Excerpt from The Miscellaneous Works in Prose and Verse of Sir Thomas Overbury, Knt: Now First Collected, Edited With Notes, and a Biographical Account of the Author Campbell, the poet, in a prefatory notice pro fixed to his Specimens, says, The compassion of the public for a man of worth, whose spirit still walked unrevenged amongst them, ' together with the contrast of his ideal W'ife with the Countess of Essex, who was his murderess, attached an interest and popularity to his poem, and made it pass through sixteen editions before the year 1653. His Cha racters, or Witty Descriptions of the Properties of Sundry Persons, ' is a work of considerable merit; but unfortunately his prose, as well as his verse, has a dryness and quaintncss that seems to oppress the natural movement of his thoughts. As a post he has few imposing attractions: his beauties must be fetched by repeated perusal. They are those of solid reflection, predominating over, but not extina guishing sensibility; and there is danger of the reader neglecting, under the coldness and ruggedness of his manner, the manly but unostentatious moral feeling that is conveyed in hismaxims, whieh are sterlingand liberal, ifwecanonlypanlonafcw obsolete ideas on female education. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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