of the seas;
Yet (strange to think) his wain was his increase.
His letters are delivered all and gone,
Only remains the superscription.

_How very sure we should all be that Milton did not write these pieces,
if he had not given them a place among his published works! Returning to
the crowd of Character-writers we find in 1631, the year of Milton's
writing upon Hobson,_

WYE SALTONSTALL,

_author of "Pictures Loquentes, or Pictures drawn forth in Characters.
With a Poeme of a Maid" The poem of a Maid was, of course, suggested by
the fact that Sir Thomas Overbury's Characters had joined to them the
poem of a Wife. There was a second edition in 1635. Saltonstall's
Characters were the World, an Old Man, a Woman, a Widow, a True Lover, a
Country Bride, a Ploughman, a Melancholy Man, a Young Heir, a Scholar in
the University, a Lawyers Clerk, a Townsman in Oxford, an Usurer, a
Wandering Rogue, a Waterman, a Shepherd, a Jealous Man, a Chamberlain, a
Maid, a Bailey, a Country Fair, a Country Ale-house, a Horse Race, a
Farmer's Daughter, a Keeper, a Gentleman's House in the Country; to
which he added in the second edition, a Fine Dame, a Country Dame, a
Gardener, a Captain, a Poor Village, a Merry Man, a Scrivener, the Term,
a Mower, a Happy Man, an Arrant Knave, and an Old Waiting Gentlewoman.
This is one of his Characters as quoted by Philip Bliss in the Appendix
to his edition of Earle_--

THE TERM

Is a time when Justice keeps open court for all comers, while her sister
Equity strives to mitigate the rigour of her positive sentence. It is
called the term, because it does end and terminate business, or else
because it is the _Terminus ad quem_, that is, the end of the
countryman's journey, who comes up to the term, and with his hobnail
shoes grinds the faces of the poor stones, and so returns again. It is
the soul of the year, and makes it quick, which before was dead.
Innkeepers gape for it as earnestly as shell-fish do for salt water
after a low ebb. It sends forth new books into the world, and
replenishes Paul's Walk with fresh company, where _Quid novi_? is their
first salutation, and the weekly news their chief discourse. The taverns
are painted against the term, and many a cause is argued there and tried
at that bar, where you are adjudged to pay the costs and charges, and so
dismissed with "welcome, gentlemen." Now the city puts her best side
outward, and a new play at the Blackfriars is atten