“Good Lord, what a world is this!  How may,” quoth he, “a man believe or trust in the same?  See you not,” quoth he, “this old knave told me that he had but seven shillings, and here is more by an angel!  What an old knave and a false knave have we here!” quoth this Ruffler.  “Our Lord have mercy on us, will this world never be better?” and therewith went their way and left the old man in the wood, doing him no more harm.

But sorrowfully sighing this old man, returning home, declared his misadventure with all the words and circumstances above showed.  Whereat for the time was great laughing, and this poor man, for his losses, among his loving neighbours well considered in the end.

Such character-painting simply came of the keen interest in life that was at the same time developing an energetic drama.  But at the end of Elizabeth’s reign a writing of brief witty characters appears to have come into fashion as one of the many forms of ingenuity that pleased society, and might be distantly related to the Euphuism of the day.

Ben Jonson’s “Cynthia’s Revels,” first acted in 1600, two or three years before the end of Elizabeth’s reign, has little character sketches set into the text.  Here are two of them_:—­

A TRAVELLER.

One so made out of the mixture of shreds and forms that himself is truly deformed.  He walks most commonly with a clove or pick-tooth in his mouth, he is the very mint of compliment, all his behaviours are printed, his face is another volume of essays, and his beard is an Aristarchus.  He speaks all cream skimmed, and more affected than a dozen waiting-women.  He is his own promoter in every place.  The wife of the ordinary gives him his diet to maintain her table in discourse; which, indeed, is a mere tyranny over her other guests, for he will usurp all the talk; ten constables are not so tedious.  He is no great shifter; once a year his apparel is ready to revolt.  He doth use much to arbitrate quarrels, and fights himself, exceeding well, out at a window.  He will lie cheaper than any beggar, and louder than most clocks; for which he is right properly accommodated to the whetstone, his page.  The other gallant is his zany, and doth most of these tricks after him; sweats to imitate him in everything to a hair, except a beard, which is not yet extant.  He doth learn to make strange sauces, to eat anchovies, maccaroni, bovoli, fagioli, and caviare, because he loves them; speaks as he speaks, looks, walks, goes so in clothes and fashion:  is in all as if he were moulded of him.  Marry, before they met, he had other very pretty sufficiencies, which yet he retains some light impression of; as frequenting a dancing-school, and grievously torturing strangers with inquisition after his grace in his galliard.  He buys a fresh acquaintance at any rate.  His eyes and his raiment confer much together as he goes in the street.  He treads nicely, like the fellow that walks upon ropes, especially the first Sunday of his silk stockings; and when he is most neat and new, you shall strip him with commendations.