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. |
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