or inexpedience, but because it proceeded from any mouth besides his own.  And it must be a cause rarely plausible that will not admit some probable contradiction.  When his equal should rise to honour, he strives against it unseen, and rather with much cost suborneth great adversaries; and when he sees his resistance vain, he can give an hollow gratulation in presence, but in secret disparages that advancement.  Either the man is unfit for the place, or the place for the man; or if fit, yet less gainful, or more common than opinion; whereto he adds that himself might have had the same dignity upon better terms, and refused it.  He is witty in devising suggestions to bring his rival out of love into suspicion.  If he be courteous, he is seditiously popular; if bountiful, he binds over his clients to a faction; if successful in war, he is dangerous in peace; if wealthy, he lays up for a day; if powerful, nothing wants but opportunity of rebellion.  His submission is ambitious hypocrisy; his religion, politic insinuation; no action is safe from a jealous construction.  When he receives a good report of him whom he emulates, he saith, “Fame is partial, and is wont to blanche mischiefs;” and pleaseth himself with hope to find it worse; and if ill-will have dispersed any more spiteful narration, he lays hold on that, against all witnesses, and broacheth that rumour for truest because worst; and when he sees him perfectly miserable, he can at once pity him, and rejoice.  What himself cannot do, others shall not; he hath gained well if he have hindered the success of what he would have done, and could not.  He conceals his best skill, not so as it may not be known that he knows it, but so as it may not be learned, because he would have the world miss him.  He attained to a foreign medicine by the secret legacy of a dying empiric, whereof he will leave no heir lest the praise shall be divided.  Finally, he is an enemy to God’s favours, if they fall beside himself; the best nurse of ill-fame, a man of the worst diet, for he consumes himself, and delights in pining; a thorn-hedge covered with nettles, a peevish interpreter of good things, and no other than a lean and pale carcase quickened with a fiend.

* * * * *

JOHN STEPHENS,

The younger, a lawyer of Lincoln’s Inn, published in 1615 “Satyrical Essayes, Characters, and others, or accurate and quick Descriptions fitted to the life of their Subjects.”  He had published two years before a play called “Cinthia’s Revenge, or Maenander’s Extasie,” which Langbaine described as one of the longest he had ever read, and the most tedious.  Somebody seems to have attacked him and his Characters.  A second edition, in 1631, was entitled “New Essays and Characters, with a new Satyre in defence of the Common Law, and Lawyers:  mixt with Reproofe against their enemy Ignoramus."

JOHN EARLE