Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles | Page 8

de France; la plupart composés par eux-mêmes_.[12] The introductory defence of the portrait cites Suetonius and Plutarch, and Horace and Montaigne, but also states frankly the true original of the new fashion--'il faut avouer que nous sommes très redevables au Cyrus et à la _Clélie_ qui nous en ont fourni les modèles.' About the same time Antoine Baudeau, sieur de Somaize, brought out his _Grand Dictionnaire des Précieuses_,[13] in which there are many portraits in the accepted manner. The portrait was more than a fashion at this time in France; it was the rage. It therefore invited the satirists. Molière has a passing jest at them in his _Précieuses Ridicules_;[14] Charles Sorel published his _Description de I'isle de la Portraiture et de la ville des Portraits_; and Boileau wrote his _Héros de Roman_.
The effects of all this in England are certainly not obvious. It is quite a tenable view that the English characters would have been no less numerous, nor in any way different in quality, had every Englishman been ignorant of French. But the _mémoires_ and romances were well known, and it was after 1660 that the art of the character attained its fullest excellence. The literary career of Clarendon poses the question in a simple form. Most of his characters, and the best as a whole, were written at Montpelier towards the close of his life. Did he find in French literature an incentive to indulge and perfect his natural bent? Yet there can be no conclusive answer to those who find a sufficient explanation in the leisure of these unhappy years, and in the solace that comes to chiefs out of war and statesmen out of place in ruminating on their experiences and impressions.
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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 Scudéry prepared the way for the _Caractères ou les Moeurs de ce Siècle_ of La Bruyère. 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 Bruyère '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 Bruyère, 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 _Cyrop?dia_ by Philemon Holland in 1632; Arthur Golding's version of C?sar'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