[G] Professor Jebb, in his edition of The Characters of Theophrastus. I rejoice to see that Professor Jebb assigns Earle a place of far more distinction than is implied in the measured tribute of Hallam. His preface furnishes lovers of Earle with just those reasoned opinions with which instinctive attraction desires to justify itself; and I take this opportunity of acknowledging my great obligations to it. [H] Hallam. The same tone is taken in the article on Earle in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica." [I] Mr. Bridges indeed, ("Achilles in Scyros"), finds that this character has been always with us, and gives it a place in the Heroic Age. The passage has almost the note of Troilus and Cressida:-- "My invitation, Sir, Was but my seal of full denial, a challenge For honor's eye not to be taken up. Your master hath slipped in manners." [J] We may compare Matthew Arnold's travelling companion ("Essays in Criticism," 1st Edition, Preface), who was so nervous about railway murders, and who refused to be consoled by being reminded that though the worst should happen, there would still be the old crush at the corner of Fenchurch Street, and that he would not be missed: "the great mundane movement would still go on!" [K] Chaucer could hardly have been well-known in 1811, or Dr. Bliss would scarcely have quoted in full the most familiar character in his Prologue; but I could not find courage to excise, or lay a profane hand on any of his notes. [L] It is, perhaps, superfluous to say that no disrespect is intended to the Author of the "Ring and the Book"; but it would be difficult to find another poet who has had so many of the equivocal tributes of fashion. [M] Sir Thomas Browne, "Christian Morals." [N] "So infinite a fancy, bound in by a most logical ratiocination."--_Clarendon (of Lord Falkland)._ [O] Clarendon. [P] "A great cherisher of good parts ... and if he found men clouded with poverty, or want, a most liberal and bountiful patron."--_Clarendon, ib._ [Q] Clarendon, _ib._ [R] Between Earle himself and Berkeley there is much resemblance. Of Berkeley too it would have been said--"a person certainly of the sweetest and most obliging nature that lived in our age"; and this resemblance extends beyond their social gifts or their cast of mind, even to their language. Earle's "vulgar-spirited" man, with whom "to thrive is to do well," recalls a famous passage in the Siris. "He that hath not thought much about God, the human soul, and the _summum bonum_, may indeed be a _thriving_ earth-worm, but he will make a sorry patriot, and a sorry statesman." [S] Is this from Pliny's Letters? "Totum patrem mira similitudine exscripserat."--_Lib._ V. xvi. [T] One may recall, too, the famous words of the Sophoclean Ajax to his son in connection with Earle's phrases. "He is not come to his task of melancholy," "he arrives not at the mischief of being wise," read like a free translation of Soph. Ajax, II. 554 and 555.