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 Nor arrows in a quiver stuck, nor yet 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 passion, 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 Passages 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 Pawnbroker and Ear-mark of an oppressing Tallyman, with a friendly description of a Bum-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 CeremonyMonger 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-space 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 NOBLE; OR, ONE THAT IS PROUD Is like a turnip, there is nothing good of him but that which is underground; or rhubarb, a contemptible shrub that springs from a noble root. He has no more title 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 nobility 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 as 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 title of honour sufficient to serve his turn, though he has spent the substance and reality of it, like the fellow that sold his ass 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 title of a saint, and makes that his privilege to act all manner of wickedness; or the ruins of a noble 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 nobility 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 nobility has rendered him ignoble, 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 noble ancestors will not permit the good or bad of their posterity to be obscure. He values himself only upon his title, 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 His Is a cipher, that has no value himself but from the place he stands in. All his happiness consists in the opinion he believes others have of it. This is his faith, but as it is heretical and erroneous, though he suffer much tribulation for it, he continues obstinate, and not to be convinced. He flutters up and down like a butterfly in a garden, and while he is pruning of his peruke takes occasion to contemplate his legs and the symmetry of his breeches. He is part of the furniture of the rooms, and serves for a walking picture, a moving piece of arras. business is only to be seen, and he performs it with admirable industry, placing himself always in the best light, looking wonderfully politic, and cautious whom he mixes withal. His occupation is to show his clothes, and if they could but walk themselves they would save him the labour and do his work as well as himself. His immunity from varlets is his freehold, and he were a lost man without it. His clothes are but his tailor's livery, which he gives him, for 'tis ten to one he never pays for them. He is very careful to discover the lining of his coat, that you may not suspect any want of integrity or flaw in him from the skin outwards. His tailor is his creator, and makes him of nothing; and though he lives by faith in him, he is perpetually committing iniquities against him. His soul dwells in the outside of him, like that of a hollow tree, and if you do but peel the bark off him he deceases immediately. His carriage of himself is the wearing of his clothes, and, like the cinnamon tree, his bark is better than his body. His looking big is rather a tumour than greatness. He is an idol that has just so much value as other men give him that believe in him, but none of his own. He makes his ignorance pass for reserve, and, like a hunting-nag, leaps over what he cannot get through. He has just so much of politics as hostlers in the university have Latin. He is as humble |