" The
Parliament, even just before depriving him as a malignant, had put him
to the trouble of declining its nomination as one of the Westminster
Assembly of Divines. As a Bishop in the early days of Charles the Second
he did all he could to oppose the persecuting spirit of the first
Conventicle Act and of the Five Mile Act.
Dr. Philip Bliss, who died in 1857, after a life marked by many services
to English Literature, chose Bishop Earle's "Characters" for one of his
earlier studies, published in 1811, when his own age was twenty-four.
His book[2] included an account of Bishop Earle himself, a list of his
writings, publication for the first time of some of his early verses,
his correspondence with Baxter, and a Chronological List of Books of
Characters from 1567 to 1700, which was the first contribution to a
study of this feature in our Seventeenth Century Literature. Bliss took
his text of Earle from the edition of 1732, collated with the first
impression in 1628. As the Characters which now follow are given with
Bliss's text and notes, I add what the editor himself says of his
method. The variations of the 1732 text from the first impressions in
1628 are thus distinguished: "Those words or passages which have been
added since the first edition are contained between brackets_ [and
printed in the common type]; _those which have received some alteration
are printed in italic; and the passages, as they stand in the first
edition, are always given in a note.
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