Study Edition · Essay 9
A Good Old Man
Source: Microcosmographie (1628), in Henry Morley (ed.), Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century (1891). Text from Project Gutenberg #10699. Archaic verb forms modernized; vocabulary kept and glossed.
A warm, admiring portrait, and a deliberate contrast to Earle's antiquary: here is an “antique” truly worth loving. The good old man has learned from life, does not fear death, gives advice without lecturing, and makes the young people around him wiser rather than making himself younger. Like many characters, it starts without a subject: read the title as the opening words.
15 sentences: 0 simple, 8 moderate, 7 complex. Hover a number for its paraphrase; click it for the full note.
Key Vocabulary
- antiquityan old thing; great age
- vanityemptiness, worthlessness; also pride
- hazardto risk; to expose to danger
- fortifiedprotected; made strong against attack
- recoilto spring or fall back
- reverentdeserving reverence; venerable
- out of countenanceashamed; abashed
- indecoruma breach of good manners or propriety
- viciousfull of vice; wicked (not “violent”)
- reproofa scolding; criticism
- counseladvice
- oftoften
- gravityseriousness; dignity
- testyirritable; easily annoyed
- conjectureto guess; to form an idea from evidence
- relicsomething that survives from the past
- dearnessaffection; closeness
- whensoeverwhenever
The Essay
Is the best antiquity, and which we may with least vanity admire.1 One whom time has been thus long working, and like winter fruit, ripened when others are shaken down.2 He has taken out as many lessons of the world as days, and learnt the best thing in it; the vanity of it.3 He looks over his former life as a danger well past, and would not hazard himself to begin again.4 His lust was long broken before his body, yet he is glad this temptation is broken too, and that he is fortified from it by this weakness.5 The next door of death does not sadden him, but he expects it calmly as his turn in nature; and fears more his recoiling back to childishness than dust.6 All men look on him as a common father, and on old age, for his sake, as a reverent thing.7 His very presence and face puts vice out of countenance, and makes it an indecorum in a vicious man.8 He practises his experience on youth without the harshness of reproof, and in his counsel is good company.9 He has some old stories still of his own seeing to confirm what he says, and makes them better in the telling; yet is not troublesome neither with the same tale again, but remembers with them how oft he has told them.10 His old sayings and morals seem proper to his beard; and the poetry of Cato does well out of his mouth, and he speaks it as if he were the author.11 He is not apt to put the boy on a younger man, nor the fool on a boy, but can distinguish gravity from a sour look; and the less testy he is, the more regarded.12 You must pardon him if he likes his own times better than these, because those things are follies to him now that were wisdom then; yet he makes us of that opinion too when we see him, and conjecture those times by so good a relic.13 He is a man capable of a dearness with the youngest men, yet he is not youthfuller for them, but they older for him; and no man credits more his acquaintance.14 He goes away at last too soon whensoever, with all men's sorrow but his own; and his memory is fresh, when it is twice as old.15
Sentence Notes
In plain English: A good old man is the best antique there is, and the one we can admire with the least foolishness.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A gentle twist: the most valuable antique is a person.
Reference & context: Earle is answering his own character of the antiquary (No. 8 in this series): instead of worshipping rusty objects, admire a well-lived old age.
In plain English: He is someone time has been shaping for a long while; like a winter apple, he has ripened slowly after other fruit has already fallen from the tree.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A beautiful image for aging well: some people are not finished until late in life.
Reference & context: Gardening: winter fruit (late apples and pears) ripens slowly, keeps longest, and is often the sweetest.
Modernized: hath been → has been; a working → working
In plain English: He has learned one lesson from the world for every day he has lived, and the best thing he has learned is that the world itself is empty and fleeting.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A paradox: the most valuable lesson the world teaches is how little the world is worth.
Reference & context: Biblical: Ecclesiastes 1:2, “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” “Vanity” there means emptiness or futility.
Modernized: hath → has
In plain English: He looks back on his life as a danger he has safely got through, and he wouldn't risk living it all over again.
In plain English: His sexual desire faded long before his body did, but he is still glad that temptation is gone, and grateful that his physical weakness now protects him from it.
Modernized: broke → broken
In plain English: Living next door to death doesn't make him sad; he waits for it calmly as his natural turn. He is more afraid of sliding back into childishness than of turning to dust.
Reference & context: Literary: Shakespeare's “seven ages of man” speech ends in “second childishness and mere oblivion” (As You Like It, II.7). Biblical: “dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Genesis 3:19).
Modernized: sads him not → does not sadden him
In plain English: Everyone regards him as a father to them all, and because of him they think of old age as something to be honoured.
In plain English: His mere presence makes wickedness feel ashamed of itself, so that even a bad man feels it would be rude to behave badly in front of him.
In plain English: He passes on his experience to young people without scolding them, and even when he's giving advice he is pleasant to be with.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: The rarest gift of an adviser: being enjoyable while being useful.
In plain English: He has old stories from his own experience to back up what he says, and they improve with each telling. But he doesn't bore people by repeating them, because he remembers how often he has already told them.
Reference & context: Grammar: “not … neither” is a double negative used for emphasis, normal in older English.
In plain English: His old proverbs and moral sayings suit his grey beard; the wise verses of Cato sound right coming from him, and he recites them as if he'd written them himself.
Reference & context: Literary: the Distichs of Cato, a collection of Latin moral couplets, was the first Latin book every English schoolboy studied.
In plain English: He doesn't treat young men like boys, or boys like fools. He knows that being serious is different from looking sour, and the less irritable he is, the more people respect him.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A useful distinction: real seriousness is not the same as grumpiness.
In plain English: Forgive him if he prefers the old days to ours, because what was wisdom then looks like foolishness to him now. And when we see him, we tend to agree, judging the past by such a fine survivor from it.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: He is himself the best argument for the past: we judge an age by the people it produced.
Modernized: like → likes
In plain English: He can become close friends with the youngest men, but he doesn't become more youthful through them; they become more mature through him. No one does more credit to the people who know him.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A balanced, mirror-image phrase: good influence flows from the old man to the young, not the other way.
Modernized: he not → he is not
In plain English: Whenever he finally dies, it is too soon. Everyone grieves except him, and his memory stays fresh even after twice his lifetime has passed.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: The finest line in the piece: everyone mourns his death except the man himself, who is at peace with it.
Fun Fact
Earle wrote this tender portrait of old age while he was still in his twenties. Microcosmographie appeared anonymously in 1628, when he was a young Oxford fellow. He later became tutor to the future King Charles II, followed the royal family into exile during the Civil War, and after the Restoration became Bishop of Salisbury. By his death in 1665 he had become something very like his own good old man: a gentle, much-loved figure whom even his political opponents respected.