^{page 75 note 1} Speaking of the Character, Professor Raleigh says it “may rank as an ancestor of the novel in the direct line.” The English Novel (Scribners, 1894), p. 113.

^{page 75 note 2} “From the Spectator the character sketch, with its types and minute observation and urbane ridicule, passed into the novel and became a part of it.” Cross, The Development of the Novel (Macmillan, 1899), p. 25.

^{page 76 note 1} The latter part of the century was especially prolific in these biographical Characters; they served as campaign documents, the various leaders of the Whig and Tory parties being criticised alternately. Moreover, the poetical satires of the period teemed with them. Such, to mention the most notable example, was Dryden's portrait of the Duke of Buckingham in “Zimri.” Absalom and Achitophel, ll. 544–568.

^{page 77 note 1} A case in point is the swarm of “Keys” which followed the publication in 1688 of La Bruyère's Caracteres ou Les Moeurs de ce Siècle.

^{page 77 note 2} Its excellence as a Character did not escape the notice of the English Character writers. Sir Richard Steele, in The Guardian, No. 168, said of it: “I do not think there is any character of Theophrastus which has so many beautiful particulars in it, and which is drawn with such elegance of thought and phrase.”

^{page 77 note 3} Iliad, xiii, 278 ff.

^{page 77 note 4} Aristophanes, Wasps, ll. 87–134.

^{page 77 note 5} Horace, Book i, Sat. ix.; Juvenal, Sat. viii. and ix.

^{page 77 note 6} Martial, Book iii, Epigram on Cotilus.

^{page 77 note 7} De Figuris Sententiarum et Elocutionis, Book ii.

^{page 77 note 8} Book iv.

^{page 77 note 9} Synesius, Epistle civ.

^{page 77 note 10} One of the μeneal of Libanius, the Greek sophist of Antioch, is a dramatic Character, the original of “Morose” in Ben Jonson's play, The Silent Woman. The extent of Jonson's indebtedness to Libanius is pointed out in my article in Modem Language Notes for November, 1901.

^{page 77 note 11} The Satiricon of Petronius Arbiter contains the character of a man “vani et insulsi.”

^{page 78 note 1} E. g., Vision of Piers Plowman, Passus viii: Description of the “Palmer from Sinai.”

^{page 78 note 2} E. g., Description of “Riot” in Skelton's Bowge of Court.

^{page 79 note 1} The full title was: The Fraternity of Vagabonds, as well of Ruffling Vagabonds as of beggarly, of Women as of Men, of Girls as of Boys with their proper names and Qualities. With a Description of the crafty Company of Cozeners and Shifters. Whereunto is adjoined the XXV. orders of Knaves, otherwise called a quartern of Knaves confirmed forever by Cock Lorrel. This is said to owe a good deal to a similar book, written in Latin, called Liber Vagatorum, published in 1514, for a new edition of which in 1528, Martin Luther wrote a preface.

^{page 79 note 2} Thomas Decker's Bellman of London (1608) is also stolen almost wholly from Harman, but contains some curious interpolations that bring it up to date. The fraud was exposed in a tract called Martin Mark-All, Beadle of Bridewell, by Samuel Rowland. The latter bears interesting testimony to the popularity of this class of books. “These volumes and papers, now spread everywhere, so that every Jackboy now can say as well as the proudest of the fraternity ‘Will you waff for a win, or tramie for a make ?‘” The last of the series was The English Rogue, 1665.

^{page 79 note 3} Nash had read Theophrastus in the original. At least we find him alluding respectfully to “the golden book of Theophrastus” in a tract entitled The Anatomy of Absurdity, published in 1589, three years before Casaubon's translation had popularized that author.

^{page 80 note 1} The form and content of Theophrastus' 'H and the use that was made of it by the English writers of Characters has already been discussed in my article on The Relation of the English Character to its Greek Prototype (Publications of the Modern Language Association, July, 1903.)

^{page 81 note 1} In my article on the relation of the English Character to the Greek, I have shown how Hall in these six “Characters of Vices” imitated Theophrastus, not only in the selection of the types for characterization, but also to the extent of adapting to his own use certain of the ideas of Theophrastus, and even his forms of expression.

^{page 81 note 2} Character-writing, at least up to the middle of the seventeenth century, was closely allied to Euphuism. Indeed Euphuism, with its pointed, antithetical, balanced sentences, was well adapted to express subtle shades of difference in character, and came consequently to be regarded as the conventional dialect of the Character-writers. Several passages in Euphues (1580) are written exactly in the manner of the later Character-writers. Such, to mention a single instance, is the description of “Camilla,” (Arber's English Reprints, vol. iv, pp. 310–11), which, if it were isolated from the context and labeled the “Character of a Fair and Honest Maid,” might pass for a hitherto unpublished sketch of Overbury's.

^{page 83 note 1} The translation is that of Professor R. C. Jebb (Macmillan, 1870.)

^{page 85 note 1} Within the first decade after its publication the book went through nine editions. La Bruyère was followed by about thirty imitators, chief of whom were Brillon (author of Le Theophraste Moderne), Mme de Lambert, and the Marquis de Lassay.

^{page 86 note 1} A Wife now the Widow of Sir Thomas Overburye. Being a most exquisite Poem of the Choice of a Wife, Whereunto are added many witty Characters, and conceited Newes, written by himself and other learned Gentlemen his friends.

^{page 86 note 2} Johnson in his life of Savage says the story was “well adapted to the stage, though perhaps not far enough removed from the present age to admit properly the fictions necessary to complete the plan.”

^{page 86 note 3} Three, which appeared first in the sixth edition (1616), were by J. Cooke. In an address prefixed to New Essays and Characters (1631) by John Stephens, Cooke writes: “I am here forced to claim three Characters following the Wife; viz. the Tinker, the Apparitor, and the Almanac-maker that I may signify the ridiculous and bold dealings of an unknown botcher.”

^{page 87 note 1} It is noticeable that there are several pairs of sketches which seem like rival exercises in the same theme. Thus there are two of “A Mere Fellow of an House.” It is hard, also, to see much difference between “A Mere Common Lawyer” and “A Mere Pettifogger;” or between “A Puritan” and “A Precision;” or between “A Wise Man” and “A Noble Spirit.”

^{page 87 note 2} Many of the Characters end with a kind of humorous flourish, as, for example, that of “A Courtier:” “If you find him not here, you shall in Paul's, with a pick-tooth in his hat, cape-cloak and a long stocking.”

Or that of a “Mere Pettifogger:” “Only with this I will pitch him over the bar and leave him: that his fingers itch for a bribe ever since his first practising of Court-hand.”

^{page 87 note 3} Among these was Donald Lupton, whose London and Country Carbonadoed and Quartered into several Characters (1632) contained Characters of most of the places of interest in and about London.

^{page 88 note 1} Among the very best of them is Dr. John Donne's “Character of a Scotchman” in his Paradoxes, Problems, Essays and Characters (1652).

^{page 89 note 1} Once only does Overbury show any fineness of feeling. It is the “Character of a Virtuous Widow,” where he says, speaking of her old age: “This latter chastity of hers is more grave and reverend than that ere she was married, for in it is neither hope, nor longing, nor fear, nor jealousy.”

^{page 90 note 1} The book contains seventy-eight Characters, of which fifty-four appeared in the edition of 1628, twenty-two more in that of the following year, and two more in that of 1633. Of these only forty are, properly speaking, ethical. The rest are of the same class as most of Overbury's, in which the types are considered not so much as possessing certain ethical qualities, as playing certain parts in life. They consist for the most part of types to be found in a college town—academical and professional types, with a sprinkling of tradesmen, duns, and catchpoles. This limited range of subject was due to Earle's being, at the time of writing, a resident fellow at Oxford.

^{page 92 note 1} Johann Caspar Lavater, founder of the pseudo-science of Physiognomy, and author of Physiognomische Fragmente (1775–8). The popularity, in the eighteenth century, of such works as Lavater's was probably due, at least in part, to the interest in types of character, aroused, in the preceding century, by phrenological Character-books—for instance, A Brief Discourse Concerning the Different Wits of Men (1669), by Dr. Walter Charleton.

^{page 92 note 2} “His wishes are winds, which breathed forth, return into himself, and make him a most giddy and tottering vessel.”

^{page 93 note 1} It is divided into two parts, the first offering examples for imitation, the second, for avoidance. The Holy State contains forty-eight Characters; The Profane State, thirty-one. Of this total of seventy-nine, only four are genuine types of ethical character: this shows how far the Character-writers had by this time departed from the Theophrastic tradition.

^{page 94 note 1} “Character of a Quibbler,” in Remains, vol. ii, p. 206.

^{page 95 note 1} “Essay on Specimens from the Writings of Fuller.”

^{page 95 note 2} Peter Heylyn, one of Fuller's contemporaries, notes this habit of Fuller and says there was no precedent for it among historical writers (Article on Fuller as a historian in his Examen Historicum).

^{page 95 note 3} An example of this is the line,

“Heu mihi, quam pingui macer est mihi taurus in arvo,”

which is translated thus:

“My starveling bull

Ah woe is me

In pasture full

How lean is he.“

^{page 96 note 1} In his “Character of the Favorite” Fuller says: “But the most temperate princes love to taste the sweetness of their own praises, if not overluscious with flattery.” The praises here are certainly open to the charge of overlusciousness. The flattery is so fulsome as closely to resemble the severest irony; and at the close, Fuller becomes so “dazzled by the lustre of majesty” that he becomes almost incoherent.

^{page 96 note 2} Quaintly humorous also is the grouping of the Duke of Suffolk, Cardinal Wolsey, and Haman to embody the qualities set forth in the “Character of a Favorite.”

^{page 96 note 3} In the “Character of a Controversial Divine.”

^{page 99 note 1} “In order,” as Fuller says, “that the books on both sides may equally reach to them.”

^{page 100 note 1} Such, to mention a single instance, was Owen Feltham's Resolves (1628), of which the twelve editions previous to 1709 attest the continued popularity.

^{page 101 note 1} The periodical essay was in style an imitation of the gay, light, and graceful essays of Montaigne, rather than of the brief, sententious essays of Bacon. Or, more specifically, the imitation was of Montaigne through his disciple, La Bruyère.

^{page 101 note 2} Conjectures were formerly made as to whether these sketches were not from life. Sir Roger has been identified with a certain Sir John Packington of Worcestershire; Captain Sentry is said to have been C. Kempenfelt, father of Admiral Kempenfelt; and Will Honeycomb, a certain festive Colonel Cleland. “I once thought I knew a Will Wimble and a Will Honeycomb, but they turned out but indifferently” (Hazlitt, On the Periodical Essayists).

^{page 102 note 1} “But he [Sir Roger] was from the first intended to be a type of a country gentleman, just as much as Don Quixote was an imaginative representation of many Spanish gentlemen whose brains had been turned by the reading of romances. In both cases the type of character was so common .... as to lend itself easily to the treatment of writers who approached it with various conceptions and very unequal degrees of skill.” Addison, by W. J. Court hope (Harpers, 1884, p. 166).

^{page 102 note 2} “Nothing but a subpoena can draw him to London; and when he is there, he sticks fast upon every object, casts his eyes away upon gazing, and becomes the prey of every cut-purse.”—Overbury.

^{page 102 note 3} “He speaks statutes and husbandry well enough to make his neighbors think him a wise man.”—Overbury.

^{page 102 note 4} “When he travelleth he will go ten miles out of the way to a cousin's house of his to save charges; he rewards the servant by taking him by the hand when he departs.”—Overbury.

^{page 103 note 1} History of English Literature, translated by H. Van Laun (Holt and Williams, 1871), vol. ii, p. 112.

^{page 103 note 2} Macaulay had not the least doubt “that if Addison had written a novel on an extensive plan, it would have been superior to any that we possess.” Macaulay's Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (Appleton, 1861), vol. v, p. 118.

^{page 103 note 3} Leslie Stephen says “Parson Adams” of Fielding's Joseph Andrews (1742) is closely related to Sir Roger de Coverley (Hours in a Library, iii. Series, p. 76).

^{page 104 note 1} With a view to economy of space, I have purposely omitted to mention the size of the volume and, in most cases, the place of publication. It will be understood to have been London, unless otherwise stated.