1645 had named him as one to be summoned to the Assembly of Divines, but
he declined to come.[FA]

In 1654 there was printed at the Hague an Elzevir volume--"morum
exemplar," _Latin_ characters by one Louis du Moulin. He aspires he says
in the preface to be the Virgil or Seneca to Earle's Theocritus or
Menander.

This is his testimony to the characters.

"Et sane salivam primum mihi movit vester Earles cujus characteribus, non
puto quicquam exstare vel severius ubi seria tractat, vel festivius quands
_innoxie_ jocatur: ant pictorem unquam penicillo propius ad nativam
speciem expressisse hominis vultus, quam ille ejus mores patria lingua
descripserit."

It may be of interest to mention in connection with the title of Earle's
book that the phrase of Menenius Agrippa in Coriolanus.--"The _Map_ of my
Microcosm" actually occurs as a title of a book of characters by H.
Broune, 1642, the alternative description being "a morall description of
man newly compiled into Essays.

Bliss's MS. book illustrates what I have said in the preface of the change
in the character-sketch. The essay and the pamphlet gradually usurp the
place of social studies. The great mass of the "characters" of the last
half of the seventeenth century are political or religious. On the other
hand, while the only _prose_ character in Bliss of the sixteenth century
deals with the criminal classes, "a discoverie of ten English leapers
verie noisome and hurtfull to the Church and Commonwealth," quoted in his
MS. notebook, mixes such characters with "the Simoniacke," "the murmurer,"
"the covetous man." The date is 1592. (The Tincker of Torvey (1630) also
exhibits this mixture.)

It may be worth while to add a few titles of books of characters, as
illustrating the range of this class of literature, or as being in
themselves interesting. They are from Bliss's own notes in his own copy of
his book or in the MS. note book before referred to.

1. "The Coffee-House--a character."

{When coffee once was vended here,
Prefatory {The Alc'ran shortly did appear,
verses. {... reformers were such widgeons,
{New liquors brought in new religions.

2. Also a character of coffee and coffee-houses. "It was first brought
into England when the palats of the English were as fanaticall as their
brains.... The Englishman will be a la mode de France. With the barbarous
Indian he smooks tobacco: with the Turk he drinks coffee