ance 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_ 15_th of
September_ 1613. _On the_ 5_th 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