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." 3. News from the new Exchange. The commonwealth of ladies. Printed in the _year of women with out Grace_, 1650. 4. There are many countries characterized--Italy, Spain, Holland, Scotland. 'Holland' is in verse. It bears out Earle's contemptuous references to the Dutch. It is here called "The offscouring of the British land." "This indigested vomit of the sea Fell to the Dutch by just propriety." 1672. [It will be found among Marvell's satires, but Bliss does not mention this.] 5. "Scotland characteriz'd: in a letter to a young gentleman to dissuade him from an intended journey thither, 1701." 6. "The noble cavalier characterized," "& a rebellious caviller cauterized," 1644 _or_ 5. An answer to Wither's Campo Musae. A vigorous preface says--"To begin roundly, soundly, and profoundly, the Cavalier is a gentleman." By John Taylor. 7. Lucifer's Lacky: the true character of a dissembling Brownist, 1641. 8. "The Tincker of Torvey: a scholler, a cobler, a tincker, a smith; with Bluster, a seaman, travel from Billingsgate to Gravesend." 1650. 9. "The interpreter," 1622, deals with "three principall terms of state--a puritan, a Protestant, a papist."