Читать книгу Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century - Various - Страница 11

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Asper. He is of an ingenious and free spirit, eager and constant in reproof, without fear controlling the world's abuses. One whom no servile hope of gain, or frosty apprehension of danger, can make to be a parasite, either to time, place, or opinion.

Macilente. A man well parted, a sufficient scholar, and travelled; who, wanting that place in the world's account which he thinks his merit capable of, falls into such an envious apoplexy, with which his judgment is so dazzled and distasted, that he grows violently impatient of any opposite happiness in another.

Puntarvolo. A vainglorious knight, over-Englishing his travels, and wholly consecrated to singularity; the very Jacob's staff of compliment; a sir that hath lived to see the revolution of time in most of his apparel. Of presence good enough, but so palpably affected to his own praise, that for want of flatterers he commends himself, to the floutage of his own family. He deals upon returns, and strange performances, resolving, in despite of public derision, to stick to his own particular fashion, phrase, and gesture.

Carlo Buffone. A public, scurrilous, and profane jester, that more swift than Circe, with absurd similes, will transform any person into deformity. A good feast-hound or banquet-beagle, that will scent you out a supper some three miles off, and swear to his patrons, damn him! he came in oars, when he was but wafted over in a sculler. A slave that hath an extraordinary gift in pleasing his palate, and will swill up more sack at a sitting than would make all the guard a posset. His religion is railing, and his discourse ribaldry. They stand highest in his respect whom he studies most to reproach.

Fastidious Brisk. A neat, spruce, affecting courtier, one that wears clothes well, and in fashion; practiseth by his glass how to salute; speaks good remnants, notwithstanding the base viol and tobacco; swears tersely, and with variety; cares not what lady's favour he belies, or great man's familiarity; a good property to perfume the boot of a coach. He will borrow another man's horse to praise, and backs him as his own. Or, for a need, on foot can post himself into credit with his merchant, only with the jingle of his spur, and the jerk of his wand.

Deliro. A good doting citizen, who, it is thought, might be of the common-council for his wealth; a fellow sincerely besotted on his own wife, and so wrapt with a conceit of her perfections, that he simply holds himself unworthy of her. And, in that hoodwinked humour, lives more like a suitor than a husband; standing in as true dread of her displeasure, as when he first made love to her. He doth sacrifice twopence in juniper to her every morning before she rises, and wakes her with villainous out-of-tune music, which she out of her contempt (though not out of her judgment) is sure to dislike.

Fallace. Deliro's wife, and idol; a proud mincing peat, and as perverse as he is officious. She dotes as perfectly upon the courtier, as her husband doth on her, and only wants the face to be dishonest.

Saviolina. A court-lady, whose weightiest praise is a light wit, admired by herself, and one more, her servant Brisk.

Sordido. A wretched hobnailed chuff, whose recreation is reading of almanacks; and felicity, foul weather. One that never prayed but for a lean dearth, and ever wept in a fat harvest.

Fungoso. The son of Sordido, and a student; one that has revelled in his time, and follows the fashion afar off, like a spy. He makes it the whole bent of his endeavours to wring sufficient means from his wretched father, to put him in the courtiers' cut; at which he earnestly aims, but so unluckily, that he still lights short a suit.

Sogliardo. An essential clown, brother to Sordido, yet so enamoured of the name of a gentleman, that he will have it though he buys it. He comes up every term to learn to take tobacco, and see new motions. He is in his kingdom when he can get himself into company where he may be well laughed at.

Shift. A threadbare shark; one that never was a soldier, yet lives upon lendings. His profession is skeldring and odling, his bank Paul's, and his warehouse Picthatch. Takes up single testons upon oath, till doomsday. Falls under executions of three shillings, and enters into five-groat bonds. He waylays the reports of services, and cons them without book, damning himself he came new from them, when all the while he was taking the diet in the bawdy-house, or lay pawned in his chamber for rent and victuals. He is of that admirable and happy memory, that he will salute one for an old acquaintance that he never saw in his life before. He usurps upon cheats, quarrels, and robberies, which he never did, only to get him a name. His chief exercises are, taking the whiff, squiring a cockatrice, and making privy searches for imparters.

Clove and Orange. An inseparable case of coxcombs, city born; the Gemini, or twins of foppery; that, like a pair of wooden foils, are fit for nothing but to be practised upon. Being well flattered they'll lend money, and repent when they have done. Their glory is to invite players, and make suppers. And in company of better rank, to avoid the suspect of insufficiency, will enforce their ignorance most desperately, to set upon the understanding of anything. Orange is the most humorous of the two, whose small portion of juice being squeezed out, Clove serves to stick him with commendations.

Cordatus. The author's friend; a man inly acquainted with the scope and drift of his plot; of a discreet and understanding judgment; and has the place of a moderator.

Mitis. Is a person of no action, and therefore we have reason to afford him no character.

Of this kind are the CHARACTERS BY SIR THOMAS OVERBURY, which were not published until 1614, the year after their writer's death, at the age of thirty-two; but they may have been written earlier than the "Characters of Virtues and Vices"--ethical characters--written by Joseph Hall, which were first published in 1609.

Sir Thomas Overbury died poisoned in the Tower on the 15th of September 1613. On the 5th of January 1606, by desire of James the First, the young Earl of Essex, aged fourteen, had been married to the Lady Frances Howard, aged thirteen, the younger daughter of the Earl of Suffolk. Ben Jonson's "Masque of Hymen" was produced at Court in celebration of that union. The young Robert Devereux, third Earl of Essex, had good qualities too solid for the taste of a frivolous girl; and when, after travel abroad, the husband of eighteen claimed the wife of seventeen, he found her happy in flirtation with the King's favourite, Sir Robert Carr. Though compelled to live with her husband, she repelled all his advances, and after three years of this repugnance tried for a divorce. The King's Scotch favourite, Carr, had been made, in March 1611, an English peer, as Viscount Rochester, when the age of the young Countess of Essex was nineteen. He was the man highest in King James's favour. If the divorce sought by the Countess early in 1613 were obtained for her, it was understood that Carr would marry her, and that support of the divorce would be a way to future benefit through his good offices. Thus she obtained the support of her father and uncle, the Earls of Suffolk and Northampton. The King's influence went with the wishes of the favourite. The trial, in 1613, ending in a decree of nullity of marriage, was a four months' scandal in the land. Among the familiar friends of Robert Carr, Lord Rochester, was Sir Thomas Overbury, born in Warwickshire in 1581, and knighted by King James in 1608. He strongly opposed the policy of a divorce obtained on false pretences followed by his patron's marriage to the divorced wife. The grounds of his opposition may have been part private, part political. His opposition was determined, and if he offered himself as witness before the Commission, he probably knew enough about the lady's secret practisings to give such evidence as would frustrate her designs. It was thought desirable, therefore, to get Overbury out of the way. The King offered him a post abroad. He was unwilling to accept it, and at last was driven to an explicit refusal. The King was angry, and caused his Council to commit Sir Thomas Overbury to the Tower for contempt of His Majesty's commands. He was to be seen by no one, and to have no servant with him. Sir William Wood, the Lieutenant of the Tower, was superseded, and Sir Gervase Helwys was put in his place with secret understandings, of which the design may only have been to prevent Sir Thomas Overbury from saying anything that could come to the ears of the world until the divorce was granted. But Lady Essex wished Sir Thomas Overbury to be more effectually silenced. She had tried and failed to get him assassinated. Now she resolved to get him poisoned. She obtained the employment of a creature of her own, named Weston, as his immediate keeper. Weston falsely professed to Lady Essex that he had administered the poison she had given him, and that the result had been not death but loss of health. There is much uncertainty about the evidence of detail and of the privity of others in the designs of Lady Essex, who seems at last to have completed her work by the agency of an apothecary's assistant. He gave the fatal dose in an injection, by which Overbury was killed ten days before the Commission gave judgment in favour of the divorce. At Christmas the favourite married the divorced wife, having been created Earl of Somerset, that as his wife she might be Countess still. In the following year, 1614, Sir Thomas Overbury's "Characters" were published, together with his Character in verse of A Wife, who was described as "A Wife, now a Widow." This had been published a little earlier in the same year separately, without any added "Characters." When the Characters appeared they were described as "Many Witty Characters and conceited Newes written by himselfe and other learned Gentlemen his Friends." The twenty-one Characters in that edition were, therefore, not all from one hand. Their popularity is indicated by the fact that in the next year, 1615, they reached a sixth edition. Three more editions were published in 1616. This was because interest in the book had been heightened by the Great Oyer of Poisoning, the trial in May 1616 of the Earl and Countess of Somerset for Overbury's murder, of which both were found guilty, though the Countess took all guilt upon herself. Then followed a tenth edition in 1618, an eleventh in 1622, a twelfth in 1627, a thirteenth in 1628, a fourteenth in 1630, a fifteenth in 1632, a sixteenth in 1638; and then a pause, the seventeenth being in 1664, two years before the fire of London. By this time the original set of twenty-one Characters had been considerably increased, "with additions of New Characters and many other Witty Conceits never before Printed;" so that Overbury's Characters, which had from the first included a few pieces written by his friends, became a name for the most popular miscellany of pieces of Character Writing current in the Seventeenth Century, and shows how wit was exercised in this way by half-a-dozen or more of the mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease. These are the pieces thus at last made current as