The seventeenth century is rich in short studies or characters of its
great men. Its rulers and statesmen, its soldiers and politicians,
its lawyers and divines, all who played a prominent part in the public
life, have with few notable exceptions been described for us by their
contemporaries. There are earlier characters in English literature;
but as a definite and established form of literary composition
the character dates from the seventeenth century. Even Sir Robert
Naunton's _Fragmenta Regalia, or Observations on the late Queen
Elizabeth her Times and Favourites_, a series of studies of the great
men of Elizabeth's court, and the first book of its kind, is an old
man's recollection of his early life, and belongs to the Stuart period
in everything but its theme. Nor at any later period is there the same
wealth of material for such a collection as is given in this volume.
The eighteenth century devoted itself rather to biography. When the
facts of a man's life, his works, and his opinions claimed detailed
treatment, the fashion of the short character had passed.
Yet the seventeenth century did not know its richness. None of its
best characters were then printed. The writers themselves could not
have suspected how many others were similarly engaged, so far were
they from belonging to a school. The characters in Clarendon's
_History of the Rebellion_ were too intimate and searching to be
published at once, and they remained in manuscript till about
thirty years after his death. In the interval Burnet was drawing the
characters in his _History of His Own Time_. He, like Clarendon,
was not aware of being indebted to any English model. Throughout the
period which they cover there are the characters by Fuller, Sir Philip
Warwick, Baxter, Halifax, Shaftesbury, and many others, the Latin
characters by Milton, and the verse characters by Dryden. There is no
sign that any of these writers copied another or tried to emulate
him. Together, but with no sense of their community, they made the
seventeenth century the great age of the character in England.