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'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.
