John Robinson, the pastor of the early Pilgrims, on points of religious conscience and religious toleration are clearly the result of personal experience and independent thought. The detached Treatise on Play by Sir John Harrington and the very delightful essay on travel by Fynes Moryson derive almost nothing from books, but owe their attractiveness to the firsthand character of their impressions. Barclay's "Mirror of Minds" analyzes differences of character with a psychological insight superior to that of any contemporary essayist. He deals fairly with the emotions, and in the humanity of his temper calls to mind Montaigne, resembling him especially in his quite modern views on education. His book deserves to be much better known. An originality of a still bolder sort appears in Francis Osborn, who in the "Advice to His Son" frankly sets up a narrow worldly self-interest as a guide to conduct. He feeds the dry light of his intelligence from the rational flame of Bacon and Hobbes, but lacks the generous imagination of the former. He is an earlier Chesterfield without Chesterfieldian devotion to the Graces. His disdain of sentiment is unqualified, and the cynicism of his views. on love and marriage, on patriotism, and on religion would be shocking if it were not redeemed by intellectual honesty. He recognizes and admires clearness of thought whether it comes with a villainous reputation like Machiavelli's or with a virtuous one like John Selden's. He is attentive to new truth and inquisitive toward established error. Unlike Sir Thomas Browne, he is inclined to believe in the theory of Copernicus and to doubt the existence of witches. His criticism of current notions is generally with some foundation. Altogether he is an interesting forerunner of the English rationalists. But after reading him one should cleanse

his self-respect by turning to Clarendon. In spite of his long experience with unsteady monarchs, corrupt courts, and faithless politicians, that austere statesman preserved his faith in moral principles, and his splendid integrity has a bracing influence which atones abundantly for the archaism of some of his views and the heaviness of his style.

VI

The tendency of the essay toward objectiveness was reinforced by the discovery and diffusion of character writing. The impulse was given by the Characters of Theophrastus which, having been translated into Latin by Isaac Casaubon in 1592, were imitated in English by Joseph Hall, popularized by Sir Thomas Overbury, and perfected by John Earle. The similarity of character and essay lies in that they both treat primarily of moral qualities. Their distinction is in the manner of treatment, the essay being analytic and tending to discursiveness, the character dramatic and concentrated. As transmitted by Theophrastus, the latter consists of a definition of a quality followed by a series of typical actions described in sentences of parallel construction. The detachment of the writer is complete; there is not a phrase of comment, not even a suggestion of emphasis. The economy of means could not be carried further. Resembling the aphoristic essay in its epigrammatic movement, the character is technically superior by virtue of its perfect though simple organization. The two forms coalesced very easily, with the result either of bringing about a firmer unity in the essay or, by introducing an element of discursiveness into the character, breaking down the rigid uniformity of the latter. In proportion as this

second process took place, the character tended to approximate the form of the essay, and from a very early date the two kinds have an indistinct boundary. In Overbury's "Characters" there are already, traces of a method of analysis derived from the essay, and in the title pages of sundry volumes there is also evidence of the close connection which the two forms appeared to have for writers, the most striking being Breton's "Characters upon Essays and Essays upon Characters.” The fusion of the two types is most completely and patently illustrated, however, in Fuller's "Holy and Profane State." The characters in this book are composed upon a regular and uniform pattern. They consist of a series of paragraphs, each having a topic sentence corresponding to the individual sentences of the Theophrastean character. But every topic sentence is amplified by the kind of observations and illustrations which are the regular stock in trade of the essay. The identification by Fuller of the two forms, both in substance and technique, is further emphasized in his Third Book where, writing on the familiar essay themes, he employs the same structure as in the others, the topic sentences in this case being precepts instead of characteristic actions.

The character had an additional influence upon the essay by leading it toward the observation of contemporary manners and fostering a satiric attitude in the treatment of vices. The ridicule of eccentricities and exaggerations of character and behavior was familiar enough on the Elizabethan stage, notably in Ben Jonson's comedy of humors, which is of classical inspiration. The popular prose pamphleteers had also utilized such material as a source of entertainment, adhering in their form, however, to the tradition of mediaeval allegory and in their style to blunt Skeltonic vitupera

tion. The diatribes of Lodge and Nash and Dekker owe nothing of their manner to classical examples, but they manifest a gradually developing independence in recording abuses and absurdities in the life of their own London. Dekker's "Gul's Hornbook" in its humorous, ironical dissection of a fantastic social excrescence points unmistakably in the direction of the "Tatler", though for its full realization this type of portraiture had to await the arrival of an age in which the standards of social decorum had found a wider diffusion and acceptance. In the meantime, however, the writers of character might gain a degree of animation and reality by extending the range of subjects and adding traits that were local and temporary to the conventional scheme of virtues and vices.

Theophrastus had described vices or defects of character with a serene, imperturbable irony; the virtues, whether deliberately or by chance, were not represented in his book. His example might have been expected to give a decidedly satiric bent to his English followers. That they did not take this bias more thoroughly is perhaps due to the ecclesiastical calling of his first imitator. Joseph Hall, later Bishop of Norwich, wrote characters of both virtues and vices, and though his treatment of the virtues is colorless to insipidity while that of the vices is vigorous and pungent, his authority established the form as a medium of moral edification, and his balanced scheme was followed by Nicholas Breton in "The Good and the Bad" and by Fuller in "The Holy and Profane State." Fuller, however, is unique in his genius for presenting the good character more attractively than the bad. A warm heart and an innate sympathy with the basic virtues of the English character in both its nobler and homelier phases, give to his ideal presentments the flavor of truth.

So

genuine are the detached strokes which he borrows from familiar life that they create an impression of reality in the ideal whole. The winning sincerity of the man triumphs even over the artificiality of the witty style. Artificial or affected is what that style has to be called in most writers of Jacobean and Caroline prose; to Fuller's such epithets are inapplicable. His brain is a storehouse of metaphors in which his simple thoughts array themselves naturally and becomingly in spite of the principles of rhetoric. It is precisely this fanciful garb, fitted so happily and unexpectedly to the plain, honest figure of the underlying thought, that produces the impression of Fuller's quaintness. It would be fairer to say that the natural quaintness of Fuller's mind (as natural as Lamb's, who pleaded it in extenuation of his own stylistic subtleties) found its proper utterance in the verbal conceits and the agile antitheses which had been the traditional ornaments of character writing since the publication of Overbury's volume.

Overbury, though his book was published six years later than Hall's, exercised a greater influence on the style of character-writing, making brilliancy of wit a condition of success in that form. He calls a character, "wit's descant on any plain song." In his own case this wit served as a cover for a good deal of commonplaceness in observation, and with other writers, too, the novelty of the far-fetched phrasing was what often distinguished one set of characters from another. But an exception must be made from this general statement in favor of the "Microcosmography" of John Earle. By no means inferior in rhetorical brilliancy, Earle's real distinction lies in a greater truth and depth of analysis. His sketches are better than satires of vicious and ridiculous types, better than patterns of a bloodless ideal. They are not artificially simplified,