CHAPTER X.
Curious Authors from Thackeray's Library, indicating the Course of his Readings—Early Essayists illustrated with the Humourist's Pencillings—Bishop Earle's 'Microcosmography; a piece of the World Characterised,' 1628—An 'Essay in Defence of the Female Sex,' 1697—Thackeray's Interest in Works on the Spiritual World—'Flagellum Dæmonum, et Fustis Dæmonum. Auctore R. P. F. Hieronymo Mengo,' 1727—'La Magie et L'Astrologie,' par L. F. Alfred Maury—'Magic, Witchcraft, Animal Magnetism, Hypnotism, and Electro Biology,' by James Baird, 1852.
MICROCOSMOGRAPHY (1628),
OR A PIECE OF THE WORLD DISCOVERED IN ESSAYS AND CHARACTERS.
By JOHN EARLE, D.D., Bishop of Salisbury.
Preface to the Edition of 1732.
This little book had six editions between 1628 and 1633, without any author's name to recommend it. An eighth edition is spoken of in 1664. The present is reprinted from the edition of 1633, without altering anything but the plain errors of the press, and the old printing and spelling in some places.
The language is generally easy, and proves our English tongue not to be so very changeable as is commonly supposed. The change of fashions unavoidably casts a shade upon a few places, yet even those contain an exact picture of the age wherein they were written, as the rest does of mankind in general; for reflections founded upon nature will be just in the main, as long as men are men, though the particular instances of vice and folly may be diversified. Perhaps these valuable essays may be as acceptable to the public as they were at first; both for the entertainment of those who are already experienced in the ways of mankind, and for the information of others who would know the world the best way, that is—without trying it.
Advertisement to the Edition of 1786.
'This entertaining little book is become rather scarce, and is replete with so much good sense and genuine humour, which, though in part adapted to the times when it first appeared, seems on the whole by no means inapplicable to any era of mankind.'
Earle's 'Microcosmography' is undoubtedly a favourable example of the quaint epigrammatic wisdom of the early English writers, and few could question the appropriateness of the pencil which has lightly margined the settings of these terse and sterling essays, to the wisdom and humour of which the happiest productions of later essayists can but be appreciatively likened. Concerning the profoundly accomplished and eminently modest author, 'a most eloquent and powerful preacher, a man of great piety and devotion; and of a conversation so pleasant and delightful, so very innocent, and so very facetious, that no man's company was more desired and more loved; no man was more negligent in his dress, habit, and mien, no man more wary and cultivated in his behaviour and discourse; insomuch as he had the greater advantage when he was known, by promising so little before,' we may accept the testimony of Lord Clarendon's 'Account of his own Life.' The observations of the great Chancellor are supplemented by the character which honest Isaac Walton has sketched of this estimable prelate in his 'Life of Hooker.'
'... Dr. Earle, now Lord Bishop of Salisbury,[12] of whom I may justly say (and let it not offend him, because it is such a truth as ought not to be concealed from posterity, or those that now live and yet know him not) that since Mr. Hooker died, none have lived whom God hath blessed with more innocent wisdom, more sanctified learning, or a more pious, peaceable, primitive temper; so that this excellent person seems to be only like himself, and our venerable Richard Hooker.'
A Child
Is a man in a small letter, yet the best copy of Adam before he tasted of Eve or the apple; and he is happy whose small practice in the world can only write his character. He is nature's fresh picture newly drawn in oil, which time, and much handling, dims and defaces. His soul is yet a white paper unscribbled with observations of the world, wherewith at length it becomes a blurred notebook. He is purely happy because he knows no evil, nor hath made means by sin to be acquainted with misery. He arrives not at the mischief of being wise, nor endures evils to come by foreseeing them. He kisses and loves all, and, when the smart of the rod is past, smiles on his beater. Nature, and his parents alike, dandle him, and 'tice him on with a bit of sugar to a draught of wormwood. He plays yet like a young 'prentice the first day, and is not come to his task of melancholy.
All the language he speaks yet is tears, and they serve him well enough to express his necessity. His hardest labour is his tongue, as if he were loth to use so deceitful an organ, and he is best company with it when he can but prattle. We laugh at his foolish sports, but his game is our earnest, and his drums, rattles, and hobby-horses, but the emblems and mocking of man's business. His father hath writ him as his own little story, wherein he reads those days of his life that he cannot remember, and sighs to see what innocence he hath outlived. The older he grows, he is a star lower from God; and, like his first father, much worse in his breeches. He is the Christian's example, and the old man's relapse; the one imitates his pureness, and the other falls into his simplicity. Could he put off his body with his little coat, he had got eternity without a burden, and exchanged but one heaven for another.
An Upstart Knight.
An upstart country knight is a holiday clown, and differs only in the stuff of his clothes, not the stuff of himself, for he bare the king's sword before he had arms to wield it; yet being once laid o'er the shoulder with a knighthood, he finds the herald his friend. His father was a man of good stock, though but a tanner or usurer; he purchased the land, and his son the title. He has doffed off the name of a country lout, but the look not so easy, and his face still bears a relish of churn milk. He is guarded with more gold lace than all the gentlemen of the country, yet his body makes his clothes still out of fashion. His housekeeping is seen much in the distinct families of dogs, and serving-men attendant on their kennels, and the deepness of their throats is the depth of his discourse.
A justice of peace he is to domineer in his parish, and do his neighbour wrong with more right. He will be drunk with his hunters for company, and stain his gentility with drippings of ale. He is fearful of being sheriff of the shire by instinct, and dreads the assize week as much as the prisoner.
In sum, he's but a clod of his own earth, or his land is the dunghill, and he the cock that crows over it; and commonly his race is quickly run, and his children's children, though they 'scape hanging, return to the place from whence they came.
A Plain Country-Fellow.
A plain country-fellow is one that manures his ground well, but lets himself lie fallow and untilled. He has reason enough to do his business, and not enough to be idle and melancholy. He seems to have the punishment of Nebuchadnezzar, for his conversation is among beasts, and his talons none of the shortest, only he eats not grass because he loves not salads. His hand guides the plough, and the plough his thoughts, and his ditch and landmark is the very mound of his meditations. He expostulates with his oxen very understandingly, and speaks gee, and ree, better than English. His mind is not much distracted with objects, but if a good fat sow come in his way, he stands dumb and astonished, and though his haste be never so great, will fix here half an hour's contemplation. His habitation is some poor thatched roof, distinguished from his barn by the loop-holes that let out smoke, which the rain had long since washed through, but for the double ceiling of bacon on the inside, which has hung there from his grandsire's time, and is yet to make rashers for posterity. His dinner is his other work, for he sweats at it as much as at his labour; he is a terrible fastener on a piece of beef, and you may hope to stave the guard off sooner. His religion is part of his copyhold, which he takes from his landlord, and refers it wholly to his discretion. Yet if he give him leave he is a good Christian to his power—that is, comes to church in his best clothes, and sits there with his neighbours, where he is capable only of two prayers, for rain, and fair weather. He apprehends God's blessings only in a good year, or a fat pasture, and never praises Him but on good ground. Sunday he esteems a day to make merry in, and thinks a bagpipe as essential to it as evening prayer, when he walks very solemnly after service with his hands coupled behind him, and censures the dancing of his parish. His compliment with his neighbour is a good thump on the back, and his salutation commonly some blunt curse. He thinks nothing to be vices, but pride and ill husbandry, from which he will gravely dissuade the youth, and has some thrifty hob-nail proverbs to clout his discourse. He is a niggard all the week, except only market days, when, if his corn sell well, he thinks he may be drunk with a good conscience. He is sensible of no calamity but the burning of a stack of corn, or the overflowing of a meadow, and thinks Noah's flood the greatest plague that ever was, not because it drowned the world, but spoiled the grass. For death he is never troubled, and if he get in but his harvest before, let it come when it will, he cares not.
A Pot Poet.
A pot poet is the dregs of wit, yet mingled with good drink may have some relish. His inspirations are more real than others, for they do but feign a god, but he has his by him. His verse runs like the tap, and his invention as the barrel ebbs and flows at the mercy of the spiggot. In thin drink he aspires not above a ballad, but a cup of sack inflames him, and sets his muse and nose a-fire together. The press is his mint, and stamps him now and then a sixpence or two in reward of the baser coin, his pamphlet. His works would scarce sell for three halfpence, though they are given oft for three shillings, but for the pretty title that allures the country gentleman; for which the printer maintains him in ale for a fortnight. His verses are, like his clothes, miserable stolen scraps and patches, yet their pace is not altogether so hobbling as an almanac's. The death of a great man, or the burning of a house, furnish him with an argument, and the nine muses are out strait in mourning gowns, and Melpomene cries 'Fire! fire!' His other poems are but briefs in rhyme, and, like the poor Greek's collections, to redeem from captivity.
His frequentest works go out in single sheets, and are chanted from market to market to a vile tune and a viler throat; whilst the poor country wench melts like her butter to hear them. And these are the stories of some men of Tyburn, or of a strange monster broken loose; or sitting in a tap-room he writes sermons on judgments. He drops away at last, and his life, like a can too full, spills upon the bench. He leaves twenty shillings on the score, which his hostess loses.
A Bowl Alley.
A bowl alley is the place where there are three things thrown away besides bowls—to wit, time, money, and curses, and the last ten for one. The best sport in it is the gamesters, and he enjoys it that looks on and bets not. It is the school of wrangling, and worse than the schools, for men will cavil here for a hair's breadth, and make a stir where a straw would end the controversy. No antic screws men's bodies into such strange flexures, and you would think them here senseless, to speak sense to their bowl, and put their trust in entreaties for a good cast. It is the best discovery of humours, especially in the losers, where you have fine variety of impatience, whilst some fret, some rail, some swear, and others more ridiculously comfort themselves with philosophy. To give you the moral of it, it is the emblem of the world, or the world's ambition; where most are short, or over, or wide, or wrong-biassed, and some few justle in to the mistress of fortune. And it is here as in the court, where the nearest are most spited, and all blows aimed at the toucher.
A Handsome Hostess.
A handsome hostess is the fairer commendation of an inn, above the fair sign, or fair lodgings. She is the loadstone that attracts men of iron, gallants and roarers, where they cleave sometimes long, and are not easily got off. Her lips are your welcome, and your entertainment her company, which is put into the reckoning too, and is the dearest parcel in it. No citizen's wife is demurer than she at the first greeting, nor draws in her mouth with a chaster simper; but you may be more familiar without distaste, and she does not startle at a loose jest. She is the confusion of a pottle of sack more than would have been spent elsewhere, and her little jugs are accepted to have her kiss excuse them. She may be an honest woman, but is not believed so in her parish, and no man is a greater infidel in it than her husband.
A Poor Fiddler.
A poor fiddler is a man and a fiddle out of case, and he in worse case than his fiddle. One that rubs two sticks together (as the Indians strike fire), and rubs a poor living out of it; partly from this, and partly from your charity, which is more in the hearing than giving him, for he sells nothing dearer than to be gone. He is just so many strings above a beggar, though he have but two; and yet he begs too. Hunger is the greatest pain he takes, except a broken head sometimes. Otherwise his life is so many fits of mirth, and 'tis some mirth to see him. A good feast shall draw him five miles by the nose, and you shall track him again by the scent. His other pilgrimages are fairs and good houses, where his devotion is great to the Christmas; and no man loves good times better. He is in league with the tapsters for the worshipful of the inn, whom he torments next morning with his art, and has their names more perfect than their men. A new song is better to him than a new jacket, especially if it be lewd, which he calls merry; and hates naturally the puritan, as an enemy to this mirth. A country wedding and Whitsun-ale are the two main places he domineers in, where he goes for a musician, and overlooks the bagpipe. The rest of him is drunk, and in the stocks.
A Coward.
A coward is the man that is commonly most fierce against the coward, and labouring to take off this suspicion from himself; for the opinion of valour is a good protection to those that dare not use it. No man is valianter than he is in civil company, and where he thinks no danger may come of it, and is the readiest man to fall upon a drawer and those that must not strike again; wonderfully exceptious and choleric where he sees men are loth to give him occasion, and you cannot pacify him better than by quarrelling with him. The hotter you grow, the more temperate man is he; he protests he always honoured you, and the more you rail upon him, the more he honours you, and you threaten him at last into a very honest quiet man. The sight of a sword wounds him more sensibly than the stroke, for before that come, he is dead already. Every man is his master that dare beat him, and every man dares that knows him. And he who dare do this is the only man that can do much with him; for his friend he cares not, as a man that carries no such terror as his enemy, which for this cause only is more potent with him of the two; and men fall out with him on purpose to get courtesies from him, and be bribed again to a reconcilement. A man in whom no secret can be bound up, for the apprehension of each danger loosens him, and makes him betray both the room and it. He is a Christian merely for fear of hell fire; and if any religion could frighten him more, would be of that.
(APPENDIX.)
CHARACTERS FROM THE 'FRATERNITY OF VAGABONDS.'
WITH A DESCRIPTION OF THE CRAFTY COMPANY OF CUSONERS AND SHIFTERS, WHEREUNTO IS ADDED THE TWENTY-FIVE ORDERS OF KNAVES. 1565.
'A Ruffler goeth with a weapon to seek service, saying he hath been a servitor in the wars, and beggeth for relief. But his chiefest trade is to rob poor wayfaring men and market-women.
'An Upright Man is one that goeth with the truncheon of a staff. This man is of so much authority, that, meeting with any of his profession, he may call them to account, and command a share or "snap" unto himself of all that they have gained by their trade in one month.
'A Whipiake, or fresh-water mariner, is a person who travels with a counterfeit license in the dress of a sailor.
'An Abraham Man (hence to "Sham-Abraham") is he that walketh bare-armed and bare-legged, and feigneth himself mad, and carryeth a pack of wool, or a stick with a bauble on it, or such-like toy, and nameth himself "Poor Tom."'