Moral folly is much the same everywhere; it is only the fool’s costume that changes in different countries. The folly of the miser is seen in his cheating himself of the real goods of life and in robbing himself of the respect of his fellows; the folly of the coward, in gaining personal safety by losing reputation for manliness; the folly of the flatterer, in his shallow self-serving which men see through, while they nudge their fellows and laugh at his weakness; the folly of the vain man, in the way in which he assumes impressive proportions to his own magnifying eye, while to others his personality looks as small as it is; the folly of the tactless man, in consulting his own convenience rather than his neighbor’s, whereby he becomes a butt for his gaucherie; the folly of the boor, in his trampling awkwardly on the established usages of the polite world and thereby drawing upon himself the smilingly derisive attention of all observers. Throughout the list these characters represent some type of social foible or folly.
The Literary Art of Theophrastus
The Canons of his Art
In regard to the literary art of Theophrastus, as exhibited in these sketches, it must be looked at from the standpoint of an innovation in Greek letters; it is rare that any man both begins and perfects an art. There is nothing in the world so interesting as a character, but there is also nothing that is so difficult to portray briefly. Theophrastus was an acute observer and he was a plain realist. His art consists in the truthfulness of his vision and in the direct simplicity with which he gives it expression. He does not seek to create a laugh by exaggeration or by the trick of a ludicrous situation that has no moral significance. His art is not possible without wit, keenness, and fineness of feeling. There is no exhibition of the satirist’s lash, but his criticism is made with that geniality which is more telling than the severest invective. These are not individual portraits. They lack, therefore, the detailed finish of such a portrait as is given in the much-elaborated modern novel with its varied facilities for exhibiting the individuality of one or several persons. On the contrary, these are merely outline sketches, as Theophrastus himself calls them, and are descriptive of a class, not of an individual. A simple line, however, does not constitute a sketch; to exhibit a character, the sketch must not only be clear but complete. The coward, e.g., is sketched in his fear at sea, where his timid imagination invents dangers, and he wishes to be put ashore; he is sketched on the field of battle, where he tries to impress his comrades by a courage that he does not feel; but when he hears the shouts of war and sees the soldiers fall, he shrinks faint-hearted to his tent and there searches for the sword he has himself hid; and again when the danger is over he resumes his bold exterior and proclaims his daring rescue of a comrade. We have here a pictorial sketch which, with its life and action, appeals to the reader’s eye. The coward is shown from various points of view, always in new lights, but he is always the coward. The canons of this species of literary art may be summarized as follows: 1.—Faithfulness to reality: The character must be an accurate report of nature and not a caricature. It must be executed in the spirit of realism. 2.—Brevity: It must be slight and swift, essentially of the nature of a sketch. 3.—Humor: It must have the sprightliness of statement that amuses while it instructs. 4.—Type: It must be illustrative of a generic or typical fault. In other words, the character must give embodiment to some fault that touches human nature in an essential and universal way. 5.—Concreteness: The fault as an abstraction must be translated by the artist’s power into a concrete personal form. The foible must be revealed in a genre picture of a living personality.
Imitators of Theophrastus
La Bruyère
Since Theophrastus, this form of character-writing has been cultivated at various times, but it flourished most amongst the minor essayists of the seventeenth century. It is of too slight a nature in itself to make a serious impression on any literary epoch. It suited, however, the temper of the seventeenth century, as the sprightly essay possessing no serious depth and aiming to touch life at many points. The chief imitators of Theophrastus and exponents of character-writing at this time were Bishop Hall, Bishop Earle, Sir Thomas Overbury, Nicholas Breton, Samuel Butler, and La Bruyère. Bishop Hall, contrary to the example of Theophrastus, includes virtues as well as vices in his book entitled Characters of Vertues and Vices (London, 1608). In the general structure of his composition he follows the model of Theophrastus closely. In the description of vices, however, he is much more entertaining than in his sketches of virtues, which are rather homilies and, as the panegyrics of a tedious preacher, provoke one to yawn. Virtue is not fitting material for this species of writing. The brilliant but ill-starred Sir Thomas Overbury, in his Characters or Witty Descriptions of the Properties of Sundry Persons (London, 1614; went through eighteen editions), departs from the usage of Theophrastus in depicting for the most part amusing accidents of character and humorous peculiarities of trades and professions. Bishop Earle, on the other hand, in his Micro-cosmographie (London, 1628) confined his character delineation to mores hominum, to ethical types of men as such, in a spirit similar to that of his Greek model. The best known of all the imitators of Theophrastus, if he can be called an imitator at all, is La Bruyère, in his Les caractères ou les mœurs de ce siècle (Paris, 1688). The caractères of La Bruyère are really satires on certain thinly disguised contemporaries of his own and are executed in a spirited method totally different from that of Theophrastus, but to which a translation of The Characters of Theophrastus is added. La Bruyère was a lover of the ancient classics, although his translation or paraphrase was hardly more than a pretext for writing down his own description of the manners of his time. It furnished him, perhaps, the first suggestion and the first impulse to the portrayal of the vices and weaknesses of his contemporaries on a much larger scale than Theophrastus had attempted.
[2] “I gather, too, from the undeniable testimony of his [Aristotle’s] disciple, Theophrastus, that there were bores, ill-bred persons, and detractors even in Athens, of a species remarkably corresponding to the English, and not yet made endurable by being classic; and, altogether, with my present fastidious nostril, I feel that I am the better off for possessing Athenian life solely as an inodorous fragment of antiquity.” George Eliot in Theophrastus Such, p. 27, Cabinet Edition.
[3] The original name of Theophrastus, according to tradition, was Tyrtamus, but owing to his divine speech Aristotle gave him the name which has come down to us.
[4] The following treatises are extant, either entire or in considerable parts: On Sensation, 1 bk.; On Smells, 1 bk.; Moral Characters, 1 bk.; History of Plants, 2 bks.