* * * * *

Then there-were separate Characters, as “of a Projector” (1642); “of an Oxford Incendiary” (1645); and in 1664, “A New Anatomic, or Character of a Christian or Roundhead, expressing his Description, Excellenrie, Happiness, and Innocencie.  Wherein may appear how far this blind World is mistaken in their unjust Censures of him.”  Several Characters were included in Lord North’s “Forest of Varieties” published in 1645.  Fourteen Characters, some of individual persons, were in the “Characters and Elegies, by Sir Francis Wortley, Knight and Baronet” published in 1646.  The author was son of Sir Richard Wortley of Wortley in Yorkshire.  He was a good royalist, was taken prisoner in the civil wars, and wrote his Characters in the Tower.  They were these:—­The Character of his Roy all Majestie; the Character of the Queene’s Majestie; the Hopeful Prince; a true Character of the illustrious James, Duke of York; the Character of a Noble General; a true English Protestant; an Antinomian, or Anabaptistical Independent; a Jesuit; the true Character of a Northern Lady, as she is Wife, Mother, and Sister; the Politique Neuter; the Citie Paragon; a Sharking Committee-man; Britannicus his Pedigree —­afatall Prediction of his end; and last, the Phoenix of the Court.

In 1646, T. F., who is named by interlineation on his title-page among the King’s Pamphlets, T. Ford, servant to Mr. Sam.  Man, produced the “Times Anatomized, in several Characters.”  These were:  A Good King, Rebellion, an Honest Subject, an Hypocritical Convert of the Times, a Soldier of Fortune, a Discontented Person, an Ambitious Man, the Vulgar, Error, Truth, a Self-seeker, Pamphlets, an Envious Man, True Valour, Time, a Neuter, a Turn-Coat, a Moderate Man, a Corrupt Committee-man, a Sectary, War, Peace, a Drunkard, a Novice, Preacher, a Scandalous Preacher, a Grave Divine, a Self-Conceited Man, Religion, Death.  This is T. Ford’s Character of Pamphlets—­_

PAMPHLETS

Are the weekly almanacs, showing what weather is in the state, which, like the doves of Aleppo, carry news to every part of the kingdom.  They are the silent traitors that affront majesty, and abuse all authority, under the colour of an imprimatur.  Ubiquitary flies that have of late so blistered the ears of all men, that they cannot endure the solid truth.  The echoes, whereby what is done in part of the kingdom, is heard all over.  They are like the mushrooms, sprung up in a night, and dead in a day; and such is the greediness of men’s natures (in these Athenian days) of new, that they will rather feign than want it.

So the tide ran on.  In 1647 there was “The Character of an Agitator,” and also John Cleveland’s Character of a London Diurnal.

JOHN CLEVELAND,