Page:An English Garner Ingatherings from Our History and Literature (Volume 1 1877).pdf/661

 BISHOP JOHN EARLE.

Character of a Child

[Microcosmography &C.]

A child is a man in a small letter; yet the best copy of ADAM before he tasted of EVE, or the apple: and he is happy, whose small practice in the world can only write this character.

He is Nature's fresh picture, newly drawn in oil; which time and much handling dims and defaces. His soul is yet a white paper unscribbled with observations of the world; wherewith, at length, it becomes a blurred note book.

He is purely happy; because he knows no evil, nor hath made means by sin to be acquainted with misery. He arrives not at the mischief of being wise; nor endures evils to come, by foreseeing them.

He kisses and loves all; and when the smart of the rod is past, smiles on his beater. Nature and his parents alike dandle him; and entice him on with a bait of sugar to a draught of wormwood. He plays yet, like a young prentice the first day, and is not come to his task of melancholy. His hardest labour is his tongue; as if he were loth to use so deceitful an organ; and he is best company with it, when he can but prattle.

We laugh at his foolish sports, but his game is our earnest: and his drums, rattles and hobby-horses but the emblems and mocking of man's business.

His father hath written him as his own little story; wherein he reads those days of his life which he cannot remember, and sighs to see what innocence he has outlived.

The older he grows, he is a stair lower from GOD; and like his first father much worse in his breeches.

He is the Christian's example, and the old man's relapse. The one imitates his pureness, the other falls into his simplicity. Could he put off his body with his little coat, he had got eternity without a burden; and exchanged but one heaven for another.