t. 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 Bruyere 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 Bruyere 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 Bruyere 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 Whi