Bacon's merits are his logic and his dignity, the wisdom of his judgments, the conscious art of his style. Montaigne's charm comes from his mind, ever awake, ever ready, from the happy picturesqueness of his speech, and the meanderings of his thought, which, at every turn, throws out unexpected lights. Bacon starts when he should and stops when his reason has decided that it is better to cease speaking; he is magnificent to look at and listen to. With the Gascon, reason is never absent either, but his is a Gascon reason, which the "folle du logis" leads by the hand; both reason and imagination are on very good terms and deem that, according to the Italian proverb, "A fool and a sage know more than a sage alone." Without being more familiar with the ancients nor quoting them oftener, Bacon is more formal, he has more starch on his ruff, he approaches nearer to pedantry; the interest of his remarks is less human, too, and less general, because of his usual adherence to the aristocratic point of view; if he speaks of travels, he has in mind young gentlemen escorted by their tutors and having access to embassies; his gardens are "princelike," the houses he describes are palaces. In both writers traits of truest wisdom abound, coined like aphorisms by Bacon, slipped by Montaigne into some corner of his sentences where they will perchance remain unperceived; but this is one of the peculiarities of his genius and one of the results of his system: unobserved on the moment, these traits stay, as if dormant, in a nook of the memory, to quicken at the proper hour, when their virtue can be of service. Bacon's little book was greatly admired; he soon had

"There is no secrecy comparable to celerity."—"There is a superstition in avoiding superstition."-" Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter; they increase the cares of life, but they mitigate the remembrance of death."

many imitators: essays or characters of Cornwallis,1 Vaughan, Hall, Overbury, Nicholas Breton,3 John Taylor,4 Owen Feltham, Earle, without speaking of the pious George Herbert's "Country Parson," which is only a "character " on a larger scale than usual,5 or of Ben Jonson's descriptions of the personages in some of his comedies, or of his "Timber or Discoveries," which are in reality short essays,

"Essayes by Sir William Corne-waleys the younger, Kt.," London, 1600; "A second part of Essayes. Written by Sir William Cornwallis," London, 1601; printed with the usual excuse: "The author... hateth nothing more then comming in publick," but he is afraid of pirates; other ed. 1610, 1631-2. In this collection, of slight value, Cornwallis treats of Resolution, Patience, Suspition, Love, etc. He extolls the "Lord de Montaigne," who "hath made morall Philosophy speak couragiously," and "hath put Pedanticall schollerisme out of countenance" (sig. H. 4); he bestows great attention on his own self, which unluckily does not prove so interesting as that of Montaigne. By the same, "Discourses upon Seneca the Tragedian," 1601, common-place disquisitions on moral subjects.

“The Golden Grove, moralized . . . very necessary for all such as would know how to governe themselves, their houses or their countrey," 1600, 2nd ed. 1608, by W. Vaughan (for a time a colonist in Newfoundland, b. 1577, d. 1641), being mostly essays, treating of temperance, anger, friendship, "gynecracie," of the education of gentlemen, of vice, of stage plays and their immorality, etc.

3 By Breton, "Characters upon Essaies, morall and divine," 1615, dedi. cated to Bacon, on knowledge, patience, love, peace, war, etc.; "The Good and Badde," 1616, a series of portraits, a good man, an atheist (described as being necessarily drunk), a usurer, a parasite, etc. Other essays by the same in "Fantasticks serving for a Perpetual Prognostication," 1626; some dialogues on travels, on court and country, etc. "Works in verse and prose, ed. Grosart, 1879, 2 vols. 8vo; above, vol. II. pp. 398, 470.

4 The prose 66 Armado or Navye of 103 Ships," 1627, of John Taylor, the "water poet" (ie., boatman), is, under an allegorical form, a series of something like characters, his ships being called "Lord-ship," "Scholar-ship," "Ladyship," etc. Each of Brathwaite's twelve satires, "Natures Embassie or the wilde-mans Measures," 1621 (above, vol. II. p. 436), is preceded by an argument in prose, consisting of a kind of character or essay; reprinted, Boston, Lincolnshire, 1877, 8vo; by him also, "Whimzies or a new cast of Characters," 1631.

5 "A Priest to the Temple, or the Countrey Parson, his Character and rule of holy Life," the word character being printed in very large letters to draw attention and secure readers; finished 1632, published posthumously, 1652; various chapters on the parson praying, arguing, punishing, the parson in mirth, etc.

pregnant with wisdom, fraught with sense, often reproducing, as we have seen, other men's opinions, but opinions that Jonson approved of and made his, always expressed in masterly English prose. The popularity of Montaigne, become generally accessible through Florio's translation in 1603, the fondness for the "humours" put on the stage by Jonson, the success of portraits in verse or prose, of satires and sketches of everyday life, the increasing attention paid to verifiable truths, were so many encouragements for writers to try their chance as essayists. Lists of them, of incredible length, have been drawn up. Several know how to set an individual on his feet, to make him move and talk, and they can show what is or what is not in his heart and in his soul. They do not yet write novels of real life, but they act as purveyors ; they supply the matter and the personnel. Their portraits are unconnected, but often very minute, physically and morally. To draw such, to show that it was possible to interest readers without mixing the impossible and the real, was to resume the early experiments tried by the Greenes and the Nashes of the former generation, and make it easier for their successors to surpass them.

Joseph Hall, the satirist and future bishop, describes not a few abstract types, but he has also real live men of the kind to be admitted, ready made, into the novels of a later date, with their ways of speaking, of moving or standing, their gait, attitudes and gestures; for he

1 Some among the satirists themselves court such an assimilation. Wither entitles his satires: "Abuses stript and whipt or satirical Essayes,” 1613, “TellTrothes'... Passionate Morrice," by "A.," issued as early as 1593, can be considered as a collection of portraits: series of prose pictures where are shown, dancing together, "a passionate ass and a peevish wench," "a lusty widower and a gallant wench;" etc.; ed. Furnivall, New Shak. Soc., 1876. Some of Randolph poems are descriptions of "characters,” e.g., “Poems," ed. Parry, p. 194. * Researches of Dr. Bliss; Arber, Introduction to Earle's "MicroCosmographie," 1868.

forgets nothing. We shall meet again, in the course of time, his Vain-Glorious, who "wears all his land on his back, and walking high, looks over his left shoulder to see if the point of his rapier follows him with a grace," his Busy-Body, and many others. Busy-Body's 'estate is too narrow for his mind, and therefore he is fain to make himself room in others' affairs. . . . No news can stir but by his door. . . . What every man ventures in a Guiana voiage, and what they gain'd he knows to a hair. [He] calls at his neighbour's window, and asks why his servants are not at work. . . . His tongue, like the tail of Sampson's foxes, carries fire-brands, and is enough to set the whole field of the world on a flame."

Feltham, who ceaselessly fluctuates between paradox and banality, confining himself as much as possible to abstractions, in the hopes apparently of belonging to all times (but who only succeeded in being of none), is among the least valuable of all. There is little profit to glean in hearing him descant with good intention on hope, poverty," the uncertainty of life," "Time's continual speed," or in examining with him whether woman is inferior to man. He considers that she is not, for she is prettier,

"Characters of Vertues and Vices," 1608, in the numerous editions of his "Works"; translated into French, with great success (by de Tourval ?), "Caractères de Vertus et de Vices," 1610. As a moralist and satirist again, Hall wrote his "Mundus Alter et Idem," Frankfort, 1605, in Latin prose, a painful description of imaginary countries as execrable as the island of Utopia was perfect: country of Avarice, Gluttony, Lechery, Folly, etc. Charles Sorel, a connoisseur in such matters, knew Hall's work: "Un certain Anglois," says he, "a fait un livre Latin qu'il appelle Mundus Alter et Idem; il veut dire que c'est un nouveau monde semblable à celui-cy. . . Il y a de grandes cartes géographiques dans le livre, qui se déployent comme si c'estoit pour une contrée véritable décrite sérieusement." Sorel wonders whether the author did not give the first idea of those fancy maps, so numerous since in France, such as the map of the Tendre country or the "carte du Royaume des Prétieuses"; but he inclines to conclude that he has not, Bibliothèque Françoise," Paris, 1664, 12m0, p. 151.

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And can wee thinke God would put a worser soule into a better body?" From which obviously we ought to conIclude that Socrates had a worser soule" than Phryne.1

But with Overbury, and also with Earle, we again meet realities. The former's sketches, in spite of too constant a striving after wit, are among the best; even when the original has been painted a hundred times before, the portrait is worth looking at. The "affectate traveller" returns home, and it so happens that "his attire speaks French or Italian, and his gait cries Behold me. . . . He chooseth rather to be counted a spy than not a politician . . . rather to tell lies than not wonders." Overbury's collection does not include only satirical portraits; he has a kindly, jovial, and indulgent "Franklin," a descendant of the one who went on a pilgrimage to Canterbury, an ancestor of Sir Roger de Coverley, a friend to man and beast, who favours all field sports, "and thinks not the bones of the dead any thing bruised, or the worse for it, though the country lasses dance in the church-yard after even-song." 2 Earle comes even nearer the novel, as he is fond of describing little scenes and the surroundings among which they take place, those by preference which Teniers painted. There is plenty of ale and tobacco in his work, numerous drunkards, scamps, low gallants, and queer creatures

"Resolves, divine, morall, politicall," n.d. but 1618 or 1620, numerous editions (the 8th in 1661, mod. one by O. Smeaton, "Temple Classics "). Owen Feltham, 1602 ?-68, left also some poems, and "A Brief Character of the Low Countries," 1652 (note the word character), paradoxical, vain attempts at being witty. His lack of humour is shown by the little he made of an idea he had the luck, a dangerous one for his fame, of lighting upon before Voltaire: comparison between the effects of tragedies and of sermons ("Of Preaching"; cf. Voltaire, "Vision de Babouc," vii).

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Witty Characters and conceited Newes," printed with his poem "A Wife," 1614 (posthumous). These characters are partly by him, partly, says the title, by "other learned gentlemen his friends," but judging from the unity of style, he must have revised the latter; great success, 20th ed. in 1673. "Works," ed. Raimbault, 1856.