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 Parsimony, Impurity, Ill-timed Approach, Inept Sedulity, Stupidity, Contumacy, Superstition, Querulousness, Distrust, Dirtiness, Tediousness, 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, asks one who sits by him how much it comes to. When any

play, the rest go out and he is The same man, having eaten relieve himself, and fall over

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 left, fallen asleep in the theatre. too much, will go out in the night to the neighbour's dog, who bites him. The same man, having hidden away what he has received, is always searching for it, and never

finds it. And when it is announced to him that one of his intimate friends is dead, and he is asked to the funeral, then, with a face set to sadness and tears, he says, "Good luck to it!" When he receives money owing to him he calls in witnesses, and in midwinter he scolds his man for not having gathered cucumbers. To train his boys for wrestling he makes them race till they are tired. Cooking his own lentils in the field, he throws salt twice into the pot and makes them uneatable. When it rains he says, "How sweet I find this water of the stars." And when some one asks, “How many have passed the gates of death?" [proverbial phrase for a great number] answers, "As many, I hope, as will be enough for you and me."

The first and the best sequence of “ Characters" in English Literature is the series of sketches of the Pilgrims in the Prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales." The Characters are so varied as to unite in representing the whole character of English life in Chaucer's day; and they are written upon one plan, each with suggestion of the outward body and its dress as well as of the mind within. But Chaucer owed nothing to Theophrastus. In his Character Writing he drew all from nature with his own good wit. La Bruyère in France translated the characters of Theophrastus, and his own writing of Characters in the seventeenth century followed a fashion that had its origin in admiration of the wit of those Greek Ethical Characters. La Bruyère was born in 1639 and died in 1696. Our Joseph Hall, whose "Characters of Vices and Virtues" were written in 1608, and translated into French twenty years before La Bruyère was born, said, in his Preface to them, "I have done as I could, following that ancient Master of Morality who thought this the fittest task for the ninety-ninth year of his age, and the profitablest Monument that he could leave for a farewell to his Grecians."

There was some aim at short and witty sketches of character in descriptions of the ingenuity of horse-coursers and coney-catchers who used quick wit for beguiling the unwary in those bright days of Elizabeth, when the very tailors and cooks worked fantasies in silk and velvet, sugar and paste. Thomas Harman, whose grandfather

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had been Clerk of the Crown under Henry VII., and who himself inherited estates in Kent, became greatly interested in the vagrant beggars who came to his door. He made a study of them, came to London to publish his book, and lodged at Whitefriars, within the Cloister, for convenience of nearness to them, and more thorough knowledge of their ways. He first published his book in 1567 as A Caveat or Warning for Common Cursitors, vulgarly called Vagabonds-" A Caueat or Warening for common cursetors, Volgarely called Vagabones, set forth by Thomas Harman, Esquiere, for the utilite and proffyt of his naturall Cuntrey," and he dedicated it to Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury. It contained twenty-four character sketches, gave the names of the chief tramps then living in England, and a vocabulary of their cant words. This is Harman's first character:

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A RUFFLER.

The Ruffler, because he is first in degree of this odious order, and is so called in a statute made for the punishment of Vagabonds in the twenty-seventh year of King Henry VIII., late of most famous memory, he shall be first placed as the worthiest of this unruly rabblement. And he is so called when he goeth first abroad. Either he hath served in the wars, or else he hath been a serving-man, and weary of well-doing, shaking off all pain, doth choose him this idle life; and wretchedly wanders about the most shires of this realm, and with stout audacity demandeth, where he thinketh he may be bold, and circumspect enough where he seeth cause, to ask charity ruefully and lamentably, that it would make a flinty heart to relent and pity his miserable estate, how he hath been maimed and bruised in the wars. Peradventure one will show you some outward wound which he got at some drunken fray, either halting of some privy wound festered with a filthy fiery flankard [brand]. For be well assured that the hardiest soldiers be either slain or maimed, either and [or if] they escape all hazards and return home again, if they be without relief of their friends they will surely desperately rob and steal,

and either shortly be hanged or miserably die in prison. For they be so much ashamed and disdain to beg or ask charity, that rather they will as desperately fight for to live and maintain themselves, as manfully and valiantly they ventured themselves in the Prince's quarrel. Now these Rufflers, the outcasts of serving-men, when begging or craving fails them, they pick and pilfer from other inferior beggars that they meet by the way, as rogues, palliards, morts, and doxes. Yea, if they meet with a woman alone riding to the market, either old man or boy, that he knoweth well will not resist, such they fetch and spoil. These Rufflers, after a year or two at the farthest, become upright men [lusty vagrants who beg and take only money, who rob hen roosts, filch from stalls or pockets, and have dens of their own for drinking and receipt of stolen goods], unless they be prevented by twined hemp.

I had of late years an old man to my tenant who customably a great time went twice in the week to London, either with fruit or with peascods, when time served therefor. And as he was coming homeward, on Blackheath, at the end thereof next to Shooter's Hill, he overtook two Rufflers, the one mannerly waiting on the other, as one had been the master and the other his man or servant, carrying his master's cloak. This old man was very glad that he might have their company over the hill, because that day he had made a good market. For he had seven shillings in his purse and an old angel, which this poor man had thought had not been in his purse; for he willed his wife overnight to take out the same angel and lay it up until his coming home again, and he verily thought his wife had so done, which indeed forgot to do it. Thus, after salutations had, this Master Ruffler entered into communication with this simple old man, who, riding softly beside them, communed of many matters. Thus feeding this old man with pleasant talk until they were on the top of the hill, where these Rufflers might well behold the coast about them clear, quickly steps unto this poor man and taketh hold of his horse bridle and leadeth him into the wood, and demandeth of him what and how much money he had in his purse.

"Now, by my troth," quoth this old man, "you are a merry gentleman! I know you mean not to take anything from me, but rather to give me some, if I should ask it of you."

By and by [immediately] this servant thief casteth the cloak that he carried on his arm about this poor man's face that he should not mark or view them, with sharp words to deliver quickly that he had, and to confess truly what was in his purse. This poor man then all abashed yielded, and confessed that he had seven shillings in his purse; and the truth is, he knew of no more. This old angel was fallen out of a little purse into the bottom of a great purse. Now this seven shillings in white money they quickly found, thinking indeed that there had been no more; yet farther groping and searching, found this old angel. And with great admiration this gentleman thief began to bless him, saying

"Good Lord, what a world is this! How may," quoth he, "a man believe or trust in the same? See you not," quoth he, "this old knave told me that he had but seven shillings, and here is more by an angel! What an old knave and a false knave have we here!" quoth this Ruffler. "Our Lord have mercy on us, will this world never be better?" and therewith went their way and left the old man in the wood, doing him no more harm.

But sorrowfully sighing this old man, returning home, declared his misadventure with all the words and circumstances above showed. Whereat for the time was great laughing, and this poor man, for his losses, among his loving neighbours well considered in the end.

Such character-painting simply came of the keen interest in life that was at the same time developing an energetic drama. But at the end of Elizabeth's reign a writing of brief witty characters appears to have come into fashion as one of the many forms of ingenuity that pleased society, and might be distantly related to the Euphuism of the day.

Ben Jonson's "Cynthia's Revels," first acted in 1600, two or