PAGE

WYE SALTONSTALL

PICTURE LOQUENTES, OR PICTURES DRAWN FORTH IN CHAR-

ACTERS

The Term

DONALD LUPTON

LONDON AND COUNTRY CARBONADOED AND QUARTERED INTO

SEVERAL CHARACTERS.

The Horse

CHARACTERS PUBLISHED BETWEEN 1642 AND 1646, BY SIR

FRANCIS WORTLEY, T. FORD, AND OTHERS

T. Ford's Character of Pamphlets

JOHN CLEVELAND

The Character of a Country Committee-Man, with the Ear-

294

294

295

295, 296

296, 297

. 297, 298

298-313

298-303
• 303-306

307-313

313

313

313, 314

314

315

316-441

UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

CHARACTER WRITINGS

OF THE

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

CHARACTER WRITING, as a distinct form of Literature, had its origin more than two thousand years ago in the exoi Xaganrñges-Ethic Characters of Tyrtamus of Lesbos, al disciple of Plato, who gave him for his eloquence the name of Divine Speaker-Theophrastus. Aristotle left him his library and all his MSS., and named him his successor in the schools of the Lyceum. Nicomachus, the son of Aristotle, was among his pupils. He followed in the steps of Aristotle. Diogenes Laertius ascribed to Theophrastus two hundred and twenty books. He founded, by a History of Plants, the science of Botany; and he is now best known by the little contribution to Moral Philosophy, in which he gave twenty-eight short chapters to concise description of twenty-eight differing qualities in men. The description in each chapter was not of a man, but of a quality. The method of Theophrastus, as Casaubon said, was between the philosophical and the poetical. He described a quality, but he described it by personification, and his aim was the amending of men's manners. The twenty-eight chapters that have come down to us are probably no more than a fragment of a larger work. They describe vices, and not all of them. Another part, now lost, may have described the virtues. In a short proem the writer speaks of himself as ninety-nine years old. Probably those two nines were only a poetical suggestion of long experience

from which these pictures of the constituents of human life and
action had been drawn. He had wondered, he said, before he
thought of writing such a book, at the diversities of manners among
Greeks all born under one sky and trained alike.
For many years

he had considered and compared the ways of men; he had lived to be
ninety-nine. Our children may be the better for a knowledge of our
ways of daily life, that they may grow into the best. Observe and
see whether I describe them rightly. I will begin, he says, with
Dissimulation. I will first define the vice, and then describe the
quality and manners of the man who dissembles. After that I will
endeavour to describe also the other qualities of mind, each in its
kind. Then follow the Characters of these twenty-eight qualities:
Dissimulation, Adulation, Garrulity, Rusticity, Blandishment,
Senselessness, Loquacity, Newsmongering, Impudence, Sordid Par-
simony, Impurity, Ill-timed Approach, Inept Sedulity, Stupidity,
Contumacy, Superstition, Querulousness, Distrust, Dirtiness, Tedi-
ousness, Sordid or Frivolous Desire for Praise, Illiberality,
Ostentation, Pride, Timidity, Oligarchy, or the vehement desire for
honour, without greed for money, Insolence, and Evil Speaking.
One of these Characters may serve as an example of their method,
and show their place in the ancestry of Characters as they were
written in England in the Seventeenth Century.

STUPIDITY.

You may define Stupidity as a slowness of mind in word or deed. But the Stupid Man is one who, sitting at his counters, and having made all his calculations and worked out his sum, sks one who sits by him how much it comes to. When any

actwetsks

one has a suit against him, and he has come to the day when the cause must be decided, he forgets it and walks out into his field. Often also when he sits to see a play, the rest go out and he is left, fallen asleep in the theatre. The same man, having eaten too much, will go out in the night to relieve himself, and fall over the neighbour's dog, who bites him. The same man, having hidden away what he has received, is always searching for it, and never