“What stories are new?”
asks Thackeray, subtle
observer of men.
The Antiquity
of
Modern
Character-Types
Accidental
and Essential
Types
“All types of all characters
march through all fables:
tremblers and boasters; victims
and bullies: dupes and
knaves; long-eared Neddies, giving
themselves leonine airs; Tartuffes
wearing virtuous clothing; lovers
and their trials, their blindness, their
folly and constancy. With the very
first page of the human story do not
love, and lies too, begin? So the
tales were told ages before Æsop;
and asses under lions’ manes roared
in Hebrew; and sly foxes flattered
in Etruscan; and wolves in sheep’s
clothing gnashed their teeth in Sanscrit,
no doubt. The sun shines
to-day as he did when he first began
shining; and the birds in the tree
overhead, while I am writing, sing
very much the same note they have
sung ever since there were finches.
There may be nothing new under
and including the sun; but it looks
fresh every morning, and we rise
with it to toil, hope, scheme, laugh,
struggle, love, suffer, until the night
comes and quiet. And then will
wake Morrow and the eyes that look
on it; and so da capo.” All this is
very true; the changes which may be
observed in human nature are small,
and the old types of Theophrastus
are all about us nowadays and really
look and act much the same as they
did to the eyes of the ancient Peripatetic.
Offices and institutions have
somewhat changed, and many character-types
due to new vocations
have come into being since then,
e.g. the newsboy, the bishop, the
reporter, the hotel-clerk, and the
jockey. But these are only accidents
of civilization, and the peculiarities
of office or the type or professional
character do not
touch the vital essence of
human nature, although they may
modify its expression.
When one speaks of a coward, one
means an intrinsic quality in human
kind which is essentially the same
whether found in a hoplite or in a
modern infantryman, but which may
express itself differently in the two
cases. The types described by Theophrastus
are types of such intrinsic
qualities, and his pictures of ancient
vices and weaknesses show men
much as we see them now. They
are not merely types of professions
or callings.
Similarity
between
Greek and
Modern
Types
The
Flatterer
The Officious
Man
Apart from slight variations
of local coloring and institutions,
the descriptions of the
old Greek philosopher might
apply almost as well to the present
inhabitants of London or Boston as
to the Athenians of 300 B.C. Then,
as now, the flatterer plied his wily
trade, indulging in smooth compliment
of his hero’s person or actions. “As
he walks with an acquaintance, he
says: ‘Behold! How the eyes of
all men are turned upon
you! There is not a man
in the city who enjoys so
much notice as yourself. Yesterday
your praises were the talk of the
Porch. While above thirty men
were sitting there together and the
conversation fell upon the topic:
“Who is our noblest citizen?” they
all began and ended with your
name.’” “If his friend essay a jest,
the flatterer laughs and stuffs his
sleeve into his mouth as though he
could not contain himself.” But
the flatterer of old could be subtle
too. “He buys apples and pears,
carries them to his hero’s house, and
gives them to the children, and in
the presence of their father he kisses
them, exclaiming: ‘Chips of the old
block!’” and “while his talk is
directed to others in the company,
his eye is ever fixed upon his hero.”
Then as now there existed the officious
man, always over-ready to
undertake the impossible or
to interfere in the affairs
of others. “At a banquet,
he forces the servants to mix more
wine than the guests can drink. If
he sees two men in a quarrel, he
rushes in between, even though he
knows neither one.” “If the doctor
leave instructions that no wine
be given the patient, he administers
‘just a little’ on the plea that he
wants to set the sufferer right.”
The Tactless
Man
There existed, of course, then as now,
the tactless person, who “selects a
man’s busiest hour for a
lengthy conference, and who
sings love ditties under his sweetheart’s
window as she lies ill of a
fever.” “At a wedding, he declaims
against womankind, and when a
friend has just finished a journey, he
invites him to go for a walk.” “If
he happens to be standing by when
a slave is flogged, he tells the story
of how he once flogged a slave of his,
who then went and hanged himself.”
The Mean
Man
There was the mean man, too, who,
if his servant broke a pot or plate,
deducted its value from the
poor fellow’s rations. “He
permits no one to take a fig from his
garden or cross his field, or even to
pick up windfalls under his fruit
trees. He forbids his wife to lend
salt or lamp-wicks or a pinch of cummin,
marjoram, or meal, observing
that these trifles make a large sum
in a year.”
The Thankless
Man
There was also the thankless man
whose pessimism is so gloomy as to
cloud all view of his blessings.
“When a friend
has sent him something from his
table, he says to the servant who
brings it: ‘He grudged me a dish
of soup and a cup of wine, I suppose,
and so couldn’t invite me to
dinner.’” “If he secures a slave at
a bargain after long dickering with
the owner, he says: ‘I imagine I
haven’t got much at this price.’
And to the person who brings him
the glad tidings that a son is born to
him, he retorts, ‘If you only add:
“And half your fortune’s gone,”
you’ll hit it.’”
Petty
Vanity
Then we have the man who is ostentatious
in trivial things. “When he
has sacrificed an ox, he
winds the head and horns
with fillets, and nails them up, opposite
the entrance of his house.”
“When he parades with the cavalry
he gives all his accoutrements to his
squire to carry home, and throwing
back his mantle stalks proudly about
the market-place in his spurs.”
When he is master of the prytany,
he craves the privilege of announcing
to the people the result of the
sacrifice; and as soon as he has
delivered to the people the momentous
intelligence that the sacrifice has
resulted well, he hies him home and
recounts his triumph to his wife in
an ecstasy of joy.
The foregoing are but illustrations
of the happy skill with which Theophrastus
has delineated a number of
character-types which are as universal
as human nature and know no limits
of age or of country. Here and
there we meet a type in the Greek
for which we have no exact counterpart
in our customary modern modes
of thought. Such a type may be
seen in Theophrastus’s “The Disagreeable
Man,” a person who seems
a sort of general nuisance with a
touch of the bore and the braggart.
As a rule, however, the types are
singularly like those we know to-day,
and it is not difficult at once to provide
them with appropriate modern
labels. The treatment, though almost
invariably brief, is invariably
vigorous and trenchant. With a
few bold strokes the character is
drawn. There is absolutely no pretense
of style, as we ordinarily understand
it; yet each type is in its way
a gem. Through them all runs that
fidelity to truth which was the unfailing
inspiration of all Greek art.
It is this which makes The Characters
a unique creation and vindicates
their position as a part of the world’s
literature.
The Earliest
Attempt
at
Character-writing
It is largely for this reason that these
slight sketches are here produced in
English, exhibiting as they do,
when we compare them with
what we see around us, the essential
identity of human nature
in ages widely separated
from each other in time and manners.[2]
There is, furthermore, an accidental
interest in the work of Theophrastus,
due to the fact that it is the first recorded
attempt at systematic character-writing.
Characters, to be
sure, are portrayed in Homer and
in the tragedians, but they are incidental
to the narrative or to the
dramatic plot, whereas in Theophrastus
the business is with the
delineation of a character as such.
The
Influence
of Theophrastus
He tells us what a man does, simply
as an illustration of what he is, and
this method of writing had a very
intimate bearing on the evolution
of the New Comedy
under the leadership of Menander.
There is a tradition,
in fact, that Theophrastus was the
teacher of Menander, who in turn
furnished models for Terence in his
delineation of conventional dramatic
types. The influence of Theophrastus
was further directly and
potently exerted on the so-called
character-writers of the seventeenth
century in England and France. The
simple methods of these character-writers
and their uninvolved sketches
were succeeded by the more elaborate
art of the novelists, in whose works
individuals rather than types are described
by exhibiting their development
in long periods of time and
under great diversity of circumstances.
The Youth
of Theophrastus
Theophrastus
and
Aristotle
Theophrastus
Chosen by
Aristotle
to be
President
of the
Lyceum
Death of
Theophrastus
His Writings and
Genius
His Will
We have little information as to
the personal history of Theophrastus,
beyond what we learn from
the extant fragments of his
writings and from the meagre
biography of Diogenes of Laërte.
He was born at Eresus, a village on
the island of Lesbos, in 371 B.C.,
and his father was one Melantas, a
fuller by trade. He first went to
school to Alcippus in his native
island, but afterwards travelled to
Athens, the intellectual metropolis,
and became a pupil of Plato at the
Academy, with whom he appears to
have studied until the Master’s death.
Theophrastus was then in his twenty-fifth
year. At that time he attached
himself to Aristotle, who was some
twelve years his senior and who had
also been a member of the Academy,
until Plato died scribens. During
the twelve years which elapsed from
the death of Plato until Aristotle
established the new school
of the Lyceum (in 335 B.C.),
Theophrastus was probably
with his new leader, at least
part of the time, in Stagira or at the
Macedonian court, where the youthful
Alexander was under the tutorial
discipline of Aristotle. Theophrastus
was an intimate friend of Callisthenes,
the unfortunate fellow-student and
companion of Alexander, and it is
probable that the two studied together
at Pella. The story is told
that Aristotle, in speaking of these
two pupils, said: “Callisthenes
needs a spur, but Theophrastus,[3]
a bridle.” Many years later, when
Aristotle was dead and Cassander
(see Character VII.) had gained
control of Alexander’s throne, Theophrastus
was invited to an office at
the court where he had spent his
student days, and Ptolemy Soter,
Cassander’s political ally, sent him
an invitation to the court of Egypt.
But he declined these calls into the
social and political world, and maintained
steadfastly his devotion to philosophy.
It was a fashion for the rectors or
presidents of the great schools of
Athens, such as the Cynosarges,
the Academy, and the
Lyceum, before their death
to name their successors in
office. And so when Aristotle
was asked who should
succeed him in the presidency
of the Lyceum, tradition tells of the
delicate way in which he left record
of his wish. His two most distinguished
pupils were Theophrastus
of Lesbos and Eudemus of Rhodes.
Aristotle replied to the question as to
his successor by asking for two sorts
of wine,—Lesbian and Rhodian.
After tasting of them he said: “They
are both excellent; but the Lesbian
is the sweeter.” Thereby it was
known that he had decided in favor
of Theophrastus, who on the death
of Aristotle (322 B.C.) succeeded to
the presidency of the Lyceum, over
which he continued to preside for
thirty-five years. His administration
was one of almost unparalleled success.
Diogenes Laertius reports that
two thousand students thronged to
him. Although not born at Athens,
he was one of the most popular and
beloved members of that somewhat
exclusive community. This is illustrated
by the story of Agonides,
who preferred against him a charge of
atheism,—a charge similar to that
which brought Socrates to martyrdom
and drove Aristotle into exile and
caused his early death; but instead
of injuring Theophrastus, Agonides
narrowly escaped paying a fine for
his folly. Amongst his contemporaries
Theophrastus was a great personal
force by reason of his amiable
character, his charities and lavish
benefactions, the amenity of
his manners, his great erudition,
and gifts of oratory.
He died in 287 B.C. in the eighty-fifth
year of his age, and Diogenes
Laertius says that “the whole population
of Athens, honoring him
greatly, followed him to the grave.”
Theophrastus was one of the greatest
polygraphs of antiquity. Two
hundred and twenty-seven
works[4] are attributed to him.
The range of his learning is
similar to that of Aristotle’s, with the
emphasis laid rather more strongly
on the side of natural science. His
genius, however, is not marked by
Aristotle’s profundity. He served
his age rather as a great popularizer
of science; he was not an
originator of epoch-making ideas or
theories. Yet as a local and popular
force he surpassed Aristotle.
His influence on subsequent ages,
however, is less marked. Of the
227 works (containing 232,908 lines)
attributed to Theophrastus, fragments
of nine only are now extant,
excluding certain insignificant
remains.
It is doubtless true, however, that
he influenced his own time as much
by his administrative ability in the
conduct of the Lyceum and by
his oral utterances as by his written
treatises. His prodigious industry
was no doubt partially inspired by
Aristotle as well as by the swift,
stirring movement of the age immediately
preceding and following the
death of Alexander, in which his literary
manhood was passed. “Time,”
he says, “is the most valuable thing
a man can spend.” He expressed
his sense of the value of order in the
apothegm: “Better trust a horse
without bridle than a discourse without
arrangement.” His estimate of
oral converse at table is recorded in
a rather brusque and un-Athenian
remark said to have been made by
him to a silent neighbor at dinner:
“Sir, if you are an ignorant man,
your conduct shows wisdom; but if
you are a wise man, you act like a
fool.” The genuinely kind character
of Theophrastus, however, is amply
illustrated by the provisions
of his will, which evidences
also his very considerable wealth.
He had inherited from Aristotle the
largest private library then known.
This library, to which he had himself
made notable additions, he
bequeathed to Neleus, his nephew
(Theophrastus never married), and by
Neleus it was taken to Asia Minor,
where it was hidden in a cellar to
avoid the rapacity of the agents of
the Attalid dynasty, who were seizing
all available books for the Royal
Library at Pergamon. And hereby
hangs the curious old story of the loss
of Aristotle’s works for one hundred
and fifty years, until they were rediscovered,
worm eaten, in the cellar of
Neleus at Scepsis. A Museum,—temple
of the muses,—had been built
by Theophrastus as the home of the
Lyceum. In his will he provided
that this should be maintained and
beautified, that statues of the illustrious
dead (particularly of Aristotle)
should be completed, for which commissions
had already been given to
the renowned sculptor Praxiteles;
further, that tablets with maps of the
world engraved on them should be
erected in the lower colonnade. In
acknowledgment of the claims of religion,
he also directed that an altar
should be placed there. He devised
the garden, promenade, and houses
adjoining the garden to the joint control
of Hipparchus, Neleus, Strato,
and their successors, as a trust, enjoining
that a school of philosophy
should be maintained in them, and
that the property should never be
alienated from this purpose nor
claimed as private possession. After
piously making provision for certain
friends and the support of faithful
attendants, he further directed that
he should be buried in the school
garden without unnecessary expense
or ceremony.
The
Characters
A Fragment
from
a Larger
Work
Mimetic
Delineations
of
Moral
and Social
Defects
Realism
Theophrastus is more generally
known for his character sketches than
for his scientific work, although
his treatises on botany
represented the highest
attainments made by science in that
field during antiquity and the Middle
Ages. The treatise here translated
(ἠθικοὶ χαρακτῆρες) sets forth thirty
types of character striking to the
Greek mind. They are
probably a fragment or extract
made by some epitomator
from a larger treatise
which was suggested by the abstract
ethical analyses of Aristotle, as
exhibited in the Nicomachean Ethics,
and by the concrete dramatic representations
of the New Comedy. The
stage suggests the form, and Aristotle’s
treatise the content. They
represent moral and social defects
and weaknesses, though not revolting
vices, but they do this in a
mimetic way by exhibiting
persons as acting or speaking.
Theophrastus was a contemporary
of Philemon and
Menander, and his life was
spent in the era of the revival of comedy
and the elaboration of current
moral types for humorous presentation
on the stage. So the characters of
Theophrastus are, as it were, dramatis
personae of his time. He shows us
how a given type of man speaks and
acts; the dramatization of his characters
would require scarcely anything
more than stage setting. His portrayal
is not satire, but imitation; not
caricature, but realistic delineation
from life. Moreover,
this description of generic types rather
than of individuals belongs to the
literary fashion of his age. Looked
at from this mimetic point of view,
The Characters of Theophrastus are
historically all the more important,
because our knowledge of Menander,
the “tenth muse,” is so meagre, resting,
as it does, upon scanty Greek
fragments and a few Latin adaptations.
Greek
Notion of
Vice
These thirty sketches at the beginning
of the post-classical age
do not represent, properly
speaking, vices, and yet they
were vices to the mind of the
Greek, who measured his morality
largely by the canons of good form.
Any violation of good taste or breach
of courtesy was morally vicious.
The disposition was to maintain in
close unity the natures of beauty and
goodness (καλοκἀγαθία); moderns
discriminate sharply between the æsthetic
and the moral. The social
virtues of gentle breeding and the
graces of politeness toward their
fellow men had for the classical
Greeks an ethical nature, as is witnessed
in Aristotle’s Ethics. Manners
and morals were not sundered.
What we call a social weakness, or defect,
or boorish crudity, Theophrastus
called a vice. It is necessary to bear
this in mind when one reads the
“moral characters,”[5] as they are called
in the Greek title.
Virtues
not Delineated
The Subject-matter
of the
Sketches
Amongst these characters there are
no virtues, and one may ask: Why
is it that in his portrayal of
types Theophrastus has altogether
omitted any description
of good men? The answer is
not to be found in the supposition
that such characters were originally
included in the work, but have since
perished. The real ground for the
omission is probably to be discovered
in the nature of the conditions under
which Theophrastus wrote. These,
as we have already indicated, were
closely connected with the development
of the New Comedy. The
portrayal of a good character may be
edifying, and may serve the conditions
of tragedy, but it does not suit the
purposes or surroundings of the
comic stage, where the ludicrous
elements of weak, eccentric, or faulty
personalities are the materials employed.
The aim of Theophrastus
is both to amuse and to instruct, but
his instruction is given by exposing
to ridicule certain faults which he
elevates into the striking tangibility
of concrete character. The serious
dignity and excellence of the
good man, while it may suit
the heroic conditions of the
epic, the grave purpose of
tragedy, or the aims of moral allegory,
offers no material for such sketches
as these. Theophrastus has no concern
either with the grossly immoral
or with the helplessly weak; the
former awaken only disgust and hate,
while the latter stir only feelings of
pity, and neither of these emotions
can be kept active in the true art of
comedy. Rightly speaking, the art
of Theophrastus has to do only with
folly or with such eccentricities and
weaknesses as have a humorous
aspect. And it is only moral imperfections
of this sort that we
actually find in The Characters.
Ridicule as
an Instrument
of Instruction
As to the serious function of instruction
which Theophrastus no doubt
aims to combine with that
of entertainment, there is no
more skilful mode of inducing
moral betterment than
the discovery and exposure of the
ludicrous. Most men would rather
incur the charge of immorality than
be exposed to the belittling laugh or
derision of a community; they would
rather be rogues than fools. The
portrait-painter of moral life makes use
of the ludicrous when he desires to
catch the popular attention, and there
is nothing, one may safely say, that
makes society at large prick up its
ears and fall to gossiping so much as
a satire in which some well-known
person is subjected to ridicule.
Moral
Folly
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.