NOTES AND QUERIES.
[US. X. JULY 4, 1914.
of Characters thus heralded on a new title-
page :
An addition of other Characters, or lively
descriptions of Persons. A mere scholar. A chamber-maid.
A tinker. A precisian.
An apparator. A fantastic Inns of
An almanac-maker. court-man.
An hypocrite. A mere fellow of a
A maquerela. house.
Then comes a third title-page with these words : New Characters (drawne to the life) of severall
persons in severall qualities. London, Printed for L. L'isle 1615. These additions, thus presented as a separate flection, consist of A Worthy Commander A buttonmaker of
in the wars. Amsterdam.
A vainglorious coward A distaster of the time.
in command. A fellow of a house.
A pirate A mere pettifogger.
An ordinary fencer. An engrosser of corn.
A puny Clerk. A devilish usurer.
A footman A waterman.
A noble and retired A reverend judge.
housekeeper A virtuous widow.
An intruder into favour. 1^^^^' A fair and happy milk- A cant i n g rogue.
maid - A French cook.
An arrant horse-courser. ^ sexton. A roaring-boy. X Jesuit.
.A drunken Dutchman An excellent actor.
resident in England. A franklin. .An improvident young A purveyor of tobacco.
gallant. A rimer.
This new contribution of 42 essays thus more than doubled the former set, and brought to public inspection a wider survey -of social characteristics.
However, in the seventh edition, published in 1616, and in the eleven reprints of the book from that date to 1664, this separate collection was mixed up with the former one, And, several additional Characters having been given, no external sign of its independ- ent origin was left ; and the modern editors of ' Overbury's Characters,' E. F. Rim- bault (1856) and Prof. Morley (1891), having referred to no early impressions, made no mention of these successive instalments, though the latter, in his Introduction, stated that ' Overbury's Characters ' was but a general title for a miscellaneous collection.
Three of the Characters in the third set (namely a Tinker, an Apparator, and an Almanac -Maker) had been claimed, in the very year of their publication, by a certain J. Cocke. Of this writer I shall have more to say hereafter. No attempt, however, has previously been made to ascertain the author- ship of the rest, though a study of the style jn the fourth set affords sufficient evidence
to enable us to ascribe these 42 Characters
to no other author than the great dramatist
John Webster, whose prose work seemed
to consist solely of his prefaces, apart from
passages in his plays.
Many students (among them Mr. Charles Crawford in ' N. & Q.') have illustrated the fact that John Webster repeatedly borrowed phrases, lines, and sentences, not only from contemporary books (Sidney's ' Arcadia ' and Florio's ' Montaigne '), but from his own works. Thus fragments of ' The White Devil ' and ' A Monumental Column ' were used again in ' The Duchess of Malfi,' ' The Devil's Law Case,' ' Appius and Virginia,' and ' A Cure for a Cuckold.' Of course, if only a few quotations from ' The White Devil ' and the ' Column ' (both published before 1615) occurred in the ' Characters,' we could hardly surmise that Webster was responsible for this prose work. The number of parallel passages, however, has proved so considerable as to convince me that nobody but John Webster could have written this ; for not only are several passages from his two printed works found in it, but numerous phrases were obviously borrowed from ' The Duchess of Malfi,' which (though it never appeared in print till 1623) must have been acted before December, 1614 :* and from these ' Cha- racters,' again, Webster took many a phrase when writing ' The Devil's Law Case ' at a later date.j
The very motto affixed to the title-page in this sixth edition (never after repro- duced) was especially familiar to Webster, the quotation from Martial, Non norunt hose monumenta mori, occurring in the pre- face to ' The White Devil ' (1612) as well as in the title of ' Monuments of Honour' (1624).
I append parallels, placing those from the ' Characters ' of 1615 second in each case :
White Devil (1612).
Vittoria. Your strict combined heads, Which strike against this mine of diamonds, Shall prove but glassen hammers. III. ii.
.... meetes him as if Glasse should encounter adamant. ' A Worthy Commander."
- The actor William Ostler, who, according to
the Dramatis Personcc, was the original Antonio, died in December, 1614, as the documents printed by Prof. C. W. Wallace in The Times (2 and 4 Oct., 1909) show.
t Prof. C. E. Gough, in his dissertation on Over- bury's 'Characters,' Norwich, 1909, pointed out six parallel passages from ' The Duchess of Malfi ' ; however, he failed to recognize Webster's author- ship. Let him find here an acknowledgment of the courteous assistance he has given me in my work.
