What himself
cannot do, others shall not; he hath gained well if he have hindered the
success of what he would have done, and could not. He conceals his best
skill, not so as it may not be known that he knows it, but so as it may
not be learned, because he would have the world miss him. He attained to
a foreign medicine by the secret legacy of a dying empiric, whereof he
will leave no heir lest the praise shall be divided. Finally, he is an
enemy to God's favours, if they fall beside himself; the best nurse of
ill-fame, a man of the worst diet, for he consumes himself, and delights
in pining; a thorn-hedge covered with nettles, a peevish interpreter of
good things, and no other than a lean and pale carcase quickened with
a fiend.
* * * * *
JOHN STEPHENS,
_The younger, a lawyer of Lincoln's Inn, published in 1615 "Satyrical
Essayes, Characters, and others, or accurate and quick Descriptions
fitted to the life of their Subjects." He had published two years before
a play called "Cinthia's Revenge, or Maenander's Extasie," which
Langbaine described as one of the longest he had ever read, and the most
tedious. Somebody seems to have attacked him and his Characters. A
second edition, in 1631, was entitled "New Essays and Characters, with a
new Satyre in defence of the Common Law, and Lawyers: mixt with Reproofe
against their enemy Ignoramus."_
JOHN EARLE
_Is the next of our Character writers. His "Microcosmography, or a Piece
of the World discovered, in Essays and Characters" was first printed in
1628.
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