• 1 “The celebration last year of the Tercentenary of Dr. Bright’s work on Characterie, the first Engli (...)

1In his 1888 presentation of a limited reprint of Timothy Bright’s Characterie, originally published in 1588, James Herbert Ford celebrated the book as “the first English Shorthand”.1 Nineteenth-century scholars were interested in exploring what they considered as the origins of stenography, but in reality the art of “characterie” did not solely aim to transcribe oral content into short and intelligible signs. Its purpose was also to establish a “secrete” alphabet which could only be understood by those in the know:

• 3 “On a voulu voir au XVIIème siècle une ‘rupture épistémologique’ entre un édifice d’analogies empil (...)

3In an article on the signification of hieroglyphics, Marc Fumaroli has shown that in the seventeenth-century the myth of an actual correspondence between word and object had long been lost.3 In fact any type of writing – and not only short-writing as practised and theorized by Bright – was perceived as somehow “secrete”. Readers had to learn how to unravel the obscure meaning of words, the signification of which was all but natural and intuitive. John Bullokar was one among many to write and publish a dictionary aimed at explaining the meaning of difficult words by analyzing them and putting them into context. Bullokar’s concern was that he might be accused of leveling down superior sciences by revealing their hidden significations, or as we would put it today of being excessively eager to democratize higher culture:

• 5 John Bullokar, op. cit. , [sig. D4v].
• 6 Ibid.

4It is a paradox that authors should use rare and uncommon words if their aim is indeed to be read and understood by all. But words can never be entirely redeemed from their obscurity since the characters they are made of are irrevocably arbitrary and uncanny. Such strangeness did not feature in Bullokar’s definition of a “character”: “The forme of a letter. A marke, signe, or stamp made in any thing.”5 In his definition of the art of “characterie” however, “characters” and “strange markes” could be used indifferently: “Characterie. A writing by characters or by strange markes.”6

• 7 “Le paratexte est donc pour nous ce par quoi un texte se fait livre et se propose comme tel à ses l (...)

8English literary “characters” appeared in very different forms and contexts. They had served an exemplary function in the Greek art of rhetoric and were sometimes still used as illustrations in the seventeenth century: “characters” would feature in the development of larger texts such as sermons for instance. Most seventeenth-century characters however were gathered in collections under the title of “character-books”. A few were published in conjunction with essays and various short forms and some hit the streets under the independent form of pamphlets.

• 8 “Si l’on ôte de beaucoup d’ouvrages de morale l’avertissement au lecteur, l’épître dédicatoire, la (...)

9I will first focus on “character-books” and on the way their authors, compilers and publishers introduced them to the public, in order to analyze how the genre of characters defined itself. The fact that the “paratext” constituted such an important part of those books is already a definition in itself, since it shows that the genre was from the start self-reflexive. As we shall see, the paradox pointed out by La Bruyère of a book entirely taken up by introductions, prefaces and authorial comments became increasingly applicable to character-books during the seventeenth-century.8

• 10 Wye Saltonstall, Picturae Loquentes, or Pictures drawn forth in Characters, with a Poeme of a Maid, (...)

11The moral dimension of Hall’s text did not survive in the way his pictorial and visual definition of the art of characters did. No other author after him chose to divide his characters into two distinct “books”, one for virtues and the other for vices. But in 1631 Wye Saltonstall’s Picturae Loquentes, or Pictures drawn forth in Characters strongly echoed Hall’s “true lineaments”, “speaking pictures, or living images”: “However, if you finde hereafter that these Pictures are not shadowed forth with those lively and exact Lineaments, which are required in a Character, yet I hope you will pardon the Painter.”10

• 13 “Thy ignorance may challenge libertie enough, not to relish the deepe Arte of Poetry [...]. For whe (...)

14The role of printing in the creation of literary characters had already been stressed in the 1614 edition of Thomas Overbury’s book of characters. In his address to the reader, the printer denounced the former’s potential lack of taste and excessive churlishness.13 He added, however, that the reader who would fail to commend Overbury’s work would be “degraded for his insufficiency” since the Romans themselves would have made the most of their technical devices to ensure the preservation of such a valuable text:

• 16 “Pour la rhétorique, la brièveté ne s’est jamais définie par la seule dimension de l’énoncé. Si, à (...)

18As shown by this passage, the typographical etymology of the “character” retained its appeal throughout the history of the genre of English character-books, which was to decline towards the end of the seventeenth-century. The idea that character-writing was affiliated with “those other Characters” of stenography (here referred to as “Brachigraphy”) allowed authors to define the form of the literary character as both brief and clear.16 In his own “Character of a Character”, Flecknoe thus defined the art of character-writing as an art of concision:

• 18 Thomas Dekker, English villanies eight severall times prest to death by the printers, but (still re (...)
• 19 William Fennor, A True Description of the Lawes, Justice and Equity of a Compter, the manner of sit (...)

21The result of those imagined acts of writing could be presented by the author as the entirety of the text published. As we shall see, Thomas Dekker’s eponymous character of the bellman of London was thus introduced as the author of Dekker’s whole book.18 Dekker used the bellman as a mask or persona. The character’s act of writing could alternatively result in a distinct textual passage which was typographically inserted within the body of the text as “real”. In William Fennor’s “description of a compter”, the narration was now and then briefly interrupted by the insertion of texts which were displayed as the result of the imagination and writing skills of one of the prisoners.19 These “texts within the text” were given as pieces of evidence and were meant to create a striking effect of reality.

• 20 See George Mynshul, Essayes and Characters of a Prison and Prisoners, London, [George Eld], 1618.
• 21 See for instance John Taylor, The Praise and Vertue of a Jayle, and jaylers. With the most excellen (...)

22In 1629, William Fennor published A True Description of the Lawes, Justice and Equity of a Compter, the manner of sitting in counsell of the twelve eldest prisoners. With a character of a jayle and jaylor. As in George Mynshul’s Essayes and Characters of a Prison and Prisoners, published in 1618, Fennor’s narration was presented as the result of his own experience of incarceration.20 This determined both the tone of the text, which tended to be descriptive rather than metaphorical or allegorical, and the position adopted: the aim was to criticize the disadvantages of the penitentiary system rather than to praise it as other authors did.21

• 22 This is the idea conveyed in the last sentence of the prisoner’s “character of a prison”: “It is a (...)
• 23 William Fennor, op. cit. , p. 9. “angel”: “an old English gold coin, called more fully at first the (...)

23Fennor illustrated the awful plight of prisoners by focusing on the misadventures of one of them. Shortly after having been put in the jail, the prisoner had spent all of his humble savings because of the corruption of the place, where he was asked to pay for everything he needed.22 In order to stimulate the sympathy of readers, Fennor gave them access to the prisoner’s inner state of mind by directly transcribing his thoughts. As it happened, the character’s way of dealing with his difficult situation was by starting to write a “character”: “I walkt up to my lodging againe, and there by chance espied a standish and a sheet of undefiled paper, which being fit for my purpose, I made bolde with, and in the middest of melancholy, writ this character of a prison.”23

• 24 “standish”: “a stand containing ink, pens and other writing materials and accessories / 1590 T. Lod (...)

24The character’s act of writing was here fully contextualized by the author. It had taken place in the secluded space of the prisoner’s “lodging”, where he had withdrawn after having left the common space of all humiliations. It was triggered by the accidental presence of all the necessary writing implements - the ink and pen and the blank sheet of paper – although the coincidence was slightly too miraculous in order to maintain the reader’s full suspension of disbelief.24 The act of writing was finally presented as emerging from a particular psychological state or humour, namely “melancholy”.

• 26 The ESTC records the following editions: 1608; 1609; 1612; 1616; 1620; 1632; 1638; 1640 and 1648. T (...)

27In 1648, Thomas Dekker published his English villanies, a ninth edition of the work previously entitled The Bell-man of London.26 As its title indicated, the book was a caveat or advisory to gentlemen, citizens and countrymen on how to by-pass the numerous and infinitely varied dangers of the city, a warning which was supposedly delivered by the “bell-man of London”. In the 1648 edition this guide had been made more complete thanks to the help of a new town-crier, as was shown in the title: English villanies […] discovered by Lanthorne and candle-light, and the helpe of a new cryer, called O-Per-Se-O: whose lowd voyce proclaimes to all that will heare him, another conspiracie of abuses lately plotting together, to hurt the peace of this kingdome, which the bell-man (because he then went stumbling i’th’ darke) could never see till now […].

• 28 Ibid.

29By presenting the Bell-Man as the fictional author of his own book, Dekker distanced himself from his work and imagined the hypothetical conditions in which it could have been written. In this hypothesis, the Bell-man had been helped by characters from a totally different social background than his: “[…] when it was once fam’d, what an excellent worke he [the Bell-man] was in hand with, a curious number of Noble-Gentlemen joy’nd their Councels to the Bell-mans undertakings.”28 Dekker probably used the intervention of these fictional gentlemen in order to justify the refined nature of his work, assuming that readers would never believe that a simple bell-man could master such an elevated style as his:

• 30 Thomas Flatman, Naps upon Parnassus: A sleepy muse nipt and pincht, though not awakened such volunt (...)

31In 1658 Thomas Flatman published his Naps upon Parnassus […]; together with two satyrical characters of his own. The bulk of the book was made up of a series of twenty-three complimentary poems from several university scholars (referred to in the title as such voluntary and jovial copies of verses, as were lately receiv’d from some of the wits of the universities) hyperbolically praising the author and his work. All of those poems focused on Flatman’s “obscurity”, which was paradoxically celebrated as an exceptional form of literary achievement and poetic refinement. Most of the authors of this highly oxymoronic praise looked upon “plain” and “obscure” style as base and elevated forms of writing respectively: “Plainness is Rustick, Thou art clear from that, / Who sayes a Poets Plain, sayes he is Flat.”30

• 33 Richard Brathwaite, Whimsies; or, a New Cast of Characters, London, F[elix] K[ingston], 1631, “The (...)

35Strong lines have been in request, but they grow disrelishing, because they smelled too much of the Lampe and opinionate singularitie. Clinchings likewise were held nimble flashes; but affectation spoyl’d all, and discovered their levitie. Characterisme holds good concurrence, and runnes with the smoothest current in this age; so it bee not wrapp’d up in too much ambiguitie. Hee writes best, that affects least; and effects most. For such as labor too intentively to please none but themselves, they for most part make it their labour to please none but themselves.33

• 34 “I have read of many Essaies, and a kinde of Charactering of them, by such, as when I lookt into th (...)
• 35 Ibid., [sig. A6].

37Nicholas Breton’s Characters upon Essaies Morall, published in 1615, were dedicated to Francis Bacon who according to Breton mastered better than any other author the art of “charactering” essays.34 In his address to the reader, Breton expressed the idea that the understanding of his art was reserved to the happy few, in terms very similar to those used more than forty years later by Flatman’s university wits: “Read what you list, and understand what you can: Characters are not every mans construction, though they be writ in our mother tongue: and what I have written, being of no other nature, if they please not your humor, they may please a better.”35

• 37 Ibid., [sig. B8v].

40Breton’s lengthy enumeration of the courtier’s various occupations pictured him as a vain busy-body rather than as a superior servant of the “Spirits honour”. The peasant was accordingly presented as unimpressed by this spectacular display of intellectual riches: “Doe you thinke so much of your strength as to remove a Mil-stone with your little finger; or are you so perswaded of your wit, that with a word of your mouth you can take away the strength of understanding?”37

• 38 “To tell truth, few words and plaine, and to the purpose, is better for our understanding, then to (...)

41The peasant pitched the courtier’s elegant but superfluous literary activities against his own “plain language” and common sense.38 As for the art of character-writing, he assigned it to the realm of dark sciences and devilish studies. Those who practised it were impostors who pretended to unveil the hidden significations of nature and were thus guilty of the sin of hubris:

• 40 Ibid., sig. D.

42Stylistic obscurity was rejected as the sign of dark and devilish purposes, and the art of character-writing as at odds with the peasant’s “honest” approach to the “word of God”. Unlike traditional caveats which helped readers to find their way through the dangerous streets of the city, such intellectual mazes could only be misleading: “I hold it a fine quality to discipher a Character, and lay open a knave: But for us in the country, wee love no such braine-labours as may bring our wits into such a wood, that we know not how to get out of it.”40

• 41 Ibid., [sig. B8v].

43The peasant was however surprisingly well-read for someone who claimed to be merely concerned with “plaine matters”: “I will say as one Dante, an Italian Poet, once said in an obscure Booke of his, Understand me that can, I understand myselfe: And though my Countrey booke be written in a rough hand, yet I can read it and picke such matter out of it as shall serve the turne for my instruction.”41 Breton’s characters of the “courtier” and “countryman” were not the actual illustration of a debate between the city and the country. They were rather the metaphorical illustration of an internal debate which took place in the genre of characters itself, between “plain” and “obscure” style. The author’s voice could be heard in both characters.

• 42 On the subject of early modern English pamphlets, see Claire Gheeraert-Graffeuille, “Satire et diff (...)

44The genre of characters featured two types of fictional “writers”: writers of “characters” and writers of other literary genres. By representing writers of “characters”, authors defined their own work through a process of self-reflection. Other characters of writers however were mostly satirical: authors defined themselves in opposition to them. Interestingly, the internal tension between “plain” and “obscure” style was exteriorized in the satire of literary genres which authors of characters represented as stylistically base. The genre of characters was thus implicitly defined as “elevated” in opposition to cheaper forms of print such as ballads, pamphlets, libels, diurnals, almanacs, prognostications and other kinds of “vulgar” broadsides.42

• 44 Two Essays of Love, op. cit. , p. 91. “the Brethren”: “in N.T. the members of the early Christian c (...)

46The ballad-maker was satirized both for his lack of literary and musical skills and for the baseness of the themes he dealt with. The author denounced the immorality of his trade, which thrived on vain superstitions, imprisonment of criminals and death; the image of the stocks and pillory emphasized the criminality of ballad-making and suggested that the ballad-maker’s taste for lucrative spectacles could only be redeemed by his spectacular punishment. The author furthermore denounced the politically subversive nature of ballads and the illegality of their independent connections: “The Brethren keep constant correspondancy with him, that he may compose their Libels into Metre; and being whipt or Pillory’d for it, he rejoyceth, saying that he suffers for the Truth.”44

• 46 Two Essays of Love and Marriage, op. cit. , p. 91.
• 47 Ibid., p. 92.

48The ballads satirized in the anonymous character of a “Ballad-maker” were probably “black-letter” ballads. The author insisted on the various subjects broached by the ballad-maker and showed that his concerns were not exclusively political: “He is in pay by the country wenches, to write Love Stories to lamentable tunes, which they sing to the Cows, and make them weep milk, tears to hear them.”46 He also alluded to the woodcuts which usually served as illustrations to “black-letter” ballads: “He like the Emblematists, is beholden to an Engraver; but only his wood carver hath certain common places; a man and a woman serve like Panpharmacons, for all occasions.”47 The author compared the ballad-maker’s work to that of the “emblematists”, however, only to demonstrate the former’s artistic inferiority: his illustrations relied on recurring “common places” which lacked visual originality and thematic inventiveness.

• 48 Joad Raymond has analyzed the early modern development of pamphlets in the context of contemporary (...)
• 49 John Earle’s Micro-cosmographie, or, a peece of the world discovered: in essayes and characters was (...)

49The appearance of characters satirizing ballad-makers and other authors of pamphlets and broadsides followed the historical development of cheaper forms of writing during periods of political turmoil and in particular during the Civil War.48 Characters of this type existed before the outbreak of the War, but the polemics that attended the conflict seem to have hastened their further development and the evolution of their format. Interestingly, John Earle’s character of a “Pot-poet” was published before the War in Earle’s “book of characters” and republished afterwards as a pamphlet.49

• 50 See for instance Thomas Heywood, Philocothonista, or the Drunkard, Opened, Dissected and Anatomized (...)

50In his character of the “Pot-poet”, Earle relied on contemporary satires of heavy drinking to strengthen his case against cheap forms of writing. He seems to have coined the expression “pot-poet” on the model of contemporary expressions referring to a drinking companion or drunkard: “pot-companion”, “pot-ally” or “potknight”. “Pot-wit” was also used to describe a person who was witty while drinking, or who became witty when inebriated (see OED, s.v. “pot”). Caricatural descriptions of drunkards were commonplace in character-books and other forms of literature: they were a vivid source of comic and an excellent illustration of characters determined by a “humour” which affected their body in excess.50 In his character of a “Tavern”, Earle did not harshly condemn the practice of drinking on moral grounds but rather satirized it as the sign of an ineluctable “nature”: drinkers just could not help it.

• 51 John Earle Micro-cosmographie, or, a peece of the world discovered: in essayes and characters, Lond (...)

51By drawing a parallel between beer-drinking and ballad-writing, the author presented the latter process as an ineluctable flow which authors could not contain: “[He] is the dreggs of wit […] His Verses run like the Tap, and his invention as the Barrell, ebs and flowes at the mercy of the spiggot. In thin drinke hee aspires not aboue a Ballad, but a cup of Sacke inflames him, and sets his Muse and Nose a fire together.”51 The condemnation of cheap literary forms was somewhat alleviated by the description of their authors as comic figures who could not give up their caricatural habits. But the image of the “dreggs” underlined the baseness of resulting poetic productions, whose quality could be only slightly improved through the absorption of stronger drinks:

• 54 “I have (for once) adventurd to play the Mid-wifes part, helping to bring forth these Infants into (...)

55Earle’s character of a “Pot-poet” was ironically republished in 1642 under the independent form of a pamphlet. This reinforced the initial irony of the publication of “characters” which the author supposedly did not intend to publish. In the address “To the Reader Gentile or Gentle” of his 1628 edition, Earle claimed that he had written his characters “for his private recreation” and had only published them in manuscript form until their increased circulation had put him at risk of seeing his own work sent to the press without his assent.54 The publication of his character of the “Pot-poet” in the very visible format of a pamphlet however suggests that Earle had all the way wanted his work to enter the public realm through print.

• 55 Anon., A Character of the New Oxford Libeller, In answer to his Character of A London diurnall, Lon (...)

56In 1644, John Cleveland published The Character of a London-Diurnall, a pamphlet which satirized pamphlet-makers and more specifically writers of diurnals. This was followed by a series of anonymous answers which vindicated the character of the diurnal-maker lampooned by John Cleveland. One of them was entitled A Character of the New Oxford Libeller, In answer to his Character of A London diurnall. This pamphlet pointed out the irony of an author’s satirizing a form which he himself practised, labeling John Cleveland “the New Oxford libeller”.55

• 56 “diurnal”: 2. “A book for daily use, a day-book, diary; esp. a record of daily occurrences, a journ (...)

57In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the noun “diurnall” could refer either to a daily diary or (as was the case here) to a newspaper published daily or at short periodical intervals.56 The way in which Cleveland defined it could justly have earned him the praises for “obscurity” which Flatman received from Oxford a few years later:

• 58 A Character of the New Oxford Libeller, op. cit. , p. 5. This was a direct answer to Cleveland’s co (...)

59The polemical exchange prompted by the publication of Cleveland’s pamphlet illustrated the opposition between “low” and “elevated” forms of literary productions. Whereas Cleveland condemned diurnal-writers as unrefined, the anonymous authors’ strategy amounted to identifying their divergence with Cleveland as one between the city of London and Oxford, the old university where wit could be purchased with land: “And so farewell, Canis ad Nilum, with your snatches, and your ink that cures Ringworms; would it would cure the pox, that you might pleasure your friends, and redeem your land with your wit, as you purchased your wit with your land.”58

• 59 For a definition of this form of conservatism, see Andrew Sharp, Political Ideas of the English Civ (...)

60The opposition between “base” London and “refined” Oxford was of course caricatural. Cleveland and those who answered him shared a common language and their writings were all equally witty, obscure and to some extent “elevated”. But Cleveland’s satire could however be metaphorically read as a conservative opposition to the passing of time which diurnals recorded.59 His enemies stood politically for those forces of change which he strongly opposed. Cleveland thus ranted at Cromwell, whom he thought diurnal-writers only too blindly praised:

• 61 “The Countesse of Zealand was brought to bed of an Almanach; as many children, as daies in the year (...)
• 62 Ibid., p. 2.

62Cleveland’s judgment on the diurnal format was in fact entirely political. He rejected parliamentarian newsbooks such as Mercurius Civicus or Marchmont Nedham’s Mercurius Britannicus as worthless publications.61 Royalist newsbooks such as Mercurius Aulicus however did not fall prey to such criticism: “It [the diurnal] differs from an Aulicus, as the Devill and his Exorcist; or as black witch doth from a white one, whose office is to unravell her inchantements.”62 The royalist newsbook was no less a “diurnal” than Mercurius Britannicus and other similar “mercuries”. Cleveland’s satire of certain formats was in reality an undisguised attack on their political content.

• 63 Ibid., p. 8.
• 64 The image of “impostumated Fancies” conveys the idea of a diseased imagination swollen by pride. “i (...)

63This was shown again in the last lines of his “character”: “The Victories of the Rebels are like the Magicall combate of Apuleius; who, thinking he had slain three of his ennemies, found them at last, but a Triumvirate of Bladders. Such, and so empty, are the Triumphs of a Diurnall: but so many impostumated Fancies, so many bladders of their own blowing.”63 The only “diurnals” at stake here were those issued by rebellious authors. Such publications formed an abscess of delirious ideas which required the intervention of efficient surgery in order to save the body of the state from lethal contamination.64

• 66 Ibid., p. 5.
• 67 Ibid., p. 5. “snatch”: 8. “A short passage, a few words, of a song, etc.; a small portion, a few ba (...)

65Cleveland’s style was described as resembling the trifling “diddle-diddle” sound of a fiddle: “I will make bold to borrow one of your diddles to lap a token of my love to him [Mercurius Aulicus] in.”66 His writing was further referred to as a series of “snatches”, a word which suggested both the diminutive nature of his satire and its equivocal content: “And so farewell, Canis ad Nilum, with your snatches, and your ink that cures Ringworms.”67

• 68 The noun “squib” here refers to “A smart gird or hit; a sharp scoff or sarcasm; a short composition (...)

66Cleveland’s case was reiterated in an anonymous pamphlet published in 1647, A fresh whip for all scandalous Lyers, or, a True description of the two eminent Pamphliteers, or Squibtellers of this Kingdome. With a Plaine and true Relation of their Tricks and Devices wherewith they use to couzen and cheate the Commonwealth. Once again, the author borrowed the weapons of the enemy by issuing his satire against “squibtellers” in the form of a pamphlet.68

• 69 Anon., A fresh whip for all scandalous Lyers, or, a True description of the two eminent Pamphliteer (...)
• 70 “Now I must doe as many false Prognosticators mistake, or skip three dayes in the change of the moo (...)
• 71 A fresh whip, op. cit. , p. 6.

67Ironically, the chronological narrative method of the “diurnall-writer” required that the anonymous author should start by the description of his very character: “I must beginne with the Diurnall-Writer first, as indeed order it selfe doth enjoyne me, by the constant course of the dayes in the week; and whose large volumne is issued out every Munday morning.”69 The author then followed the example of “false Prognosticators” in moving on directly to the description of the character of the “perfect Occurrence writer” whose newsbook came out on Fridays.70 He eventually had to put an abrupt end to his satire of pamphleteers in order to remain within the compass of a single broadsheet: “I could inlarge my selfe a great deale more, but I would keepe within the compasse of my sheete.”71 The underlying irony of a satire which used the very forms and methods it satirized was thus recurrently hinted at by the author himself.

• 75 “pasquin”: “The person popularly supposed to be represented by a statue in Rome on which satirical (...)

71These few examples demonstrate that the polemical atmosphere of the Civil War played a key role in the development of “characters” satirizing writers of cheap forms of literature. But such satirical pamphlets survived the War and were revived in later and very different historical contexts. For example, 1681 saw the publication of The Character of Wit’s Squint-Ey’d Maid. Pasquil Makers. The etymology of the word “pasquill” or “pasquin” referred to an imaginary person to whom anonymous lampoons were ascribed and subsequently to a composer of lampoons.75 The choice of a Latin word which alluded to the classical practice of satirical verses was particularly appropriate considering that the “character” itself was composed in verses: here again the anonymous author’s work was an ironical reflection of the literary productions he satirized. The overall tone of this character was nostalgic rather than polemical. The author lamented the bygone golden days of noble folios which had been supplanted by flying broadsheets and other such “spurious” productions:

• 77 Ibid.
• 78 “This World is full of a preposterous chat, / Our English writers all are Transmigrate. / In Pamphl (...)

72The only things kept from the past were those which had never been of any literary value, such as popular ballads for instance - and even then the “ancient” was deprecated as writers attempted to give out-of-date themes a fake aspect of novelty: “This is the method of the moddish times, / Renews old songs, Revives old rotten Rimes.”77 The present was but a degraded and vulgar imitation of the glorious past, which it could only lifelessly repeat without ever reviving it; new writers’ “spurious” productions were nothing but monstrous accumulations of scraps stolen from various authors.78 These “preposterous” hoaxers would however eventually receive their due and this “canke’rd age” would thus be delivered from one of its main pests:

• 80 The word “snatch” is used in the literal sense of “A hasp, catch, or fastening.”; “A trap, snare, e (...)

73The author’s play on words and images conveyed the idea that criminal writers would in the end be entangled in their own “snatches” (“Jack Ketch in end pleads for a snatch of those”) and that the noose of the hanging rope would at last open their blind men’s eyes (“Puts Hempen Spectacles upon their Nose.”)80

• 81 Roger Chartier, Culture écrite et société, L’ordre des livres (XIVème-XVIIIème siècle), Paris, Edit (...)

75We have shown that character-writing was a highly self-reflexive genre, which defined itself by representing the act of writing both in its paratext and within the text itself. As we have seen, however, the genre defined itself best in opposition to other genres which it satirized as literarily and socially inferior. Roger Chartier has argued that “popular” culture is a scholarly category and that the point of view adopted in defining and describing it was always that of scholars.81 By satirizing “base” pamphleteers, Oxford wits thus intended to demonstrate the superiority of higher forms of literature.

• 82 “Les stratégies éditoriales engendrent donc, de manière non sue, non point un élargissement progres (...)

76According to Chartier, the idea of an opposition between scholarly and “popular” culture was further reflected in the increasing separation between different types of published matter. Books which were nobly bound and carefully preserved contrasted with ephemeral and roughly-made forms.82 The fact that Oxford wits published their satirical characters as pamphlets shows that “popular” print was sometimes a scholarly product. Ironically, satirical characters of writers were thus as self-reflexive as laudatory ones: by lampooning the practice of libels in their pamphlets, authors of characters unwittingly satirized themselves.