Part 23 (1/2)

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 Parna.s.sus'” 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 n.o.bleman 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 a.s.sembly-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 pa.s.sion, 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 Pa.s.sages 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 p.a.w.nbroker and Ear-mark of an oppressing Tally-man, with a friendly description of a b.u.m-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--s.p.a.ce 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 n.o.bLE; 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 n.o.ble root. He has no more t.i.tle 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 n.o.bility 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 t.i.tle of honour sufficient to serve his turn, though he has spent the substance and reality of it, like the fellow that sold his a.s.s 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 t.i.tle of a saint, and makes that his privilege to act all manner of wickedness; or the ruins of a n.o.ble 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 n.o.bility 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 n.o.bility has rendered him ign.o.ble, 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 n.o.ble ancestors will not permit the good or bad of their posterity to be obscure. He values himself only upon his t.i.tle, 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