less and appealing. As for the harsh satiric
animus of a character-writer like Butler, it is totally alien to Gally,
who would chide good-naturedly, so as "not to seem to make any Attacks
upon the Province of Self-Love" in the reader. "Each Man," he writes,
"contains a little World within himself, and every Heart is a new
World." The writer should understand and appreciate, not ridicule,
an individual's uniqueness.
Of course, the character as Theophrastus wrote it described the type,
not the particular person. Gally, who sets up Theophrastus as his model,
apparently fails to realize that a "humourist" like Sir Roger verges on
individuality. Indeed, while discussing the need for writers to study
their own and other men's passions, he emphasizes that "without a
Knowledge of these Things, 'twill be impossible ever to draw a Character
so to the Life, as that it shall hit one Person, and him only." Here
Gally might well be talking of the Clarendon kind of portrait. If a
character is "one Person, and him only," he is no longer a type, but
somebody peculiarly himself.
Gally, then, is not as Theophrastan as he professes to be. True, he
harks back to Theophrastus in matters of style and technique. And he
does not criticize him, as does La Bruyere,[6] for paying too much
attention to a man's external actions, and not enough to his "Thoughts,
Sentiments, and Inclinations." Nevertheless his mind is receptive to
the kind of individuated characterization soon to distinguish the
mid-eighteenth century novel. The type is still his measuring-stick, but
he calibrates it far less rigidly than a Rymer analyzing Iago or Evadne.
A man can be A Flatterer or A Blunt Man and still retain a private
identity: this private identity Gally recognizes as important. Gally's
essay thus reflects fundamental changes in the English attitude toward
human nature and its literary representation.
Alexander H. Chorney
Fellow, Clark Library
Los Angeles, California
Notes to the Introduction
1. _The Characters, Or The Manners of the Age. By Monsieur De La
Bruyere of the French Academy. Made English by several hands. With the
Characters of Theophrastus..._ 1699. 2 vols.
2. Isaac Casaubon's Latin edition of Theophrastus appeared in 1592 and
was reprinted frequently during the seventeenth century.
3. Eustace Budgell, _The Moral Characters of Theophrastus_ (1714),
Preface, sig. a5.
4. _Ibid._, sig. a6 verso.
5. For a full a
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