Despite all this searching analysis and the biting wit which accompanies it, I cannot think the epithet cynical, which I have heard ascribed to Earle, is defensible. There is a vast difference between recognising our frailty which is a fact, and insisting that our nature is made up of nothing else, which is not a fact. The severe critic and the cynic differ chiefly in this: the first reports distressing facts, the second invents disgraceful fictions; the one distrusts, the other insults our common nature; and in doing justice to the possibilities of that nature, no one has gone further than Earle in his "contemplative man."
Something may be said of Earle's style before this introduction is brought to an end.
I do not think it is uniformly conspicuous[Y] for quaintness, or that there is much that can be called affectation; though occasionally an excess of brevity has proved too tempting, or the desire to individualize runs away with him.
The following passages, taken at random from the Characters, seem to contain phrases that we should be well content to use to-day if we had thought of them.
He sighs to see what innocence he hath outlived.
We look on old age for his sake as a more reverent thing.
He has still something to distinguish him from a gentleman, though his doublet cost more.
It is discourtesy in you to believe him.
An extraordinary man in ordinary things.