Manners, yet are they easily offended at the public Notice which is taken of ’em.  But tho’ Mr. de la Bruyere might have very good prudential Reasons for not making his Characters too particular, yet those Reasons cannot be urg’d, as a just Plea for his transgressing the Bounds of Characteristic-Justice, by making his Images unnatural.

In every Kind of Writing there is something of an establish’d Nature which is essential to it.  To deviate from this, is to deviate from Nature it self.  Mr. de la Bruyere is not the only French Man who is guilty in this Point.  Others of his Country-Men have committed much the same Fault in Pastoral and Comedy.  Out of a vain Affectation of saying something very extraordinary and remarkable, they have departed from the nature of Things:  They have given to the Simplicity of the Country, the Airs of the Town and Court, introduced upon the Stage Buffoonry and Farce instead of Humour; and by misrepresenting the real Manners of Men, they have turn’d Nature into Grimace.

The main Beauty of Characteristic-Writings consists in a certain Life and Spirit, which the Writer ought to endeavour to keep up, by all the Arts which he is Master of.  Nothing will contribute to this more, than the Observance of a strict Unity in the very Conception of a Character:  For Characters are Descriptions of Persons and Things, as they are such:  And, as [O]Mr. Budgell has very judiciously observ’d, “If the Reader is diverted in the midst of a Character, and his Attention call’d off to any thing foreign to it, the lively Impression it shou’d have made is quite broken, and it loses more than half its Force.”  But if this Doctrine be applied to the Practice of Mr. de la Bruyere, it will find him Guilty.  He sometimes runs his Characters to so great a Length, and mixes in ’em so many Particulars and unnecessary Circumstances, that they justly deserve the Name, rather of Histories than Characters.—­Such is the [P]Article concerning Emira.  ’Tis an artful Description of a Woman’s Vanity, in pretending to be insensible to the Power of Love, merely because she has never been exposed to the Charms of a lovely Person; and there is nothing in this Character, but what is agreeable to Nature, and carried on with a great deal of Humour.  But the many Particulars which Mr. de la Bruyere has drawn into the Composition of it, and which, in Truth, are not essential to the main Design, have quite chang’d the Nature of the Character, and converted it into a History, or rather a little Romance.—­’Tis true, Histories are Pictures as well as Characters; but yet there will ever be as wide a Difference between ’em, as there is between a Picture at full Length, and one in Miniature.

  [O:  Preface to Theophrastus.]
  [P:  C. des Femmes. ad fin.]