enemy entered. He many times tortures his readers with impertinencies, yet are these the tolerablest passages throughout all his discourse. He is the very landscape of our age. He is all air; his ear always open to all reports, which, how incredible soever, must pass for current and find vent, purposely to get him current money and delude the vulgar. Yet our best comfort is, his chimeras live not long; a week is the longest in the city, and after their arrival, little longer in the country, which past they melt like butter, or match a pipe, and so burn. But indeed, most commonly it is the height of their ambition to aspire to the employment of stopping mustard-pots, or wrapping up pepper, powder, staves-aker, &c., which done, they expire.

Now for his

He

habit, Wapping and Long Lane will give him his character. honours nothing with a more endeared observance, nor hugs ought with more intimacy, than antiquity, which he expresseth even in his clothes. I have known some love fish best that smelled of the pannier; and the like humour reigns in him, for he loves that apparel best that has a taste of the broker. Some have held him for a scholar, but trust me such are in a palpable error, for he never yet understood so much Latin as to construe Gallo-Belgicus. For his library (his own continuations excepted), it consists of very few or no books. He holds himself highly engaged to his invention if it can purchase him victuals; for authors, he never converseth with them, unless they walk in Paul's. For his discourse it is ordinary, yet he will make you a terrible repetition of desperate commanders, unheard-of exploits, intermixing withal his own personal service. But this is not in all companies, for his experience hath sufficiently informed him in this principle—that as nothing works more on the simple than things strange and incredibly rare, so nothing discovers his weakness more among the knowing and judicious than to insist, by way of discourse, on reports above conceit. Amongst these, therefore, he is as mute as a fish. But now imagine his lamp (if he be worth one) to be nearly burnt out, his inventing genius wearied and footsore with ranging over so many unknown regions, and himself wasted with the fruitless expense of much paper,

T

resigning his place of weekly collections to another, whom, in hope of some little share, he has to his stationer recommended, while he lives either poorly respected or dies miserably suspended. The rest I end with his own close :-Next week you shall hear

more.

The other characters in "Whimzies" were an Almanac-maker, a Ballad-monger, a Decoy, an Exchange-man, a Forester, a Gamester, an Hospital-man, a Jailer, a Keeper, a Launderer, a Metal-man, a Neater, an Ostler, a Postmaster, a Quest-man, a Ruffian, a Sailor, a Traveller, an Under-Sheriff, a WineSoaker, a Xantippean, a Jealous Neighbour, a Zealous Brother. The collection was enlarged by addition under separate title-page of "A Cater-Character, thrown out of a box by an Experienced Gamester," which gave Characters of an Apparitor, a Painter, a Pedlar, and a Piper. The author added also some lines "vpon the Birthday of his sonne Iohn," beginning

“God blesse thee, Iohn,

And make thee such an one
That I may joy

In calling thee my son.

Thou art my ninth,

And by it I divine

That thou shalt live

To love the Muses Nine."

JOHN MILTON,

when he was at college, ventured down among the Character-writers in his two pieces on the University Carrier. Thomas Hobson had been for sixty years carrier between Cambridge and the Bull Inn, Bishopsgate Street, London. He was a very well-known Cambridge character. Steele, in No. 509 of the "Spectator," ascribed to him the origin of the proverbial phrase, Hobson's Choice. "Being a man of great ability and invention, and one that saw where there might good profit arise, though the duller men overlooked it, this ingenious man was the first in this island who let out hackneyhorses." [That is a mistake, but never mind.] "He lived in Cambridge; and, observing that the scholars rid hard, his manner was to keep a large stable of horses, with boots, bridles, and whips, to furnish the gentlemen at once, without going from college to college to borrow. I say, Mr. Hobson kept a stable of forty good cattle, always ready and fit for travelling; but, when a man came for a horse, he was led into the stable, where there was great choice; but he obliged him to take the horse which stood next the stable door; so that every customer was alike well served according to his chance, and every horse ridden with the same justice—from whence it became a proverb, when what ought to be your election was forced upon you, to say ‘Hobson's Choice !'"

In the spring of 1630 the Plague in Cambridge caused colleges to be closed, and among other precautions against spread of infection, Hobson the Carrier was forbidden to go to and fro between Cambridge and London. At the end of the year, after six or seven months of forced inaction, Hobson sickened; and he died on the first of January, at the age of eighty-six, leaving his family amply provided for, and money for the maintenance of the town conduit. At the Bull Inn in London there used to be a portrait of him with a money-bag under his arm.

Character-writing being in fashion many a character of the

University Carrier was written, no doubt, by Cambridge men after Hobson's death at the beginning of the year 1631 (new style). And these were Milton's. Their unlikeness to other work of his lies in their likeness to a form of literature which was but fashion of the day, and having travelled out of sight of its old starting-point and forgotten where its true goal lay, had gone astray, and often by idolatry of wit sinned against wisdom.

ON THE UNIVERSITY CARRIER,

Who sickened in the time of his Vacancy, being forbid to go to
London by reason of the Plague.

Here lies old Hobson. Death hath broke his girt,
And here, alas, hath laid him in the dirt;
Or else, the ways being foul, twenty to one
He's here stuck in a slough, and overthrown.
'Twas such a shifter that, if truth were known,
Death was half glad when he had got him down;
For he had any time this ten years full
Dodged with him betwixt Cambridge and The Bull,
And surely Death could never have prevailed
Had not his weekly course of carriage failed :

But lately, finding him so long at home,

And thinking now his journey's end was come,

And that he had ta'en up his latest inn,

In the kind office of a chamberlin

Showed him his room where he must lodge that night,
Pulled off his boots, and took away the light.

If any ask for him, it shall be said,

"Hobson has supped, and 's newly gone to bed."

ANOTHER ON THE SAME.

Here lieth one that did most truly prove

That he could never die while he could move;

So hung his destiny, never to rot

While he might still jog on and keep his trot;

Made of sphere-metal, never to decay

Until his revolution was at stay.

Time numbers motion, yet (without a crime
'Gainst old truth) motion numbered out his time;
And, like an engine moved with wheel and weight,
His principles being ceased, he ended straight.
Rest, that gives all men life, gave him his death,
And too much breathing put him out of breath;
Nor were it contradiction to affirm

Too long vacation hastened on his term.
Merely to drive the time away he sickened,

Fainted, and died, nor would with ale be quickened.
"Nay," quoth he, on his swooning-bed outstretched,
"If I mayn't carry, sure I'll ne'er be fetched,

But vow, though the cross doctors all stood hearers,
For one carrier put down to make six bearers.”
Ease was his chief disease; and, to judge right,
He died for heaviness that his cart went light.
His leisure told him that his time was come,

And lack of load made his life burdensome,

That even to his last breath (there be that say 't)

As he were pressed to death, he cried, "More weight!"
But, had his doings lasted as they were,

He had been an immortal carrier.
Obedient to the moon he spent his date
In course reciprocal, and had his fate
Linked to the mutual flowing of the seas;

Yet (strange to think) his wain was his increase.

His letters are delivered all and gone,

Only remains the superscription.

How very sure we should all be that Milton did not write these pieces, if he had not given them a place among his published works! Returning to the crowd of Character-writers we find in 1631, the year of Milton's writing upon Hobson,

:

i

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