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[TO THE EDITION OF 1786[AN].]

As 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 æra of mankind, the editor conceives that there needs little apology for the republication. A farther inducement is, his having, from very good authority, lately discovered[AO] that these Characters (hitherto known only under the title of Blount's[AP]), were actually drawn by the able pencil of John Earle, who was formerly bishop of Sarum, having been translated to that see from Worcester, A.D. 1663, and died at Oxford, 1665.

Isaac Walton, in his Life of Hooker, delineates the character of the said venerable prelate.

It appears from Antony Wood's Athen. Oxon. under the Life of Bishop Earle, that this book was first of all published at London in 1628, under the name of "Edward Blount."