"
When the Characters appeared they were described as "Many Witty
Characters and conceited Newes written by himselfe and other learned
Gentlemen his Friends." The twenty-one Characters in that edition were,
therefore, not all from one hand. Their popularity is indicated by the
fact that in the next year, 1615, they reached a sixth edition. Three
more editions were published in 1616. This was because interest in the
book had been heightened by the Great Oyer of Poisoning, the trial in
May 1616 of the Earl and Countess of Somerset for Overbury's murder, of
which both were found guilty, though the Countess took all guilt upon
herself. Then followed a tenth edition in 1618, an eleventh in 1622, a
twelfth in 1627, a thirteenth in 1628, a fourteenth in 1630, a fifteenth
in 1632, a sixteenth in 1638; and then a pause, the seventeenth being in
1664, two years before the fire of London. By this time the original set
of twenty-one Characters had been considerably increased, "with
additions of New Characters and many other Witty Conceits never before
Printed;" so that Overbury's Characters, which had from the first
included a few pieces written by his friends, became a name for the most
popular miscellany of pieces of Character Writing current in the
Seventeenth Century, and shows how wit was exercised in this way by
half-a-dozen or more of the mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease. These
are the pieces thus at last made current as_
SIR THOMAS OVERBURY'S CHARACTERS;
OR,
WITTY DESCRIPTIONS OF THE PROPERTIES OF SUNDRY PERSONS.
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