This little book had six editions between 1628 and 1633, without any author's name to recommend it: I have heard of an eighth in 1664. From that of 33 this present edition is reprinted, without altering any thing but the plain errors of the press, and the old pointing and spelling in some places. The language is generally easy, and proves our English tongue not to be so very changeable as is commonly supposed; nay, sometimes the phrase seems a little obscure, more by the mistakes of the printer than the distance of time. Here and there we meet with a broad expression, and some characters are far below others; nor is it to be expected that so great a variety of portraits should all be drawn with equal excellence, though there are scarce any without some masterly touches. The change of fashions unavoidably casts a shade upon a few places, yet even those contain an exact picture of the age wherein they were written, as the rest does of mankind in general: for reflections founded upon nature will be just in the main, as long as men are men, though the particular instances of vice and folly may be diversified. Paul's Walk is now no more, but then good company adjourn to coffee-houses, and, at the reasonable fine of two or three pence, throw away as much of their precious time as they find troublesome. Perhaps these valuable essays may be as acceptable to the public now as they were at first; both for the entertainment of those who are already experienced in the ways of mankind, and for the information of others who would know the world the best way, that is--without trying it[AM]. FOOTNOTES: [AL] _London: Printed by E. Say, Anno Domini_ M.DCC.XXXII. [AM] A short account of Earle, taken from the _Athenae Oxonienses_ is here omitted. ADVERTISEMENT [TO THE EDITION OF 1786[AN].] As this entertaining little book is become rather scarce, and is replete with so much good sense and genuine humour, which, though in part adapted to the times when it first appeared, seems, on the whole, by no means inapplicable to any aera of mankind, the editor conceives that there needs little apology for the republication. A farther inducement is, his having, from very good authority, lately discovered[AO] that these _Characters_ (hitherto known only under the title of _Blount's_[AP]), were actually drawn by the able pencil of JOHN EARLE, who was formerly bishop of Sarum, having been translated to that see from Worcester, A.D. 1663, and died at Oxford, 1665. Isaac Walton, in his Life of Hooker, delineates the character of the said venerable prelate. It appears from Antony Wood's Athen. Oxon. under the Life of Bishop Earle, that this book was first of all published at London in 1628, under the name of "_Edward Blount_." FOOTNOTES: