EARLE, John (16011-1665), bishop of Worcester and afterwards of Salisbury, was born at York about 1601. He completed his education at Oxford, first entering Christ Church, and taking his degree of B.A. in 1619. He afterwards passed to Merton College, and graduated M.A. in 1624. He was appointed in 1631 proctor of the university, and the same year became chaplain to Philip, earl of Pembroke, then chancellor of the university. He was soon after presented by this nobleman to the rectory of Bishopstone, in Wiltshire, and, having been introduced to the king, Charles I., was appointed chaplain and tutor to Prince Charles. In 1642 Earle took his degree of D.D., and in the following year was elected one of the famous Assembly of Divines at Westminster. But his sympathies with the king and with the Church of England were so strong that he declined to sit. Early in 1643 he was chosen chancellor of the cathedral of Salisbury; but of this preferment he was soon after deprived. After Cromwell’s great victory at Worcester, Earle went abroad, and was named clerk of the closet and chaplain to Charles II. He spent a year at Antwerp in the house of Izaak Walton’s friend Dr Morley, who became afterwards bishop of Winchester. He next joined the duke of York (James II.) at Paris, returning to England at the Restoration. He was at once appointed dean of Westminster, and in 1661 was one of the commissioners for revising the liturgy. At the end of November 1662 he was consecrated bishop of Worcester, and was translated, ten months later, to the see of Salisbury. During the plague of London Bishop Earle attended the king and queen at Oxford, and there he died, November 17, 1665. Earle’s chief title to remembrance is his witty and humorous work entitled Microcosmography, or a Piece of the ...World discovered, in Essays and Characters, which throws light on the manners of the time. First printed in 1628, it became very popular, and ran through eight editions in the lifetime of the author. A new edition with notes and appendix, containing much interesting matter, by Philip Bliss, was published in 1811. The style is quaint and epigrammatic; and the reader is frequently reminded of Thomas Fuller by such passages as this: “A university dunneris a gentlemen follower cheaply purchased, for his own money has hyr’d him.” Several reprints of the book have been issued since the author’s death; and in 1671 a French translation by J. Dymock appeared with the title of Le vice ridicule. Earle was employed by Charles II. to make the Latin translation of the Eikon Bαsiliko, published in 1649.
“Dr Earle,” says Lord Clarendon in his Life,“ was a man of great piety and devotion, a most eloquent and powerful preacher, and of a conversation so pleasant and delightful, so very innocent, and so very facetious, that no man’s company was more desired and loved. No man was more negligent in his dress and habit and mien, no man more wary and cultivated in his behaviour and discourse. He was very dear to the Lord Falkland, with whom he spent as much time as he could make his own.”
See especially Bliss’s edition of the Hicrocosmographie, and Arber’s Keprint, London, 1868.
EΛRLOM, Richard (1742-1822), English mezzotint engraver, was born in London in 1742. His natural faculty for art appears to have been first called into exercise by admiration for the lord mayor’s state coach, just decorated by Cipriani. He tried to copy the paintings, and was sent to study under Cipriani. He displayed great skill as a draughtsman, and at the same time acquired without assistance the art of engraving in mezzotint. In 1765 he was employed by Aiderman Boydell, then one of the most liberal promoters of the fine arts, to make a series of drawings from the pictures at Houghton Hall; and these he afterwards engraved in mezzotint. His most perfect works as engraver are perhaps the fruit and flower pieces after the Dutch artists Van Os and Van Huysum. Amongst his historical and figure subjects are—Agrippina, after West · Love in Bondage, after Guido Reni; the Royal Academy, the Embassy of Hyderbeck to meet Lord Cornwallis, and a Tiger Hunt, the last three after Zoffany; and Lord Heathfield, after Sir Joshua Reynolds. Earlom also executed a series of 200 facsimiles of the drawings and sketches of Claude Lorraine, which was published in 3 vols, folio, under the title of Liber Veritatis (1777-1819). Earlom died in London, October 9, 1822.
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