Chapter III: Section III: of Gally's essay, like Section I thoroughly conventional,

is also omitted here. Gally attributes to Theophrastus the spurious "Proem," in which Theophrastus, emphasizing his ethical purpose, announces his intention of following up his characters of vice with characters of virtue. At one point Gally asserts that Theophrastus taught the same doctrine as Aristotle and Plato, but

accommodated Morality to the Taste of the _Beau Monde_, with all the
Embellishments that can please the nice Ears of an intelligent Reader,
and with that inoffensive Satir, which corrects the Vices of Men,
without making them conceive any Aversion for the Satirist.

It is Gally's concept of the character as an art-form, however, which is most interesting to the modern scholar. Gally breaks sharply with earlier character-writers like Overbury who, he thinks, have departed from the Theophrastan method. Their work for the most part reflects corrupted taste:

A continued Affectation of far-fetched and quaint Simile's, which
runs thro' almost all these Characters, makes 'em appear like so many
Pieces of mere Grotesque; and the Reader must not expect to find
Persons describ'd as they really are, but rather according to what
they are thought to be like.

And Gally attacks one of the favorite devices of the seventeenth-century character:

An Author, in this Kind, must not dwell too long upon one Idea; As
soon as the masterly Stroke is given, he must immediately pass on
to another Idea.... For if, after the masterly Stroke is given, the
Author shou'd, in a paraphrastical Manner, still insist upon the same
Idea, the Work will immediately flag, the Character grow languid, and
the Person characteris'd will insensibly vanish from the Eyes of the
Reader.

One has only to read a character like Butler's "A Flatterer" to appreciate Gally's point. The Theophrastan method had been to describe a character operatively--that is, through the use of concrete dramatic incident illustrating the particular vice. The seventeenth-century character is too often merely a showcase for the writer's wit. One frequently finds a succession of ingenious metaphors, each redefining from a slightly different angle a type's master-passion, but blurring rather than sharpening the likeness.

Gally insists that the style of the character be plain and easy, "without any of those Points and Turns, which convey to the Mind nothing but a low and false Wit." The piece should not be tediously rambling, but compact. It must have perfect unity of structure: each sentence should add a significant detail to the portrait. The manner ought to be lively, the language pure and unaffected.

As for the character-writer's materials, they are "Human Nature, in its various Forms and Affections." Each character should focus on a single vice or virtue, yet since "the Heart of Man is frequently actuated by more Passions than one," subsidiary traits ought to be included to round out the portrait (e.g., the covetous man may also be impudent, the impudent man generous). Budgell had expressed a similar conception. A character, he wrote, "may be compared to a Looking-glass that is placed to catch a particular Object; but cannot represent that Object in its full Light, without giving us a little Landskip of every thing else that lies about it."[4] By Gally's time writers like Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, and La Bruyère had done much to show the complex and paradoxical nature of human behaviour. Gally, who praises La Rochefoucauld as the one modern as well equipped as Theophrastus to compose characters, reacts with his age against the stale types which both comedy and the character had been retailing _ad nauseam_. Human nature, says Gally, is full of subtle shadings and agreeable variations which the character ought to exploit. He quotes Temple to the effect that England is richer than any other nation in "original Humours" and wonders that no one has yet attempted a comprehensive portrait-gallery of English personality. Those writers who have come closest to Gally's idea of how "humour" ought to be handled are the "great Authors" of the _Tatlers_ and _Spectators_, with their "interspers'd Characters of Men and Manners compleatly drawn to the Life."

In admiring the Roger de Coverley sketches, Gally typifies the increasingly tolerant attitude of the Augustans toward eccentric behavior.[5] Like Sterne and Fielding he is delighted by people whose idiosyncracies are harmless and appealing. As for the harsh satiric animus of a character-writer like Butler, it is totally alien to Gally, who would chide good-naturedly, so as "not to seem to make any Attacks upon the Province of Self-Love" in the reader. "Each Man," he writes, "contains a little World within himself, and every Heart is a new World." The writer should understand and appreciate, not ridicule, an individual's uniqueness.

Of course, the character as Theophrastus wrote it described the type, not the particular person. Gally, who sets up Theophrastus as his model, apparently fails to realize that a "humourist" like Sir Roger verges on individuality. Indeed, while discussing the need for writers to study their own and other men's passions, he emphasizes that "without a Knowledge of these Things, 'twill be impossible ever to draw a Character so to the Life, as that it shall hit one Person, and him only." Here Gally might well be talking of the Clarendon kind of portrait. If a character is "one Person, and him only," he is no longer a type, but somebody peculiarly himself.

Gally, then, is not as Theophrastan as he professes to be. True, he harks back to Theophrastus in matters of style and technique. And he does not criticize him, as does La Bruyère,[6] for paying too much attention to a man's external actions, and not enough to his "Thoughts, Sentiments, and Inclinations." Nevertheless his mind is receptive to the kind of individuated characterization soon to distinguish the mid-eighteenth century novel. The type is still his measuring-stick, but he calibrates it far less rigidly than a Rymer analyzing Iago or Evadne. A man can be A Flatterer or A Blunt Man and still retain a private identity: this private identity Gally recognizes as important. Gally's essay thus reflects fundamental changes in the English attitude toward human nature and its literary representation.

Alexander H. Chorney Fellow, Clark Library Los Angeles, California

Notes to the Introduction

1. _The Characters, Or The Manners of the Age. By Monsieur De La
Bruyère of the French Academy. Made English by several hands. With the
Characters of Theophrastus..._ 1699. 2 vols.

2. Isaac Casaubon's Latin edition of Theophrastus appeared in 1592 and
was reprinted frequently during the seventeenth century.

3. Eustace Budgell, _The Moral Characters of Theophrastus_ (1714),
Preface, sig. a5.

4. _Ibid._, sig. a6 verso.

5. For a full account of the shift in attitude see Edward Miles
Hooker, "Humour in the Age of Pope," _Huntington Library Quarterly_,
XL (1948), 361-385.

6. "A Prefatory Discourse concerning Theophrastus," in _The
Characters, Or The Manners of the Age_, II, xxii.

* * * * *

The
Moral Characters
of

THEOPHRASTUS.

Translated from
The Greek, with Notes.
To which is prefix’d

A
CRITICAL ESSAY
on
Characteristic-Writings.

By Henry Gally, M.A. Lecturer of
St. Paul’s Covent-Garden, and
Rector of Wanden in Buckinghamshire.

Respicere exemplar vitæ morumque jubebo
Doctum imitatorem, & vivas hinc ducere voces.
Hor. in Art. Poet.

LONDON:
Printed for John Hooke, at the _Flower-
de-luce_ over-against St. _Dunstan’s_ Church in
_Fleet-street_. MDCCXXV.

* * * * *

THE