_Character writing, as a distinct form of Literature, had its origin
more than two thousand years ago in the [Greek: aethichoi
Chadaaedes]---Ethic Characters--of Tyrtamus of Lesbos, a 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 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._