison's dry nurse; he chews their contribution before he feeds them, so the poor soldiers live like Trochilus by picking the teeth of this sacred crocodile.

So much for his warlike or ammunition face, which is so preter-natural that it is rather a vizard than a face; Mars in him hath but a blinking aspect, his face of arms is like his coat, partie per pale, soldier and gentleman much of a scantling.

Now enter his taxing and deglubing face, a squeezing look like that of Vespasianus, as if he were bleeding over a close stool.

Take him thus and he is in the inquisition of the purse an authentic gypsy, that nips your bong with a canting ordinance; not a murdered fortune in all the country but bleeds at the touch of this malefactor. He is the spleen of the body politic that swells itself to the consumption of the whole. At first, indeed, he ferreted for the parliament, but since he hath got off his cope he set up for himself. He lives upon the sins of the people, and that is a good standing dish too. He verifies the axiom, lisdem nutritur ex quibus componitur; his diet is suitable to his constitution. I have wondered often why the plundered countrymen should repair to him for succour, certainly it is under the same notion, as one whose pockets are picked goes to Moll Cutpurse, as the predominant in that faculty.

He outdives a Dutchman, gets a noble of him that was never worth sixpence; for the poorest do not escape, but Dutch-like he will be draining even in the driest ground. He aliens a delinquent's estate with as little remorse as his other holiness gives away an heretic's kingdom, and for the truth of the delinquency, both chapmen have as little share of infallibility. Lye is the grand salad of arbitrary government, executor to the star-chamber and the high commission; for those courts are not extinct, they survive in him like dollars changed into single money. To speak the truth, he is the universal tribunal; for since these times all causes fall to his cognisance, as in a great infection all diseases turn oft to the plague. It concerns our masters the parliament to look about them; if he proceedeth at this rate the jack may come to swallow the pike, as the interest often eats out the principal. As his commands are great, so he looks for a reverence accordingly. He is punctual in exacting your hat, and to say right his due, but by the same title as the upper garment is the vails of the executioner. There was a time when such cattle would hardly have been taken upon suspicion for men in office, unless the old proverb were renewed, that the beggars make a free company, and those their wardens. You may see what it is to hang together. Look upon them severally, and you cannot but fumble for some threads of charity. But oh, they are termagants in conjunction! like fiddlers who are rogues when they go single, and joined in consort, gentlemen musicianers. I care not much if I untwist my committee-man, and so give him the receipt of this grand Catholicon.

Take a state martyr, one that for his good behaviour hath paid the excise of his ears, so suffered captivity by the land-piracy of ship-money; next a primitive freeholder, one that hates the king because he is a gentleman transgressing the Magna Charta of delving Adam. Add to these a mortified bankrupt that helps out his false weights with some scruples of conscience, and with his peremptory scales can doom his prince with a mene tekel. These with a new blue-stockinged justice, lately made of a good basket-hilted yeoman, with a short-handed clerk tacked to the rear of him to carry the knapsack of his understanding, together with two or three equivocal sirs whose religion, like their gentility, is the extract of their acres; being therefore spiritual because they are earthly; not forgetting the man of the law, whose corruption gives the Hogan to the sincere Juncto. These are the simples of this precious compound; a kind of Dutch hotch-potch, the Hogan Mogan committee-man.

The Committee-man hath a sideman, or rather a setter, hight a Sequestrator, of whom you may say, as of the great Sultan's horse, where he treads the grass grows no more. He is the State's cormorant, one that fishes for the public but feeds himself; the misery is he fishes without the cormorant's property, a rope to strengthen the gullet and to make him disgorge. A sequestrator! He is the devil's nut-hook, the sign with him is always in the clutches. There are more monsters retain to him than to all the limbs in anatomy. It is strange physicians do not apply him to the soles of the feet in a desperate fever, he draws far beyond pigeons. I hope some mountebank will slice him and make the experiment. He is a tooth-drawer once removed; here is the difference, one applauds the grinder the other the grist. Never till now could I verify the poet's description, that the ravenous harpy had a human visage. Death himself cannot quit scores with him; like the demoniac in the gospel, he lives among tombs, nor is all the holy water shed by widows and orphans a sufficient exorcism to dispossess him. Thus the cat sucks your breath and the fiend your blood; nor can the brotherhood of witchfinders, so sagely instituted with all their terror, wean the familiars.

But once more to single out my embossed committee-man; his fate (for I know you would fain see an end of him) is either a whipping audit, when he is wrung in the withers by a committee of examinations, and so the sponge weeps out the moisture which he had soaked before; or else he meets his passing peal in the clamorous mutiny of a gut-foundered garrison, for the hedge-sparrow will be feeding the cuckoo till he mistake his commons and bites off her head. Whatever it is, it is within his desert, for what is observed of some creatures that at the same time they trade in productions three stories high, suckling the first, big with the second, and clicketing for the third: a committee-man is the counterpoint, his mischief is superfoetation, a certain scale of destruction, for he ruins the father, beggars the son, and strangles the hope of all posterity.



THE CHARACTER OF A DIURNAL-MAKER.

A diurnal-maker is the sub-almoner of history, Queen Mab's register, one whom, by the same figure that a north country pedlar is a merchantman, you may style an author. It is like overreach of language, when every thin tinder-cloaked quack must be called a doctor; when a clumsy cobbler usurps the attribute of our English peers, and is vamped a translator. List him a writer and you smother Geoffrey in swabber-slops; the very name of dabbler oversets him; he is swallowed up in the phrase, like Sir S.L. [Samuel Luke] in a great saddle, nothing to be seen but the giddy feather in his crown. They call him a Mercury, but he becomes the epithet like the little negro mounted upon an elephant, just such another blot rampant. He has not stuffings sufficient for the reproach of a scribbler, but it hangs about him like an old wife's skin when the flesh hath forsaken her, lank and loose. He defames a good title as well as most of our modern noblemen; those wens of greatness, the body politic's most peccant humours blistered into lords. He hath so raw-boned a being that however you render him he rubs it out and makes rags of the expression. The silly countryman who, seeing an ape in a scarlet coat, blessed his young worship, and gave his landlord joy of the hopes of his house, did not slander his complement with worse application than he that names this shred an historian. To call him an historian is to knight a mandrake; 'tis to view him through a perspective, and by that gross hyperbole to give the reputation of an engineer to a maker of mousetraps. Such an historian would hardly pass muster with a Scotch stationer in a sieveful of ballads and godly books. He would not serve for the breast-plate of a begging Grecian. The most cramped compendium that the age hath seen since all learning hath been almost torn into ends, outstrips him by the head. I have heard of puppets that could prattle in a play, but never saw of their writings before. There goes a report of the Holland women that together with their children they are delivered of a Sooterkin, not unlike to a rat, which some imagine to be the offspring of the stoves. I know not what Ignis fatuus adulterates the press, but it seems much after that fashion, else how could this vermin think to be a twin to a legitimate writer; when those weekly fragments shall pass for history, let the poor man's box be entitled the exchequer, and the alms-basket a magazine. Not a worm that gnaws on the dull scalp of voluminous Holinshed, but at every meal devoured more chronicle than his tribe amounts to. A marginal note of W. P. would serve for a winding-sheet for that man's works, like thick-skinned fruits are all rind, fit for nothing but the author's fate, to be pared in a pillory.

The cook who served up the dwarf in a pie (to continue the frolic) might have lapped up such an historian as this in the bill of fare. He is the first tincture and rudiment of a writer, dipped as yet in the preparative blue, like an almanac well-willer. He is the cadet of a pamphleteer, the pedee of a romancer; he is the embryo of a history slinked before maturity. How should he record the issues of time who is himself an abortive? I will not say but that he may pass for an historian in Garbier's academy; he is much of the size of those knotgrass professors. What a pitiful seminary was there projected; yet suitable enough to the present universities, those dry nurses which the providence of the age has so fully reformed that they are turned reformadoes. But that's no matter, the meaner the better. It is a maxim observable in these days, that the only way to win the game is to play petty Johns. Of this number is the esquire of the quill, for he hath the grudging of history and some yawnings accordingly. Writing is a disease in him and holds like a quotidian, so 'tis his infirmity that makes him an author, as Mahomet was beholding to the falling sickness to vouch him a prophet. That nice artificer who filed a chain so thin and light that a flea could trail it (as if he had worked shorthand, and taught his tools to cypher), did but contrive an emblem for this skipjack and his slight productions.

Methinks the Turk should licence diurnals because he prohibits learning and books. A library of diurnals is a wardrobe of frippery; 'tis a just idea of a Limbo of the infants. I saw one once that could write with his toes, by the same token I could have wished he had worn his copies for socks; 'tis he without doubt from whom the diurnals derive their pedigree, and they have a birthright accordingly, being shuffled out at the bed's feet of history. To what infinite numbers an historian would multiply should he crumble into elves of this profession? To supply this smallness they are fain to join forces, so they are not singly but as the custom is in a croaking committee. They tug at the pen like slaves at the oar, a whole bank together; they write in the posture that the Swedes gave fire in, over one another's heads. It is said there is more of them go to a suit of clothes than to a Britannicus; in this polygamy the clothes breed and cannot determine whose issue is lawfully begotten.

And here I think it were not amiss to take a particular how he is accoutred, and so do by him as he in his Siquis for the wall-eyed mare, or the crop flea-bitten, give you the marks of the beast. I begin with his head, which is ever in clouts, as if the nightcap should make affidavit that the brain was pregnant. To what purpose doth the Pia Mater lie in so dully in her white formalities; sure she hath had hard labour, for the brows have squeezed for it, as you may perceive by his buttered bon-grace that film of a demicastor; 'tis so thin and unctuous that the sunbeams mistake it for a vapour, and are like to cap him; so it is right heliotrope, it creaks in the shine and flaps in the shade; whatever it be I wish it were able to call in his ears. There's no proportion between that head and appurtenances; those of all lungs are no more fit for that small noddle of the circumcision than brass bosses for a Geneva Bible. In what a puzzling neutrality is the poor soul that moves betwixt two such ponderous biases? His collar is edged with a piece of peeping linen, by which he means a band; 'tis the forlorn of his shirt crawling out of his neck; indeed it were time that his shirt were jogging, for it has served an apprenticeship, and (as apprentices use) it hath learned its trade too, to which effect 'tis marching to the papermill, and the next week sets up for itself in the shape of a pamphlet. His gloves are the shavings of his hands, for he casts his skin like a cancelled parchment. The itch represents the broken seals. His boots are the legacies of two black jacks, and till he pawned the silver that the jacks were tipped with it was a pretty mode of boot-hose-tops. For the rest of his habit he is a perfect seaman, a kind of tarpaulin, he being hanged about with his coarse composition, those pole-davie papers.

But I must draw to an end, for every character is an anatomy lecture, and it fares with me in this of the diurnal-maker, as with him that reads on a begged malefactor, my subject smells before I have gone through with him; for a parting blow then. The word historian imports a sage and solemn author, one that curls his brow with a sullen gravity, like a bull-necked Presbyter since the army hath got him off his jurisdiction, who, Presbyter like, sweeps his breast with a reverend beard, full of native moss-troopers; not such a squirting scribe as this that's troubled with the rickets, and makes pennyworths of history. The college-treasury that never had in bank above a Harry-groat, shut up there in a melancholy solitude, like one that is kept to keep possession, had as good evidence to show for his title as he for an historian; so, if he will needs be an historian, he is not cited in the sterling acceptation, but after the rate of bluecaps' reckoning, an historian Scot. Now a Scotchman's tongue runs high fullams. There is a cheat in his idiom, for the sense ebbs from the bold expression, like the citizen's gallon, which the drawer interprets but half a pint. In sum, a diurnal-maker is the anti-mark of an historian, he differs from him as a drill from a man, or (if you had rather have it in the saints' gibberish) as a hinter doth from a holder-forth.



THE CHARACTER OF A LONDON DIURNAL.

A diurnal is a puny chronicle, scarce pin-feathered with the wings of time. It is a history in sippets: the English Iliads in a nutshell: the apocryphal Parliament's book of Maccabees in single sheets. It would tire a Welshman to reckon up how many aps 'tis removed from an annal; for it is of that extract, only of the younger house, like a shrimp to a lobster. The original sinner in this kind was Dutch, Gallo-Belgicus the protoplast, and the modern Mercuries but Hans-en-kelders. The Countess of Zealand was brought to bed of an almanac, as many children as days in the year. It may be the legislative lady is of that lineage, so she spawns the diurnals, and they at Westminster take them in adoption by the names of Scoticus, Civicus, Britannicus. In the frontispiece of the old Beldam diurnal, like the contents of the chapter, sitteth the House of Commons judging the twelve tribes of Israel. You may call them the kingdom's anatomy before the weekly calendar; for such is a diurnal, the day of the month with what weather in the commonwealth. It is taken for the pulse of the body politic, and the empiric divines of the assembly, those spiritual dragooners, thumb it accordingly. Indeed it is a pretty synopsis, and those grave rabbis (though in the point of Divinity) trade in no larger authors. The country-carrier, when he buys it for the vicar, miscalls it the urinal; yet properly enough, for it casts the water of the state ever since it staled blood. It differs from an Aulicus, as the devil and his exorcist, or as a black witch doth from a white one, whose office is to unravel her enchantments.

It begins usually with an Ordinance, which is a law still born, dropped before quickened by the royal assent. 'Tis one of the parliament's bye-blows, acts only being legitimate, and hath no more sire than a Spanish jennet that is begotten by the wind.

Thus their militia, like its patron Mars, is the issue only of the mother, without the concourse of royal Jupiter: yet law it is, if they vote it, in defiance to their fundamentals; like the old sexton, who swore his clock went true, whatever the sun said to the contrary.

The next ingredient of a diurnal is plots, horrible plots, which with wonderful sagacity it hunts dry-Coot, while they are yet in their causes, before materia prima can put on her smock. How many such fits of the mother have troubled the kingdom; and for all Sir W.E. [William Earle] looks like a man-midwife, not yet delivered of so much as a cushion? But actors must have properties; and since the stages were voted down the only playhouse is at Westminster.

Suitable to their plots are their informers, skippers, and tailors, spaniels both for the land and water. Good conscionable intelligence! For however Pym's bill may inflame the reckoning, the honest vermin have not so much for lying as the public faith.

Thus a zealous botcher in Moorfields, while he was contriving some quirpocut of Church-Government, by the help of his outlying ears and the Otacousticon of the spirit, discovered such a plot, that Selden intends to combat antiquity, and maintain it was a tailor's goose that preserved the capital.

I wonder my Lord of Canterbury is not once more all to be traitored, for dealing with the lions to settle the Commission of Array in the Tower. It would do well to cramp the articles dormant, besides the opportunity of reforming these beasts of the prerogative, and changing their profaner names of Harry and Charles into Nehemiah and Eleazar.

Suppose a corn-cutter being to give little Isaac a cast of his office should fall to paring his brows (mistaking the one end for the other, because he branches at both), this would be a plot, and the next diurnal would furnish you with this scale of votes:—

Resolved upon the question, That this act of the corn-cutter was an absolute invasion of the city's charter in the representative forehead of Isaac.

Resolved, That the evil counsellors about the corn-cutter are popishly affected and enemies to the State.

Resolved, That there be a public thanksgiving for the great deliverance of Isaac's brow-antlers; and a solemn covenant drawn up to defy the corn-cutter and all his works.

Thus the Quixotes of this age fight with the windmills of their own heads, quell monsters of their own creation, make plots, and then discover them; as who fitter to unkennel the fox than the terrier that is part of him?

In the third place march their adventures; the Roundheads' legends, the rebels' romance; stories of a larger size than the ears of their sect, able to strangle the belief of a Solifidian.

I'll present them in their order. And first as a whiffler before the show enter Stamford, one that trod the stage with the first, traversed the ground, made a leg and exit. The country people took him for one that by order of the Houses was to dance a morrice through the west of England. Well, he's a nimble gentleman; set him upon Banks his horse in a saddle rampant, and it is a great question which part of the Centaur shows better tricks.

There was a vote passing to translate him with all his equipage into monumental gingerbread; but it was crossed by the female committee alleging that the valour of his image would bite their children by the tongues.

This cubit and half of commander, by the help of a diurnal, routed his enemies fifty miles off. It's strange you'll say, and yet 'tis generally believed he would as soon do it at that distance as nearer hand. Sure it was his sword for which the weapon-salve was invented; that so wounding and healing (like loving correlates) might both work at the same removes. But the squib is run to the end of the rope: room for the prodigy of valour. Madam Atropos in breeches, Waller's knight-errantry; and because every mountebank must have his zany, throw him in Hazelrig to set off his story. These two, like Bel and the Dragon, are always worshipped in the same chapter; they hunt in couples, what one doth at the head, the other scores up at the heels.

Thus they kill a man over and over, as Hopkins and Sternhold murder the psalms with another of the same; one chimes all in, and then the other strikes up as the saints-bell.

I wonder for how many lives my Lord Hopton took the lease of his body.

First Stamford slew him, then Waller outkilled that half a bar; and yet it is thought the sullen corpse would scarce bleed were both these manslayers never so near it.

The same goes of a Dutch headsman, that he would do his office with so much ease and dexterity, that the head after execution should stand upon the shoulders. Pray God Sir William be not probationer for the place; for as if he had the like knack too, most of those whom the diurnal hath slain for him, to us poor mortals seem untouched.

Thus these artificers of death can kill the man without wounding the body, like lightning, that melts the sword and never singes the scabbard.

This is the William whose lady is the conqueror; this is the city's champion and the diurnal's delight; he that cuckolds the general in his commission; for he stalks with Essex, and shoots under his belly, because his Excellency himself is not charged there: yet in all this triumph there is a whip and bell; translate but the scene to Roundway Down, there Hazelrig's lobsters turned crabs and crawled backwards, there poor Sir William ran to his lady for an use of consolation.

But the diurnal is weary of the arm of flesh, and now begins an hosanna to Cromwell; one that hath beat up his drums clean through the Old Testament; you may learn the genealogy of our Saviour by the names in his regiment; the muster-master uses no other list but the first chapter of Matthew.

With what face can they object to the king the bringing in of foreigners, when themselves entertain such an army of Hebrews? This Cromwell is never so valorous as when he is making speeches for the association, which nevertheless he doth somewhat ominously with his neck awry, holding up his ear as if he expected Mahomet's pigeon to come and prompt him. He should be a bird of prey too by his bloody beak; his nose is able to try a young eagle, whether she be lawfully begotten. But all is not gold that glitters. What we wonder at in the rest of them is natural to him to kill without bloodshed, for the most of his trophies are in a church window, when a looking-glass would show him more superstition. He is so perfect a hater of images that he hath defaced God's in his own countenance. If he deals with men, 'tis when he takes them napping in an old monument; then down goes dust and ashes, and the stoutest cavalier is no better. O brave Oliver! Time's voider, subsizer to the worms, in whom death, who formerly devoured our ancestors, now chews the cud. He said grace once as if he would have fallen aboard with the Marquis of Newcastle; nay, and the diurnal gave you his bill of fare; but it proved a running banquet, as appears by the story. Believe him as he whistles to his Cambridge team of committee-men, and he doth wonders. But holy men, like the holy language, must be read backwards. They rifle colleges to promote learning, and pull down churches for edification. But sacrilege is entailed upon him. There must be a Cromwell for cathedrals as well as abbeys; a secure sin, whose offence carries its pardon in its mouth; for how shall he be hanged for church-robbery, that gives himself the benefit of the clergy?

But for all Cromwell's nose wears the dominical letter, compared to Manchester he is but like the vigils to an holy-day. This, this is the man of God, so sanctified a thunderbolt, that Burroughs (in a proportionable blasphemy to his Lord of Hosts) would style him the archangel giving battle to the devil.

Indeed, as the angels each of them makes a several species, so every one of his soldiers makes a distinct church. Had these beasts been to enter into the ark it would have puzzled Noah to have sorted them into pairs. If ever there were a rope of sand it was so many sects twisted into an association.

They agree in nothing but that they are all Adamites in understanding. It is a sign of a coward to wink and fight, yet all their valour proceeds from their ignorance.

But I wonder whence their general's purity proceeds; it is not by traduction; if he was begotten a saint it was by equivocal generation, for the devil in the father is turned monk in the son, so his godliness is of the same parentage with good laws, both extracted out of bad manners, and would he alter the Scripture as he hath attempted the creed, he might vary the text and say to corruption, Thou art my Father.

This is he that put out one of the kingdom's eyes by clouding our mother university; and (if this Scotch mist farther prevail) he will extinguish the other. He hath the like quarrel to both, because both are strung with the same optic nerve, knowing loyalty.

Barbarous rebel! who will be revenged upon all learning, because his treason is beyond the mercy of the book.

The diurnal as yet hath not talked much of his victories, but there is the more behind, for the knight must always beat the giant, that's resolved.

If anything fall out amiss which cannot be smothered, the diurnal hath a help at maw. It is but putting to sea and taking a Danish fleet, or brewing it with some success out of Ireland, and then it goes down merrily.

There are more puppets that move by the wire of a diurnal, as Brereton and Cell, two of Mars his petty-toes, such snivelling cowards that it is a favour to call them so. Was Brereton to fight with his teeth (as in all other things he resembles the beast) he would have odds of any man at the weapon. Oh, he's a terrible slaughterman at a Thanksgiving dinner. Had he been cannibal to have eaten those that he vanquished, his gut would have made him valiant.

The greatest wonder is at Fairfax, how he comes to be a babe of grace, certainly it is not in his personal, but (as the State-sophies distinguish) in his politic capacity; degenerate ab extra by the zeal of the house he sat in, as chickens are hatched at Grand Cairo by the adoption of an oven.

There is the woodmonger too, a feeble crutch to a declining cause, a new branch of the old oak of reformation.

And now I speak of reformation, vous avez, Fox the tinker, the liveliest emblem of it that may be; for what did this parliament ever go about to reform, but, tinkerwise, in mending one hole they made three?

But I have not ink enough to cure all the tetters and ring-worms of the State.

I will close up all thus. The victories of the rebels are like the magical combat of Apuleius, who thinking he had slain three of his enemies, found them at last but a triumvirate of bladders. Such, and so empty are the triumphs of a diurnal, but so many impostumated fancies, so many bladders of their own blowing.

* * * * *

_The "Surfeit to A.B.C." in 1656, was a look of Characters. "Naps upon Parnassus'" in 1658 contained Characters of a Temporizer and an Antiquary. In the same year appeared "Satyrical Characters and Handsome Descriptions, in Letters." In 1659 there was a third edition of a satire on the English, published as "A Character of England, as it was lately presented in a Letter to a Nobleman of France" replied to in that year by "A Character of France." These suggested the production in 1659 of "A Perfect Description of the People and Country of Scotland" and, also in 1659, "A Brief Character of the Low Countries under the States, being Three Weeks' Observation of the Vices and Virtues of the Inhabitants." This was written by Owen Feltham, and added to several editions of his "Resolves." In 1660 appeared "The Character of Italy" and "The Character of Spain;" in 1661, "Essays and Characters by L. G.;" in 1662-63, "The Assembly-Man" a Character that had been written by Sir John Birkenhead in 1647. Then came, in 1665, Richard Flecknoe, to whom Dryden ascribed sovereignty as one who

"In prose and verse was owned without dispute, Through all the realms of Nonsense absolute."

As he was equally ready in all forms of writing that his neighbours followed he, of course, wrote Characters. They were "Fifty-five Enigmatical Characters, all very exactly drawn to the Life, from several Persons, Humours, Dispositions. Pleasant and full of Delight. By R. F., Esq." The Duke of Newcastle admired, and wrote, in lines prefixed to the book—_

"Flecknoe, thy characters are so full of wit And fancy, as each word is throng'd with it. Each line's a volume, and who reads would swear Whole libraries were in each character. Nor arrows in a quiver stuck, nor yet Lights in the starry skies are thicker set, Nor quills upon the armed porcupine, Than wit and fancy in this work of thine."

This is one of Flecknoe's Characters:—



THE VALIANT MAN.

He is only a man; your coward and rash being but tame and savage beasts. His courage is still the same, and drink cannot make him more valiant, nor danger less. His valour is enough to leaven whole armies; he is an army himself, worth an army of other men. His sword is not always out like children's daggers, but he is always last in beginning quarrels, though first in ending them. He holds honour, though delicate as crystal, yet not so slight and brittle to be broke and cracked with every touch; therefore, though most wary of it, is not querulous nor punctilious. He is never troubled with passion, as knowing no degree beyond clear courage; and is always valiant, but never furious. He is the more gentle in the chamber, more fierce he's in the field, holding boast (the coward's valour), and cruelty (the beast's), unworthy a valiant man. He is only coward in this, that he dares not do an unhandsome action. In fine, he can only be overcome by discourtesy, and has but one defect—he cannot talk much—to recompense which he does the more.

In 1673 there was published "The Character of a Coffee House, with the symptoms of a Town Wit;" and in the same year, "Essays of Love and Marriage ... with some Characters and other Passages of Wit;" in 1675, "The Character of a Fanatick. By a Person of Quality;" a set of eleven Characters appeared in 1675; "A Whip for a Jockey, or a Character of an Horse-Courser," in 1677; "Four for a Penny, or Poor Robin's Character of an unconscionable Pawnbroker and Ear-mark of an oppressing Tally-man, with a friendly description of a Bum-bailey, and his merciless setting cur or Follower," appeared in 1678; and in the same year the Duke of Buckingham's "Character of an Ugly Woman." In 1681 appeared the "Character of a Disbanded Courtier," and in 1684 Oldham's "Character of a certain ugly old P——." In 1686 followed "Twelve ingenious Characters, or pleasant Descriptions of the Properties of sundry Persons and Things." Sir William Coventry's "Character of a Trimmer," published in 1689, had been written before 1659, when it had been answered by a "Character of a Tory," not printed at the time, but included (1721) in the works of George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham. In 1689 appeared "Characters addressed to Ladies of Age," and also "The Ceremony-Monger his Character, in Six Chapters, by E. Hickeringill, Rector of All Saints, Colchester." Ohe! Enough, enough!



SAMUEL BUTLER,

Author of "Hudibras," who died in 1680, also exercised his wit in Character writing. When Butler's "Remains" were published in two volumes in 1759 by R. Thyer, Keeper of the Public Library of Manchester, 460 pages of the second volume, (all the volume except forty or fifty pages of "Thoughts on Various Subjects,") was occupied by a collection of 120 Characters that he had written. I close this volume of "Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century" with as many of Samuel Butler's Characters as the book has room for,—none are wittier—space being left for one Character by a poet of our own century, Wordsworth's "Character of the Happy Warrior" to bring us to a happy close.



CHARACTERS.

BY SAMUEL BUTLER.



A DEGENERATE NOBLE; OR, ONE THAT IS PROUD OF HIS BIRTH,

Is like a turnip, there is nothing good of him but that which is underground; or rhubarb, a contemptible shrub that springs from a noble root. He has no more title to the worth and virtue of his ancestors than the worms that were engendered in their dead bodies, and yet he believes he has enough to exempt himself and his posterity from all things of that nature for ever. This makes him glory in the antiquity of his family, as if his nobility were the better the further off it is, in time as well as desert, from that of his predecessors. He believes the honour that was left him as well as the estate is sufficient to support his quality without troubling himself to purchase any more of his own; and he meddles us little with the management of the one as the other, but trusts both to the government of his servants, by whom he is equally cheated in both. He supposes the empty title of honour sufficient to serve his turn, though he has spent the substance and reality of it, like the fellow that sold his ass but would not part with the shadow of it; or Apicius, that sold his house, and kept only the balcony to see and be seen in. And because he is privileged from being arrested for his debts, supposes he has the same freedom from all obligations he owes humanity and his country, because he is not punishable for his ignorance and want of honour, no more than poverty or unskilfulness is in other professions, which the law supposes to be punishment enough to itself. He is like a fanatic, that contents himself with the mere title of a saint, and makes that his privilege to act all manner of wickedness; or the ruins of a noble structure, of which there is nothing left but the foundation, and that obscured and buried under the rubbish of the superstructure. The living honour of his ancestors is long ago departed, dead and gone, and his is but the ghost and shadow of it, that haunts the house with horror and disquiet where once it lived. His nobility is truly descended from the glory of his forefathers, and may be rightly said to fall to him, for it will never rise again to the height it was in them by his means, and he succeeds them as candles do the office of the sun. The confidence of nobility has rendered him ignoble, as the opinion of wealth makes some men poor, and as those that are born to estates neglect industry and have no business but to spend, so he being born to honour believes he is no further concerned than to consume and waste it. He is but a copy, and so ill done that there is no line of the original in him but the sin only. He is like a word that by ill-custom and mistake has utterly lost the sense of that from which it was derived, and now signifies quite contrary; for the glory of noble ancestors will not permit the good or bad of their posterity to be obscure. He values himself only upon his title, which being only verbal gives him a wrong account of his natural capacity, for the same words signify more or less, according as they are applied to things, as ordinary and extraordinary do at court; and sometimes the greater sound has the less sense, as in accounts, though four be more than three, yet a third in proportion is more than a fourth.



A HUFFING COURTIER

Is a cipher, that has no value himself but from the place he stands in. All his happiness consists in the opinion he believes others have of it. This is his faith, but as it is heretical and erroneous, though he suffer much tribulation for it, he continues obstinate, and not to be convinced. He flutters up and down like a butterfly in a garden, and while he is pruning of his peruke takes occasion to contemplate his legs and the symmetry of his breeches. He is part of the furniture of the rooms, and serves for a walking picture, a moving piece of arras. His business is only to be seen, and he performs it with admirable industry, placing himself always in the best light, looking wonderfully politic, and cautious whom he mixes withal. His occupation is to show his clothes, and if they could but walk themselves they would save him the labour and do his work as well as himself. His immunity from varlets is his freehold, and he were a lost man without it. His clothes are but his tailor's livery, which he gives him, for 'tis ten to one he never pays for them. He is very careful to discover the lining of his coat, that you may not suspect any want of integrity or flaw in him from the skin outwards. His tailor is his creator, and makes him of nothing; and though he lives by faith in him, he is perpetually committing iniquities against him. His soul dwells in the outside of him, like that of a hollow tree, and if you do but peel the bark off him he deceases immediately. His carriage of himself is the wearing of his clothes, and, like the cinnamon tree, his bark is better than his body. His looking big is rather a tumour than greatness. He is an idol that has just so much value as other men give him that believe in him, but none of his own. He makes his ignorance pass for reserve, and, like a hunting-nag, leaps over what he cannot get through. He has just so much of politics as hostlers in the university have Latin. He is as humble as a Jesuit to his superior, but repays himself again in insolence over those that are below him, and with a generous scorn despises those that can neither do him good nor hurt. He adores those that may do him good, though he knows they never will, and despises those that would not hurt him if they could. The court is his church, and he believes as that believes, and cries up and down everything as he finds it pass there. It is a great comfort to him to think that some who do not know him may perhaps take him for a lord, and while that thought lasts he looks bigger than usual and forgets his acquaintance, and that's the reason why he will sometimes know you and sometimes not. Nothing but want of money or credit puts him in mind that he is mortal, but then he trusts Providence that somebody will trust him, and in expectation of that hopes for a better life, and that his debts will never rise up in judgment against him. To get in debt is to labour in his vocation, but to pay is to forfeit his protection, for what's that worth to one that owes nothing? His employment being only to wear his clothes, the whole account of his life and actions is recorded in shopkeepers' books, that are his faithful historiographers to their own posterity; and he believes he loses so much reputation as he pays off his debts, and that no man wears his clothes in fashion that pays for them, for nothing is further from the mode. He believes that he that runs in debt is beforehand with those that trust him, and only those that pay are behind. His brains are turned giddy, like one that walks on the top of a house, and that's the reason it is so troublesome to him to look downwards. He is a kind of spectrum, and his clothes are the shape he takes to appear and walk in, and when he puts them off he vanishes. He runs as busily out of one room into another as a great practiser does in Westminster Hall from one court to another. When he accosts a lady he puts both ends of his microcosm in motion, by making legs at one end and combing his peruke at the other. His garniture is the sauce to his clothes, and he walks in his portcannons like one that stalks in long grass. Every motion of him cries "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, quoth the preacher." He rides himself like a well-managed horse, reins in his neck, and walks terra-terra. He carries his elbows backward, as if he were pinioned like a trussed-up fowl, and moves as stiff as if he was upon the spit. His legs are stuck in his great voluminous breeches like the whistles in a bagpipe, those abundant breeches in which his nether parts are not clothed but packed up. His hat has been long in a consumption of the fashion, and is now almost worn to nothing; if it do not recover quickly it will grow too little for a head of garlic. He wears garniture on the toes of his shoes to justify his pretensions to the gout, or such other malady that for the time being is most in fashion or request. When he salutes a friend he pulls off his hat, as women do their vizard-masks. His ribbons are of the true complexion of his mind, a kind of painted cloud or gaudy rainbow, that has no colour of itself but what it borrows from reflection. He is as tender of his clothes as a coward is of his flesh, and as loth to have them disordered. His bravery is all his happiness, and, like Atlas, he carries his heaven on his back. He is like the golden fleece, a fine outside on a sheep's back. He is a monster or an Indian creature, that is good for nothing in the world but to be seen. He puts himself up into a sedan, like a fiddle in a case, and is taken out again for the ladies to play upon, who, when they have done with him, let down his treble-string till they are in the humour again. His cook and valet de chambre conspire to dress dinner and him so punctually together that the one may not be ready before the other. As peacocks and ostriches have the gaudiest and finest feathers, yet cannot fly, so all his bravery is to flutter only. The beggars call him "my lord," and he takes them at their words and pays them for it. If you praise him, he is so true and faithful to the mode that he never fails to make you a present of himself, and will not be refused, though you know not what to do with him when you have him.



A COURT BEGGAR

Waits at Court, as a dog does under a table, to catch what falls, or force it from his fellows if he can. When a man is in a fair way to be hanged that is richly worth it, or has hanged himself, he puts in to be his heir and succeed him, and pretends as much merit as another, as no doubt he has great reason to do if all things were rightly considered. He thinks it vain to deserve well of his Prince as long as he can do his business more easily by begging, for the same idle laziness possesses him that does the rest of his fraternity, that had rather take an alms than work for their livings, and therefore he accounts merit a more uncertain and tedious way of rising, and sometimes dangerous. He values himself and his place not upon the honour or allowances of it, but the convenient opportunity of begging, as King Clause's courtiers do when they have obtained of the superior powers a good station where three ways meet to exercise the function in. The more ignorant, foolish, and undeserving he is, provided he be but impudent enough, which all such seldom fail to be, the better he thrives in his calling, as others in the same way gain more by their sores and broken limbs than those that are sound and in health. He always undervalues what he gains, because he comes easily by it; and, how rich soever he proves, is resolved never to be satisfied, as being, like a Friar Minor, bound by his order to be always a beggar. He is, like King Agrippa, almost a Christian; for though he never begs anything of God, yet he does very much of his vicegerent the King, that is next Him. He spends lavishly what he gets, because it costs him so little pains to get more, but pays nothing; for if he should, his privilege would be of no use at all to him, and he does not care to part with anything of his right. He finds it his best way to be always craving, because he lights many times upon things that are disposed of or not beggable; but if one hit, it pays for twenty that miscarry; even as those virtuosos of his profession at large ask as well of those that give them nothing as those few that, out of charity, give them something. When he has passed almost all offices, as other beggars do from constable to constable, and after meets with a stop, it does but encourage him to be more industrious in watching the next opportunity, to repair the charge he has been at to no purpose. He has his emissaries, that are always hunting out for discoveries, and when they bring him in anything that he judges too heavy far his own interest to carry, he takes in others to join with him (like blind men and cripples that beg in consort), and if they prosper they share, and give the jackal some small snip for his pains in questing; that is, if he has any further use of him; otherwise he leaves him, like virtue, to reward himself; and because he deserves well, which he does by no means approve of, gives him, that which he believes to be the fittest recompense of all merit, just nothing. He believes that the King's restoration being upon his birthday, he is bound to observe it all the days of his life, and grant, as some other kings have done upon the same occasion, whatever is demanded of him, though it were the one-half of his kingdom.



A BUMPKIN OR COUNTRY SQUIRE

Is a clown of rank and degree. He is the growth of his own land, a kind of Autocthonus, like the Athenians that sprang out of their own ground, or barnacles that grow upon trees in Scotland. His homely education has rendered him a native only of his own soil and a foreigner to all other places, from which he differs in language, manner of living, and behaviour, which are as rugged as the coat of a colt that has been bred upon a common. The custom of being the best man in his own territories has made him the worst everywhere else. He assumes the upper end of the table at an ale-house as his birthright, receives the homage of his company, which are always subordinate, and dispenses ale and communication like a self-conforming teacher in a conventicle. The chief points he treats on are the memoirs of his dogs and horses, which he repeats as often as a holder-forth that has but two sermons, to which if he adds the history of his hawks and fishing he is very painful and laborious. He does his endeavour to appear a droll, but his wit being, like his estate, within the compass of a hedge, is so profound and obscure to a stranger that it requires a commentary, and is not to be understood without a perfect knowledge of all circumstances of persons and the particular idiom of the place. He has no ambition to appear a person of civil prudence or understanding more than in putting off a lame, infirm jade for sound wind and limb, to which purpose he brings his squirehood and groom to vouch, and, rather than fail, will outswear an affidavit-man. The top of his entertainment is horrible strong beer, which he pours into his guests (as the Dutch did water into our merchants when they tortured them at Amboyna) till they confess they can drink no more, and then he triumphs over them as subdued and vanquished, no less by the strength of his brain than his drink. When he salutes a man he lays violent hands upon him, and grips and shakes him like a fit of an ague; and when he accosts a lady he stamps with his foot, like a French fencer, and makes a lunge at her, in which he always misses his aim, too high or too low, and hits her on the nose or chin. He is never without some rough-handed flatterer, that rubs him, like a horse, with a curry-comb till he kicks and grunts with the pleasure of it. He has old family stories and jests, that fell to him with the estate, and have been left from heir to heir time out of mind. With these he entertains all comers over and over, and has added some of his own times, which he intends to transmit over to posterity. He has but one way of making all men welcome that come to his house, and that is by making himself and them drunk; while his servants take the same course with theirs, which he approves of as good and faithful service, and the rather because, if he has occasion to tell a strange, improbable story, they may be in a readiness to vouch with the more impudence, and make it a case of conscience to lie as well as drink for his credit. All the heroical glory he aspires to is but to be reputed a most potent and victorious stealer of deer and beater-up of parks, to which purpose he has compiled commentaries of his own great actions that treat of his dreadful adventures in the night, of giving battle in the dark, discomfiting of keepers, horsing the deer on his own back, and making off with equal resolution and success.



AN ANTIQUARY

Is one that has his being in this age, but his life and conversation is in the days of old. He despises the present age as an innovation and slights the future, but has a great value for that which is past and gone, like the madman that fell in love with Cleopatra. He is an old frippery-philosopher, that has so strange a natural affection to worm-eaten speculation that it is apparent he has a worm in his skull. He honours his forefathers and foremothers, but condemns his parents as too modern and no better than upstarts. He neglects himself because he was born in his own time and so far off antiquity, which he so much admires, and repines, like a younger brother, because he came so late into the world. He spends the one-half of his time in collecting old insignificant trifles, and the other in showing them, which he takes singular delight in, because the oftener he does it the farther they are from being new to him. All his curiosities take place of one another according to their seniority, and he values them not by their abilities, but their standing. He has a great veneration for words that are stricken in years, and are grown so aged that they have outlived their employments. These he uses with a respect agreeable to their antiquity and the good services they have done. He throws away his time in inquiring after that which is past and gone so many ages since, like one that shoots away an arrow to find out another that was lost before. He fetches things out of dust and ruins, like the fable of the chemical plant raised out of its own ashes. He values one old invention, that is lost and never to be recovered, before all the new ones in the world, though never so useful. The whole business of his life is the same with his that shows the tombs at Westminster, only the one does it for his pleasure, and the other for money. As every man has but one father, but two grandfathers and a world of ancestors, so he has a proportional value for things that are ancient, and the farther off the greater.

He is a great time-server, but it is of time out of mind to which he conforms exactly, but is wholly retired from the present. His days were spent and gone long before he came into the world, and since his only business is to collect what he can out of the ruins of them. He has so strong a natural affection to anything that is old, that he may truly say to dust and worms, "You are my father;" and to rottenness, "Thou art my mother." He has no providence nor foresight, for all his contemplations look backward upon the days of old; and his brains are turned with them, as if he walked backwards. He had rather interpret one obscure word in any old senseless discourse than be author of the most ingenious new one, and, with Scaliger, would sell the Empire of Germany (if it were in his power) for an old song. He devours an old manuscript with greater relish than worms and moths do, and, though there be nothing in it, values it above anything printed, which he accounts but a novelty. When he happens to cure a small botch in an old author, he is as proud of it as if he had got the philosopher's stone and could cure all the diseases of mankind. He values things wrongfully upon their antiquity, forgetting that the most modern are really the most ancient of all things in the world, like those that reckon their pounds before their shillings and pence of which they are made up. He esteems no customs but such as have outlived themselves and are long since out of use, as the Catholics allow of no saints but such as are dead, and the fanatics, in opposition, of none but the living.



A PROUD MAN

Is a fool in fermentation, that swells and boils over like a porridge-pot. He sets out his feathers like an owl, to swell and seem bigger than he is. He is troubled with a tumour and inflammation of self-conceit, that renders every part of him stiff and uneasy. He has given himself sympathetic love-powder, that works upon him to dotage and has transformed him into his own mistress. He is his own gallant, and makes most passionate addresses to his own dear perfections. He commits idolatry to himself, and worships his own image; though there is no soul living of his Church but himself, yet he believes as the Church believes, and maintains his faith with the obstinacy of a fanatic. He is his own favourite, and advances himself not only above his merit, but all mankind; is both Damon and Pythias to his own dear self, and values his crony above his soul. He gives place to no man but himself, and that with very great distance to all others, whom he esteems not worthy to approach him. He believes whatsoever he has receives a value in being his, as a horse in a nobleman's stable will bear a greater price than in a common market. He is so proud that he is as hard to be acquainted with himself as with others, for he is very apt to forget who he is, and knows himself only superficially; therefore he treats himself civilly as a stranger with ceremony and compliment, but admits of no privacy. He strives to look bigger than himself as well as others, and is no better than his own parasite and flatterer. A little flood will make a shallow torrent swell above its banks, and rage and foam and yield a roaring noise, while a deep, silent stream glides quietly on. So a vain-glorious, insolent, proud man swells with a little frail prosperity, grows big and loud, and overflows his bounds, and when he sinks, leaves mud and dirt behind him. His carriage is as glorious and haughty as if he were advanced upon men's shoulders or tumbled over their heads like knipperdolling. He fancies himself a Colosse, and so he is, for his head holds no proportion to his body, and his foundation is lesser than his upper storeys. We can naturally take no view of ourselves unless we look downwards, to teach us how humble admirers we ought to be of our own values. The slighter and less solid his materials are the more room they take up and make him swell the bigger, as feathers and cotton will stuff cushions better than things of more close and solid parts.



A SMALL POET

Is one that would fain make himself that which Nature never meant him, like a fanatic that inspires himself with his own whimsies. He sets up haberdasher of small poetry, with a very small stock and no credit. He believes it is invention enough to find out other men's wit, and whatsoever he lights upon, either in books or company, he makes bold with as his own. This he puts together so untowardly, that you may perceive his own wit has the rickets by the swelling disproportion of the joints. Imitation is the whole sum of him, and his vein is but an itch that he has catched of others, and his flame like that of charcoals that were burnt before. But as he wants judgment to understand what is best, he naturally takes the worst, as being most agreeable to his own talent. You may know his wit not to be natural, 'tis so unquiet and troublesome in him; for as those that have money but seldom are always shaking their pockets when they have it, so does he when he thinks he has got something that will make him appear. He is a perpetual talker, and you may know by the freedom of his discourse that he came lightly by it, as thieves spend freely what they get. He measures other men's wit by their modesty, and his own by his confidence. He makes nothing of writing plays, because he has not wit enough to understand the difficulty. This makes him venture to talk and scribble, as chouses do to play with cunning gamesters until they are cheated and laughed at. He is always talking of wit, as those that have bad voices are always singing out of tune, and those that cannot play delight to fumble on instruments. He grows the unwiser by other men's harms, for the worse others write, he finds the more encouragement to do so too. His greediness of praise is so eager that he swallows anything that comes in the likeness of it, how notorious and palpable soever, and is as shot-free against anything that may lessen his good opinion of himself. This renders him incurable, like diseases that grow insensible.

If you dislike him, it is at your own peril; he is sure to put in a caveat beforehand against your understanding, and, like a malefactor in wit, is always furnished with exceptions against his judges. This puts him upon perpetual apologies, excuses, and defences, but still by way of defiance, in a kind of whiffling strain, without regard of any man that stands in the way of his pageant. Where he thinks he may do it safely, he will confidently own other men's writings; and where he fears the truth may be discovered, he will, by feeble denials and feigned insinuations, give men occasion to suppose it.

If he understands Latin or Greek he ranks himself among the learned, despises the ignorant, talks criticisms out of Scaliger, and repeats Martial's bawdy epigrams, and sets up his rest wholly upon pedantry. But if he be not so well qualified, he cries down all learning as pedantic, disclaims study, and professes to write with as great facility as if his Muse was sliding down Parnassus. Whatsoever he hears well said he seizes upon by poetical license, and one way makes it his own; that is, by ill-repeating of it. This he believes to be no more theft than it is to take that which others throw away. By this means his writings are, like a tailor's cushion of mosaic work, made up of several scraps sewed together. He calls a slovenly, nasty description great Nature, and dull flatness strange easiness. He writes down all that comes in his head, and makes no choice, because he has nothing to do it with that is judgment. He is always repealing the old laws of comedy, and, like the Long Parliament, making ordinances in their stead, although they are perpetually thrown out of coffee-houses and come to nothing. He is like an Italian thief, that never robs but he murders, to prevent discovery; so sure is he to cry down the man from whom he purloins, that his petty larceny of wit may pass unsuspected. He is but a copier at best, and will never arrive to practise by the life; for bar him the imitation of something he has read, and he has no image in his thoughts. Observation and fancy, the matter and form of just wit, are above his philosophy. He appears so over-concerned in all men's wits as if they were but disparagements of his own, and cries down all they do as if they were encroachments upon him. He takes jests from the owners and breaks them, as justices do false weights and pots that want measure. When he meets with anything that is very good he changes it into small money, like three groats for a shilling, to serve several occasions. He disclaims study, pretends to take things in motion, and to shoot flying, which appears to be very true by his often missing of his mark. His wit is much troubled with obstructions, and he has fits as painful as those of the spleen. He fancies himself a dainty, spruce shepherd, with a flock and a fine silken shepherdess, that follow his pipe as rats did the conjurers in Germany.

As for epithets, he always avoids those that are near akin to the sense. Such matches are unlawful, and not fit to be made by a Christian poet, and therefore all his care is to choose out such as will serve, like a wooden leg, to piece out a maimed verse that wants a foot or two; and if they will but rhyme now and then into the bargain, or run upon a letter, it is a work of supererogation.

For similitudes, he likes the hardest and most obscure best; for as ladies wear black patches to make their complexions seem fairer than they are, so when an illustration is more obscure than the sense that went before it, it must of necessity make it appear clearer than it did, for contraries are best set off with contraries.

He has found out a way to save the expense of much wit and sense; for he will make less than some have prodigally laid out upon five or six words serve forty or fifty lines. This is a thrifty invention, and very easy, and, if it were commonly known, would much increase the trade of wit and maintain a multitude of small poets in constant employment. He has found out a new sort of poetical Georgics, a trick of sowing wit like clover-grass on barren subjects which would yield nothing before. This is very useful for the times, wherein, some men say, there is no room left for new invention. He will take three grains of wit like the elixir, and projecting it upon the iron age, turn it immediately into gold. All the business of mankind has presently vanished; the whole world has kept holiday; there have been no men but heroes and poets, no women but nymphs and shepherdesses; trees have borne fritters, and rivers flowed plum-porridge.

We read that Virgil used to make fifty or sixty verses in a morning, and afterwards reduce them to ten. This was an unthrifty vanity, and argues him as well ignorant in the husbandry of his own poetry as Seneca says he was in that of a farm; for, in plain English, it was no better than bringing a noble to nine-pence. And as such courses brought the prodigal son to eat with hogs, so they did him to feed with horses, which were not much better company, and may teach us to avoid doing the like. For certainly it is more noble to take four or five grains of sense, and, like a gold-beater, hammer them into so many leaves as will fill a whole book, than to write nothing but epitomes, which many wise men believe will be the bane and calamity of learning. When he writes he commonly steers the sense of his lines by the rhyme that is at the end of them, as butchers do calves by the tail. For when he has made one line, which is easy enough, and has found out some sturdy hard word that will but rhyme, he will hammer the sense upon it, like a piece of hot iron upon an anvil, into what form he pleases.

There is no art in the world so rich in terms as poetry; a whole dictionary is scarce able to contain them, for there is hardly a pond, a sheep-walk, or a gravel-pit in all Greece but the ancient name of it is become a term of art in poetry. By this means small poets have such a stock of able hard words lying by them, as dryads, hamadryads, Aonides, fauni, nymphae, sylvani, &c., that signify nothing at all, and such a world of pedantic terms of the same kind, as may serve to furnish all the new inventions and thorough reformations that can happen between this and Plato's great year.

When he writes he never proposes any scope or purpose to himself, but gives his genius all freedom; for as he that rides abroad for his pleasure can hardly be out of his way, so he that writes for his pleasure can seldom be beside his subject. It is an ungrateful thing to a noble wit to be confined to anything. To what purpose did the ancients feign Pegasus to have wings if he must be confined to the road and stages like a pack-horse, or be forced to be obedient to hedges and ditches? Therefore he has no respect to decorum and propriety of circumstance, for the regard of persons, times, and places is a restraint too servile to be imposed upon poetical license, like him that made Plato confess Juvenal to be a philosopher, or Persius, that calls the Athenians Quirites.

For metaphors, he uses to choose the hardest and most far-set that he can light upon. These are the jewels of eloquence, and therefore the harder they are the more precious they must be.

He'll take a scant piece of coarse sense and stretch it on the tenterhooks of half-a-score rhymes, until it crack that you may see through it and it rattle like a drumhead. When you see his verses hanged up in tobacco-shops, you may say, in defiance of the proverb, "that the weakest does not always go to the wall;" for 'tis well known the lines are strong enough, and in that sense may justly take the wall of any that have been written in our language. He seldom makes a conscience of his rhymes, but will often take the liberty to make "preach" rhyme with "cheat," "vote" with "rogue," and "committee-man" with "hang."

He'll make one word of as many joints as the tin-pudding that a juggler pulls out of his throat and chops in again. What think you of glud-fum-flam-hasta-minantes? Some of the old Latin poets bragged that their verses were tougher than brass and harder than marble; what would they have done if they had seen these? Verily they would have had more reason to wish themselves an hundred throats than they then had to pronounce them.

There are some that drive a trade in writing in praise of other writers (like rooks, that bet on gamesters' hands), not at all to celebrate the learned author's merits, as they would show but their own wits, of which he is but the subject. The lechery of this vanity has spawned more writers than the civil law. For those whose modesty must not endure to hear their own praises spoken may yet publish of themselves the most notorious vapours imaginable. For if the privilege of love be allowed—Dicere quiz puduit, scribere jussit amor—why should it not be so in self-love too? For if it be wisdom to conceal our imperfections, what is it to discover our virtues? It is not likely that Nature gave men great parts upon such terms as the fairies used to give money, to pinch and leave them if they speak of it. They say—Praise is but the shadow of virtue, and sure that virtue is very foolish that is afraid of its own shadow.

When he writes anagrams he uses to lay the outsides of his verses even (like a bricklayer) by a line of rhyme and acrostic, and fill the middle with rubbish. In this he imitates Ben Jonson, but in nothing else.

There was one that lined a hatcase with a paper of Benlowes' poetry; Prynne bought it by chance and put a new demi-castor into it. The first time he wore it he felt only a singing in his head, which within two days turned to a vertigo. He was let blood in the ear by one of the State physicians, and recovered; but before he went abroad he wrote a poem of rocks and seas, in a style so proper and natural that it was hard to determine which was ruggeder.

There is no feat of activity nor gambol of wit that ever was performed by man, from him that vaults on Pegasus to him that tumbles through the hoop of an anagram, but Benlowes has got the mastery in it, whether it be high-rope wit or low-rope wit. He has all sorts of echoes, rebuses, chronograms, &c., besides carwitchets, clenches, and quibbles. As for altars and pyramids in poetry, he has outdone all men that way; for he has made a gridiron and a frying-pan in verse, that, beside the likeness in shape, the very tone and sound of the words did perfectly represent the noise that is made by those utensils, such as the old poet called sartago loquendi. When he was a captain he made all the furniture of his horse, from the bit to the crupper, in beaten poetry, every verse being fitted to the proportion of the thing, with a moral allusion of the sense to the thing; as the bridle of moderation, the saddle of content, and the crupper of constancy; so that the same thing was both epigram and emblem, even as a mule is both horse and ass.

Some critics are of opinion that poets ought to apply themselves to the imitation of Nature, and make a conscience of digressing from her; but he is none of these. The ancient magicians could charm down the moon and force rivers back to their springs by the power of poetry only, and the moderns will undertake to turn the inside of the earth outward (like a juggler's pocket) and shake the chaos out of it, make Nature show tricks like an ape, and the stars run on errands; but still it is by dint of poetry. And if poets can do such noble feats, they were unwise to descend to mean and vulgar. For where the rarest and most common things are of a price (as they are all one to poets), it argues disease in judgment not to choose the most curious. Hence some infer that the account they give of things deserves no regard, because they never receive anything as they find it into their compositions, unless it agree both with the measure of their own fancies and the measure of their lines, which can very seldom happen. And therefore, when they give a character of any thing or person, it does commonly bear no more proportion to the subject than the fishes and ships in a map do to the scale. But let such know that poets as well as kings ought rather to consider what is fit for them to give than others to receive; that they are fain to have regard to the exchange of language, and write high or low according as that runs. For in this age, when the smallest poet seldom goes below more the most, it were a shame for a greater and more noble poet not to outthrow that cut a bar.

There was a tobacco-man that wrapped Spanish tobacco in a paper of verses which Benlowes had written against the Pope, which, by a natural antipathy that his wit has to anything that's Catholic, spoiled the tobacco, for it presently turned mundungus. This author will take an English word, and, like the Frenchman that swallowed water and spit it out wine, with a little heaving and straining would turn it immediately into Latin, as plunderat ilie domos, mille hocopokiana, and a thousand such.

There was a young practitioner in poetry that found there was no good to be done without a mistress; for he that writes of love before he hath tried it doth but travel by the map, and he that makes love without a dame does like a gamester that plays for nothing. He thought it convenient, therefore, first to furnish himself with a name for his mistress beforehand, that he might not be to seek when his merit or good fortune should bestow her upon him; for every poet is his mistress's godfather, and gives her a new name, like a nun that takes orders. He was very curious to fit himself with a handsome word of a tunable sound, but could light upon none that some poet or other had not made use of before. He was therefore forced to fall to coining, and was several months before he could light on one that pleased him perfectly. But after he had overcome that difficulty he found a greater remaining, to get a lady to own him. He accosted some of all sorts, and gave them to understand, both in prose and verse, how incomparably happy it was in his power to make his mistress, but could never convert any of them. At length he was fain to make his laundress supply that place as a proxy until his good fortune or somebody of better quality would be more kind to him, which after a while he neither hoped nor cared for; for how mean soever her condition was before, when he had once pretended to her she was sure to be a nymph and a goddess. For what greater honour can a woman be capable of than to be translated into precious stones and stars? No herald in the world can go higher. Besides, he found no man can use that freedom of hyperbole in the character of a person commonly known (as great ladies are) which we can in describing one so obscure and unknown that nobody can disprove him. For he that writes but one sonnet upon any of the public persons shall be sure to have his reader at every third word cry out, "What an ass is this to call Spanish paper and ceruse lilies and roses, or claps influences; to say the Graces are her waiting-women, when they are known to be no better than her bawds; that day breaks from her eyes when she looks asquint; or that her breath perfumes the Arabian winds when she puffs tobacco!"

It is no mean art to improve a language, and find out words that are not only removed from common use, but rich in consonants, the nerves and sinews of speech; to raise a soft and feeble language like ours to the pitch of High-Dutch, as he did that writ—

"Arts rattling foreskins shrilling bagpipes quell."

This is not only the most elegant but most politic way of writing that a poet can use, for I know no defence like it to preserve a poem from the torture of those that lisp and stammer. He that wants teeth may as well venture upon a piece of tough horny brawn as such a line, for he will look like an ass eating thistles.

He never begins a work without an invocation of his Muse; for it is not fit that she should appear in public to show her skill before she is entreated, as gentlewomen do not use to sing until they are applied to and often desired.

I shall not need to say anything of the excellence of poetry, since it has been already performed by many excellent persons, among whom some have lately undertaken to prove that the civil government cannot possibly subsist without it, which, for my part, I believe to be true in a poetical sense, and more probable to be received of it than those strange feats of building walls and making trees dance which antiquity ascribes to verse. And though philosophers are of a contrary opinion and will not allow poets fit to live in a commonwealth, their partiality is plainer than their reasons, for they have no other way to pretend to this prerogative themselves, as they do, but by removing poets whom they know to have a fairer title; and this they do so unjustly that Plato, who first banished poets his republic, forgot that that very commonwealth was poetical. I shall say nothing to them, but only desire the world to consider how happily it is like to be governed by those that are at so perpetual a civil war among themselves, that if we should submit ourselves to their own resolution of this question, and be content to allow them only fit to rule if they could but conclude it so themselves, they would never agree upon it. Meanwhile there is no less certainty and agreement in poetry than the mathematics, for they all submit to the same rules without dispute or controversy. But whosoever shall please to look into the records of antiquity shall find their title so unquestioned that the greatest princes in the whole world have been glad to derive their pedigrees, and their power too, from poets. Alexander the Great had no wiser a way to secure that Empire to himself by right which he had gotten by force than by declaring himself the son of Jupiter; and who was Jupiter but the son of a poet? So Caesar and all Rome was transported with joy when a poet made Jupiter his colleague in the Empire; and when Jupiter governed, what did the poets that governed Jupiter?



A PHILOSOPHER

Seats himself as spectator and critic on the great theatre of the world, and gives sentence on the plots, language, and action of whatsoever he sees represented, according to his own fancy. He will pretend to know what is done behind the scene, but so seldom is in the right that he discovers nothing more than his own mistakes. When his profession was in credit in the world, and money was to be gotten by it, it divided itself into multitudes of sects, that maintained themselves and their opinions by fierce and hot contests with one another; but since the trade decayed and would not turn to account, they all fell of themselves, and now the world is so unconcerned in their controversies, that three Reformado sects joined in one, like Epicuro-Gassendo-Charltoniana, will not serve to maintain one pedant. He makes his hypotheses himself, as a tailor does a doublet without measure; no matter whether they fit Nature, he can make Nature fit them, and, whether they are too straight or wide, pinch or stuff out the body accordingly. He judges of the works of Nature just as the rabble do of State affairs; they see things done, and every man according to his capacity guesses at the reasons of them, but knowing nothing of the arcana or secret movements of either, they seldom or never are in the right. Howsoever, they please themselves and some others with their fancies, and the farther they are off truth, the more confident they are they are near it, as those that are out of their way believe the farther they have gone they are the nearer their journey's end, when they are farthest of all from it. He is confident of immaterial substances, and his reasons are very pertinent; that is, substantial as he thinks, and immaterial as others do. Heretofore his beard was the badge of his profession, and the length of that in all his polemics was ever accounted the length of his weapon; but when the trade fell, that fell too. In Lucius's time they were commonly called beard-wearers, for all the strength of their wits lay in their beards, as Samson's did in his locks; but since the world began to see the vanity of that hare-brained cheat, they left it off to save their credit.



A MELANCHOLY MAN

Is one that keeps the worst company in the world; that is, his own; and though he be always falling out and quarrelling with himself, yet he has not power to endure any other conversation. His head is haunted, like a house, with evil spirits and apparitions, that terrify and fright him out of himself, till he stands empty and forsaken. His sleeps and his wakings are so much the same that he knows not how to distinguish them, and many times when he dreams he believes he is broad awake and sees visions. The fumes and vapours that rise from his spleen and hypochondrias have so smutched and sullied his brain (like a room that smokes) that his understanding is blear-eyed and has no right perception of anything. His soul lives in his body, like a mole in the earth that labours in the dark, and casts up doubts and scruples of his own imaginations, to make that rugged and uneasy that was plain and open before. His brain is so cracked that he fancies himself to be glass, and is afraid that everything he comes near should break him in pieces. Whatsoever makes an impression in his imagination works itself in like a screw, and the more he turns and winds it the deeper it sticks, till it is never to be got out again. The temper of his brain, being earthy, cold, and dry, is apt to breed worms, that sink so deep into it no medicine in art or nature is able to reach them. He leads his life as one leads a dog in a slip that will not follow, but is dragged along until he is almost hanged, as he has it often under consideration to treat himself in convenient time and place, if he can but catch himself alone. After a long and mortal feud between his inward and his outward man, they at length agree to meet without seconds and decide the quarrel, in which the one drops and the other slinks out of the way and makes his escape into some foreign world, from whence it is never after heard of. He converses with nothing so much as his own imagination, which, being apt to misrepresent things to him, makes him believe that it is something else than it is, and that he holds intelligence with spirits that reveal whatsoever he fancies to him, as the ancient rude people that first heard their own voices repeated by echoes in the woods concluded it must proceed from some invisible inhabitants of those solitary places, which they after believed to be gods, and called them sylvans, fauns, and dryads. He makes the infirmity of his temper pass for revelations, as Mahomet did by his falling sickness, and inspires himself with the wind of his own hypochondrias. He laments, like Heraclitus, the maudlin philosopher, at other men's mirth, and takes pleasure in nothing but his own unsober sadness. His mind is full of thoughts, but they are all empty, like a nest of boxes. He sleeps little, but dreams much, and soundest when he is waking. He sees visions farther off than a second-sighted man in Scotland, and dreams upon a hard point with admirable judgment. He is just so much worse than a madman as he is below him in degree of frenzy, for among madmen the most mad govern all the rest, and receive a natural obedience from their inferiors.