I do not think it is uniformly conspicuous[Y] for quaintness, or that there is much that can be called affectation; though occasionally an excess of brevity has proved too tempting, or the desire to individualize runs away with him. The following passages, taken at random from the Characters, seem to contain phrases that we should be well content to use to-day if we had thought of them. _He sighs to see what innocence he hath outlived._ _We look on old age for his sake as a more reverent thing._ _He has still something to distinguish him from a gentleman, though his doublet cost more._ _It is discourtesy in you to believe him._ _An extraordinary man in ordinary things._ _His businesses with his friends are to visit them._ _The main ambition of his life is not to be discredited._ _He preaches heresy if it comes in his way, though with a mind I must needs say very orthodox._ These quotations have no very unfamiliar sound, nor much flavour of archaism about them. And there are many more, surprisingly free from conceits or other oddities, if we reflect that the book was written before Dryden was born, or modern prose with its precision and balance even thought of. There is one very distinguishing mark set on Earle's characters, the profundity of the analysis that accompanies the sketch. He lets us know not only what the grave divine or the staid man looks like, but why they are what they are, and all this without turning his sketch into an essay. This mistake Bishop Hall is inclined to make, and Butler actually makes. The author of Hudibras, it seems, would have been too fortunate had he known where his own happiness lay--to wit in that "sting" of verse, which Cowper says prose neither has nor can have. When one compares the essay in its beginnings with the essay as we know it to-day, it is not difficult to understand the change of form in the character sketch. "The Character of a Trimmer"[Z] is a very powerful piece of writing, containing some very fine things, but Halifax could not make of it that finished piece of brevity which it would have become in Earle's hands. Latin criticism has the right word for his work--"densus."[AA] We could not pack the thinking closer if we wished. And yet if we do not care to reason a type out, there are pictures enough unspoilt by commentary.[AB] Earle has some of that delightful suddenness of illustration which Selden makes so captivating in his Table-Talk. At once we are made to see likeness or unlikeness, we hear no comment on it; since the artist desires no more moral than is to be looked for in his art.