Microcosmography

On the "She-precise Hypocrite" he has a note – on "Geneva."

Like a Geneva weaver in black, who leftThe loom and entered into the ministryFor Conscience Sake. —Mayne's City Match.

On 'door-posts' in 'The Aldermen' he quotes, "a pair of such brothers were fitter for posts without dore indeed, to make a shew at a new-chosen magistrate's gate." —The Widow, 4to, 1652.

Of 'Paul's Walk' there is yet one more illustration. "Walk in the middle Ile in Paul's, and gentlemen's teeth walk not faster at ordinaries than there a whole day togeather about inquirie after newes." – Theeves falling out true men come by their good, or the Belman wanted a clapper, 4to, Lond., 1615.

On the Pot-Poet he has a quotation from Whimzies, a new cast of Characters, 8vo, Lond., 1633, an illustration of the "strange monster out of Germany." "Nor comes his invention farre short of his imagination: for want of truer relations, for a neede he can find a Sussex dragone, some sea or Inland monster, drawn out by some Shoe Lane man in a gorgon-like feature, to enforce more horror in the beholder."

At the end of the Characters there is an extract from a letter of Clarendon which mentions that the deanery of Westminster "was designed to a person of very known and confessed merit," (most probably Dr. John Earle) written below. He quotes Anthony Wood on the other side of this leaf for Earle's friendships, with Henry Cary, first Earle of Monmouth – with George Morley, afterwards Bishop of Winchester. Morley and Earle lived together at Antwerp till they were called to attend on the Duke of York in France. Two passages of Anthony Wood, which he does not quote, are worth recalling. Morley was sent by Charles II. to "thank Salmasius for his Apology for his Martyrd father, but not with a purse of gold as Joh. Milton, the impudent lyer, reported." Henry Cary was "well skill'd in the modern languages, and a general scholar"; and thus "was capacitated [by a forced retiredness in the troublesome times of Rebellion] to exercise himself in studies, while others of the nobility were fain to truckle to their inferiors for company sake."

I have only given two title-pages of editions in the year of publication. A table of editions is given on the next page.

[Title-page of first edition of 1628.]Micro-cosmographie;or,A Peece ofThe Worlddiscovered;In Essayes andCharacters[Here is inserted in MS. – "Written by John Earlesof Merton Coll."]Newly composed for the Northerne parts of this KingdomeAT LONDON:Printed by W. S., for Ed. Blount1628[Title-page of 3rd edition of 1628.]
Micro-cosmographie;or,A Peece ofThe Worlddiscovered;In Essayes andCharactersLONDON:Printed by William Stansbury, forRobert Allot, 1628[W. H. Allnutt, in a MS. note inserted in the Bodleian copy of Arber's Reprint of the Characters, states that Arber has mistaken the order of priority of the three 1628 edd. Arber places the ed. with the above title-page second, and that of which the title is copied on p. 330, third. The second ed., called by Arber the first, is not in the Bodleian.]The last written page of the Durham MS. has by way of ColophonFinis

"This little volume in calf binding, about 12mo size, is doubtless one of those referred to by Ed. Blount in his address to the Reader. The MS. is written in an exceedingly neat and small hand on the pages of the previously bound book, with margin lines ruled in red. At the top of the first page is written in a different hand, 'Edw. Blunt, Author.' The MS. contains 46 Characters in all, and is free from some evident blunders in the first printed copies, as if they had been done from dictation."

This MS. in the Durham Cathedral Library is entered in the catalogue (of the Hunter MSS.) as "Characters by Edward Blunt," and dated "about 1636," the date in the MS. having been overlooked.

Dr. Fowler in Notes and Queries, Nov. 4th, 1871.

EARLE'S MICROCOSMOGRAPHY

[EV] To Bliss's notice of {Blount Blunt}; it may be added that "Pericles" was printed for him in 1609; and the first edition of Marlow's "Hero and Leander" in 1598 ["printed for Edward Blunt by Adam Islip" (Philemon Holland's printer)]. Marlow's "First Book of Lucan" (1600) has a humorous and complimentary dedication to Blunt from another bookseller, Thomas Thorpe. See "Earlier History of English Bookselling." (Sampson and Low.)

[EW] The second folio Shakespeare (1632) was printed for him.

[EX] The 1613 edition of Hero and Leander was printed by W. Stansby for Ed. Blunt. He also published some of Ben Jonson's works.

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

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

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

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

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

In Burnet's History of his own Times we are told that Charles II. "who had a secret pleasure in finding out anything that lessened a man esteemed eminent for piety, yet had a value for him (Earle) beyond all the men of his order." (See Arber's Reprint.) On the other hand the Parliament in 1645 had named him as one to be summoned to the Assembly of Divines, but he declined to come.[FA]

In 1654 there was printed at the Hague an Elzevir volume – "morum exemplar," Latin characters by one Louis du Moulin. He aspires he says in the preface to be the Virgil or Seneca to Earle's Theocritus or Menander.

This is his testimony to the characters.

"Et sane salivam primum mihi movit vester Earles cujus characteribus, non puto quicquam exstare vel severius ubi seria tractat, vel festivius quands innoxie jocatur: ant pictorem unquam penicillo propius ad nativam speciem expressisse hominis vultus, quam ille ejus mores patria lingua descripserit."

It may be of interest to mention in connection with the title of Earle's book that the phrase of Menenius Agrippa in Coriolanus. – "The Map of my Microcosm" actually occurs as a title of a book of characters by H. Broune, 1642, the alternative description being "a morall description of man newly compiled into Essays.

Bliss's MS. book illustrates what I have said in the preface of the change in the character-sketch. The essay and the pamphlet gradually usurp the place of social studies. The great mass of the "characters" of the last half of the seventeenth century are political or religious. On the other hand, while the only prose character in Bliss of the sixteenth century deals with the criminal classes, "a discoverie of ten English leapers verie noisome and hurtfull to the Church and Commonwealth," quoted in his MS. notebook, mixes such characters with "the Simoniacke," "the murmurer," "the covetous man." The date is 1592. (The Tincker of Torvey (1630) also exhibits this mixture.)

It may be worth while to add a few titles of books of characters, as illustrating the range of this class of literature, or as being in themselves interesting. They are from Bliss's own notes in his own copy of his book or in the MS. note book before referred to.

1. "The Coffee-House – a character."

2. Also a character of coffee and coffee-houses. "It was first brought into England when the palats of the English were as fanaticall as their brains… The Englishman will be a la mode de France. With the barbarous Indian he smooks tobacco: with the Turk he drinks coffee."

3. News from the new Exchange. The commonwealth of ladies. Printed in the year of women with out Grace, 1650.

4. There are many countries characterized – Italy, Spain, Holland, Scotland. 'Holland' is in verse. It bears out Earle's contemptuous references to the Dutch. It is here called "The offscouring of the British land."

"This indigested vomit of the seaFell to the Dutch by just propriety."

1672. [It will be found among Marvell's satires, but Bliss does not mention this.]

5. "Scotland characteriz'd: in a letter to a young gentleman to dissuade him from an intended journey thither, 1701."

6. "The noble cavalier characterized," "& a rebellious caviller cauterized," 1644 or 5. An answer to Wither's Campo Musæ. A vigorous preface says – "To begin roundly, soundly, and profoundly, the Cavalier is a gentleman." By John Taylor.

7. Lucifer's Lacky: the true character of a dissembling Brownist, 1641.

8. "The Tincker of Torvey: a scholler, a cobler, a tincker, a smith; with Bluster, a seaman, travel from Billingsgate to Gravesend." 1650.

9. "The interpreter," 1622, deals with "three principall terms of state – a puritan, a Protestant, a papist."

10. "The Joviall Crew; or the Devill turn'd Ranter." 1651.

11. τα διαφεροντα; or divine characters, in two parts, will have an interest for Bristol readers; it is "by that late burning and shining lamp, Master Samuel Crook, B.D., late Pastor of Wrington in Somerset, who being dead yet speaketh." 1658.

12. "A character of the Religion and manners of Phanatiques in Generall," 1660, includes in the list "Seekers and Enthusiasts." The last sounds strange as a species.

13. "The character of an Ignoramus Doctor," 1681, recalls The Microcosmography.

14. The captive Captain, or the restrained Cavalier," 1665, also, in part, suggests Earle. "Of a Prison," "The anatomy of a Jayler," "The lean Prisoner," "The restrained Cavalier and his melancholy."

15. Bliss also mentions "The character of a learned man," and gives some choice extracts. "Our sottish and idle enthusiasts are to be reproved who call learning but a splendidum peccatum." "Alexander commanded his soldiers neither to damnify Pindarus, the poet, nor any of his family."

16. "A wandering Jew telling fortunes to Englishmen." 1640.

17. "The spiritual navigators bound for the Holy Land." 1615.

18. "The picture of a modern Whig: a dialogue between Whiglove and Double, at Tom's Coffee-House." 1715.

19. In 1671 "Le vice ridicule" appeared. A sort of translation of Earle's characters.

20. Pictures of Passions, Fancies, and Affections, poetically deciphered in variety of characters (no date).

21. Characters of gentlemen that have put in to the Ladies Invention. This begins – "A little Beau of the city strain."

22. Characters of several ingenious designing gentlewomen, who have lately put in to the Ladies Invention, which is intended to be drawn as soon as full. (There is no date to either of these.)

One or two extracts may be added from Anthony Wood.

"Lord Falkland, when he became one of the gentlemen of His Majesty's Privy Chamber, had frequent retirements to Great Tew and sometimes to Oxon, for the company of and conversation with learned and witty men. William Chillingworth (author of the Religion of Protestants), Joh. Earle,[FB] Charles Gataker (son of Thomas Gataker [the Editor of Marcus Aurelius] and Anthony Wood thinks Chaplain to Lord Falkland); Thomas Triplet, a very witty man of Christ Church; Hugh Cressey, and others.[FC] Cressey wrote a number of theological works, and in one of them occurs the testimony to Earle given in Bliss."

The saturnine Anthony Wood is amusingly illustrated in two passages from his notice of Earle. "John Earle received his first being in this vain and transitory world within the city of York… His elegy on Beaumont was printed at the end of the quarto edition of Beaumont's poems – put out with a poetical epistle before them, subscribed by a Presbyterian bookbinder– afterwards an informer to the Court of Sequestration … and a beggar defunct in prison"! In the notice of Morley he tells us that "his banishment was made less tedious to him by the company of Dr. Joh. Earle, his dearest friend." It is sad to find that the translation of Hooker which was "to make the learned of all nations happy" was "utterly destroyed" – the loose papers being taken by the servants after Earle's death "to light their fires or else to put under their bread and pies." This translation "was Earle's entertainment during a part of his exile at Cologne." See the Bodleian letters quoted in Arber's Reprint. To that Reprint I have been much indebted for help of various kinds.

My warmest thanks are due to Professor Rowley, of University College, Bristol, whom I have constantly consulted while preparing this issue of Dr. Bliss's edition. If one may be allowed a slight twist of a Shakspearian phrase, I would say of such help as his – "Ripeness is all." It is this quality that makes one at least of Professor Rowley's friends so grateful and so importunate.

S. T. I.

Clifton, April, 1897.

FOOTNOTES:

[EI] In a later hand.

[EJ] Arcana in margin.

[EK] Th. in margin, i. e., Th[omas].

[EL] In a later hand.

[EM] In the later hand.

[EN] A fellow of Merton with Earle. His testimony to Earle is quoted by Bliss. Anthony Wood says of him, "that when he lost his most beloved Lord Falkland, at Newbury Fight, he travelled as a tutor, and upon a freight that the Church of England would terminate through the endeavours of the peevish and restless Presbyterians, began to think of settling himself in the Church of Rome." He recanted his errors publicly at Rome in 1646.

[EO] Poetical?

[EP] This epithet with Clarendon's "wary and cultivated" must be set against what Clarendon tells us of his "negligence in dress, habit and mien." Earle can never have been awkward. His courtesy was born with him, and he can never have needed (like "the downright scholar") "brushing over with good company."

[EQ] Memoirs, vol. I, p. 81, ed. C. Firth.

[ER] I ought to say that Mr. Madan, who was kind enough to look at my copy, does not think many of the notes are in Bliss's hand-writing.

[ES] "More care, attention, accuracy and valuable enlargement from an inexhaustible stock of materials has rarely been witnessed than in the editorial labours of Dr. Bliss." – Dibdin, speaking of Bliss's edition of the Athenæ Oxonienses.

[ET] Cowper's Letters, June 12th, 1782.

[EU] Some of the MS. notes in my copy are the same as those in the printed volume.

[EY] Sir Henry Savile, Provost of Eton, and editor of the famous Chrysostom, recognised Earle's scholarship. "When a young scholar was recommended to him for a good witt, – Out upon him! I'll have nothing to do with him – he would say, give me the plodding student. If I would look for witts, I would go to Newgate – There be the witts! and John Earle was the only scholar that ever he took as recommended for a witt." —Aubrey.

[EZ] David Lloyd, "Memoirs," 1668, folio.

[FA] "The very Parliament naming him as worthy … though he thought not it worthy of him." —Ib.

[FB] Aubrey calls him "an ingeniose young gent, but no writer."

[FC] "Ben Jonson, Edmund Waller, Esq., Mr. Th. Hobbes, and all the excellent witts of that peaceable time." —Aubrey.

1

So Washbourne, in his Divine Poems, 12mo. 1654:

" – ere 'tis accustom'd unto sin,The mind white paper is, and will admitOf any lesson you will write in it." – p. 26.

2

This, and every other passage throughout the volume, [included between brackets,] does not appear in the first edition of 1628.

3

Adam did not, to use the words of the old Geneva Bible, "make himself breeches," till he knew sin: the meaning of the passage in the text is merely that, as a child advances in age, he commonly proceeds in the knowledge and commission of vice and immorality.

4

St. Mary's church was originally built by king Alfred, and annexed to the University of Oxford, for the use of the scholars, when St. Giles's and St. Peter's (which were till then appropriated to them,) had been mined by the violence of the Danes. It was totally rebuilt during the reign of Henry VII., who gave forty oaks towards the materials; and is, to this day, the place of worship in which the public sermons are preached before the members of the university.

5

Brachigraphy, or short-hand-writing, appears to have been much studied in our author's time, and was probably esteemed a fashionable accomplishment. It was first introduced into this country by Peter Bales, who, in 1590, published The Writing Schoolmaster, a treatise consisting of three parts, the first "of Brachygraphie, that is, to write as fast as a man speaketh treatably, writing but one letter for a word;" the second, of Orthography; and the third, of Calligraphy. Imprinted at London, by T. Orwin, &c. 1590. 4to. A second edition, "with sundry new additions," appeared in 1597. 12mo. Imprinted at London, by George Shawe, &c. Holinshed gives the following description of one of Bale's performances: – "The tenth of August (1575,) a rare peece of worke, and almost incredible, was brought to passe by an Englishman borne in the citie of London, named Peter Bales, who by his industrie and practise of his pen, contriued and writ within the compasse of a penie, in Latine, the Lord's praier, the creed, the ten commandements, a praier to God, a praier for the queene, his posie, his name, the daie of the moneth, the yeare of our Lord, and the reigne of the queene. And on the seuenteenthe of August next following, at Hampton court, he presented the same to the queene's maiestie, in the head of a ring of gold, couered with a christall; and presented therewith an excellent spectacle by him deuised, for the easier reading thereof: wherewith hir maiestie read all that was written therein with great admiration, and commended the same to the lords of the councell, and the ambassadors, and did weare the same manie times vpon hir finger." Holinshed's Chronicle, page 1262, b. edit, folio, Lond. 1587.

6

It is customary in all sermons delivered before the University, to use an introductory prayer for the founder of, and principal benefactors to, the preacher's individual college, as well as for the officers and members of the university in general. This, however, would appear very ridiculous when "he comes down to his friends" or, in other words, preaches before a country congregation.

7

of, first edit. 1628.

8

I cannot forbear to close this admirable character with the beautiful description of a "poure Persone," riche of holy thought and werk, given by the father of English poetry: —

"Benigne he was, and wonder diligent,And in adversite ful patient:And swiche he was ypreved often sithes.Ful loth were him to cursen for his tythes,But rather wolde he yeven out of doute,Unto his poure parishens aboute,Of his offring, and eke of his substance.He coude in litel thing have suffisance.Wide was his parish, and houses fer asonder,But he ne left nought for no rain ne thonder,In sikenesse and in mischief to visiteThe ferrest in his parish, moche and lite,Upon his fete, and in his hand a staf.And though he holy were, and vertuous,He was to sinful men not dispitous,Ne of his speche dangerous ne digne,But in his teching discrete and benigne.To drawen folk to heven, with fairenesse,By good ensample, was his besinesse.He waited after no pompe ne reverence,Ne maked him no spiced conscience,But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve,He taught, but first he folwed it himselve." Chaucer, Prol. to Cant. Tales, v. 485.

We may surely conclude with a line from the same poem,

"A better preest I trowe that nowher non is."

9

The secretes of the reverende maister Alexis of Piemount, containyng excellente remedies against diuers diseases, &c. appear to have been a very favourite study either with the physicians, or their patients, about this period.

They were originally written in Italian, and were translated into English by William Warde, of which editions were printed at London, in 1558, 1562, 1595, and 1615. In 1603, a fourth edition of a Latin version appeared at Basil; and from Ward's dedication to "the lorde Russell, erle of Bedford," it seems that the French and Dutch were not without so great a treasure in their own languages. A specimen of the importance of this publication may be given in the title of the first secret. "The maner and secrete to conserue a man's youth, and to holde back olde age, to maintaine a man always in helth and strength, as in the fayrest floure of his yeres."

10

The Regiment of Helthe, by Thomas Paynell, is another volume of the same description, and was printed by Thomas Berthelette, in 1541. 4to.

11

Vespatian, tenth emperor of Rome, imposed a tax upon urine, and when his son Titus remonstrated with him on the meanness of the act, "Pecuniam," says Suetonius, "ex prima pensione admovit ad nares, suscitans num odore offenderetur? et illo negante, atqui, inquit, e lotio est."

12

"Vpon the market-day he is much haunted with vrinals, where, if he finde any thing, (though he knowe nothing,) yet hee will say some-what, which if it hit to some purpose, with a fewe fustian words, hee will seeme a piece of strange stuffe." Character of an unworthy physician. "The Good and the Badde," by Nicholas Breton. 4to. 1618.

13

That the murdered body bleeds at the approach of the murderer, was, in our author's time, a commonly received opinion. Holinshed affirms that the corps of Henry the Sixth bled as it was carrying for interment; and Sir Kenelm Digby so firmly believed in the truth of the report, that he has endeavoured to explain the reason. It is remarked by Mr. Steevens, in a note to Shakspeare, that the opinion seems to be derived from the ancient Swedes, or Northern nations, from whom we descend; as they practised this method of trial in all dubious cases.

14

"Faith, doctor, it is well, thy study is to pleaseThe female sex, and how their corp'rall griefes to ease."

Goddard's "Mastif Whelp." Satires. 4to. Without date. Sat. 17.

15

Proper for handsome.

16

To gird, is to sneer at, or scorn any one. Falstaff says, "men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me." —Henry IV. Part 2.