which both were found guilty, though the Countess took all guilt upon
herself. Then followed a tenth edition in 1618, an eleventh in 1622, a
twelfth in 1627, a thirteenth in 1628, a fourteenth in 1630, a fifteenth
in 1632, a sixteenth in 1638; and then a pause, the seventeenth being in
1664, two years before the fire of London. By this time the original set
of twenty-one Characters had been considerably increased, "with
additions of New Characters and many other Witty Conceits never before
Printed;" so that Overbury's Characters, which had from the first
included a few pieces written by his friends, became a name for the most
popular miscellany of pieces of Character Writing current in the
Seventeenth Century, and shows how wit was exercised in this way by
half-a-dozen or more of the mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease. These
are the pieces thus at last made current as_




SIR THOMAS OVERBURY'S CHARACTERS;

OR,

WITTY DESCRIPTIONS OF THE PROPERTIES OF SUNDRY PERSONS.

* * * * *

A GOOD WOMAN.

A Good Woman is a comfort, like a man. She lacks of him nothing but
heat. Thence is her sweetness of disposition, which meets his stoutness
more pleasingly; so wool meets iron easier than iron, and turns