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 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 play, the rest go out and he is
left, fallen asleep in the theatre. The same man, having eaten too much,
will go out in the night to relieve himself, and fall over 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 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 Caveat or Warening for common cursetors, Vulgarely
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_:--