Something may have been learned also from the other kind of character that is found at its best in modern literature in the seventeenth century, the character derived from Theophrastus, and depicting not the individual but the type.  In France, the one kind led on to the other.  The romances of Scudery prepared the way for the Caracteres ou les Moeurs de ce Siecle of La Bruyere.  When the fashionable portrait of particular persons fell out of favour, there arose in its place the description of dispositions and temperaments; and in the hands of La Bruyere ‘the manners of the century’ were the habits and varieties of human nature.  In England the two kinds existed side by side.  They correspond to the two methods of the drama.  Begin with the individual, but draw him in such a way that we recognize in him our own or others’ qualities; or begin with the qualities shared by classes of people, embody these in a person who stands for the greatest common measure of the class, and finally—­and only then—­let him take on his distinctive traits:  these are methods which are not confined to the drama, and at all stages of our literature have lived in helpful rivalry.  Long before France had her La Bruyere, England had her Hall, Overbury, and Earle.[15] The Theophrastan character was at its best in this country at the beginning of the seventeenth century when the historical character was still in its early stages; and it was declining when the historical character had attained its full excellence.  They cannot always be clearly distinguished, and they are sometimes purposely blended, as in Butler’s character of ‘A Duke of Bucks,’ where the satire on a man of pronounced individuality is heightened by describing his eccentricities as if they belonged to a recognized class.

The great lesson that the Theophrastan type of character could teach was the value of balance and unity.  A haphazard statement of features and habits and peculiarities might suffice for a sketch, but perspective and harmony were necessary to a finished portrait.  It taught that the surest method in depicting character was first to conceive the character as a whole, and then to introduce detail incidentally and in proper subordination.  But the same lesson could have been learned elsewhere.  It might have been learned from the English drama.

[Footnote 1:  North’s Plutarch went into five editions between 1579 and 1631; Thucydides was translated by Hobbes in 1629, and Polybius by Edward Grimeston in 1633; Xenophon’s Anabasis was translated by John Bingham in 1623, and the Cyropaedia by Philemon Holland in 1632; Arthur Golding’s version of Caesar’s Gallic War was several times reprinted between 1565 and 1609; Philemon Holland, the translator-general of the age, as Fuller called him, brought out his Livy in 1600, and his Suetonius in 1606; Sallust was translated by Thomas Heywood in 1608, and by William Crosse in 1629; Velleius Paterculus was ‘rendred English by Sir Robert Le Grys’ in 1632; and by 1640 there had been six editions of Sir Henry Savile’s Histories and Agricola of Tacitus, first published in 1591, and five editions of Richard Grenewey’s Annals and Germany, first published in 1598.  See H.R.  Palmer’s English Editions and Translations of Greek and Latin Classics printed before 1641, Bibliographical Society, 1911.]