Character-writing was of Greek origin. It had its beginnings in the “ of Theophrastus, who lived between 370 and 285 B. C. Popularized by Casaubon's Latin translation of 1592, these Ethical Characters furnished a model of which the English writers were prompt to avail themselves. The first of the English writers to be influenced by Theophrastus was Joseph Hall. His Characterisms of Virtues and Vices appeared in 1608, and was translated into French in 1619. In France it contributed, along with Casaubon's translation, to make Character-writing only less popular than in England. Chief among those who felt its influence was Jean de la Bruyère, whose book, Les Caractères De Theophraste, Traduits Du Grec; avec Les Caractères ou les Mœurs de ce Siècle, was published in 1688. This, in turn, influenced the further development of English Character-writing, particularly in the form that it came to assume in the work of the periodical essayists of the eighteenth century, through which it finally merged into the novel. To point out the nature and extent of this influence of La Bruyère upon the contributors to the Spectator is the purpose of this article.

In his German Culture and Christianity, London, 1882, Joseph Gostwick says apologetically of Schiller: “As regards his unbelief, he must be classed with the more respectable rationalists.” And of his middle life he says: “The poet, naturally a proud man, learned to look down with contempt on everything that in his boyhood had been believed.” And as a sort of final judgment: “When the saying is once more repeated, that for Schiller independent culture takes the place of religion, the truth of the conclusion is obvious, though it may require some qualification.” This qualification is found in the statement at the end of the chapter on Schiller, that “there may be found passages in his later prose writings to support our opinion that near the close of his life he was led to think with reverence of religion.” This judgment of Gostwick's may stand as a fair sample of the conservative view of Schiller's religion, and this by one who is partial to the poet and would fain count him as a fellow-believer.

The history of the pastoral is a long history; perhaps no other manner of writing has exerted so wide an influence or held so deep a fascination. The words pastoral, idyllic, Arcadian still move us; they surround us with an atmosphere of charm; they encourage those moments that are unstrenuous; they recall us to an early and almost outgrown freshness of feeling. Yet, oftentimes, the poets of the Golden Age are regarded as mere literary alchemists by critics who cannot yield themselves to genuine poetic illusion, failing to recognize in that distant world the embodiment of really existent beauty. Pastoral has, in many cases, justly been a word of reproach and ridicule, a synonym for insipid creations, unreal in feeling, affected in style; but whether good art or bad it has appeared, Proteus-like, in numerous forms. Music, sculpture, and painting have used the pastoral motif; the Good Shepherd has been for twenty centuries, in the Christian church, a tender symbol of Divine Care; and in literature the pastoral has never really faded away, but has come back again and again with persistent appeal. It seems, therefore, that there must be in it some inherent beauty, some elemental greatness which deserves investigation and acknowledgment.

In 1775 Tyrwhitt, speaking of the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women, suggested that “it is possible that le dit de la fleur de lis et de la Marguerite by Guillaume de Machaut … and the Dittié de la flour de la Margherite by Froissart … might furnish us with the true key to those mystical compliments, which our poet has paid to the Daysie-flower.” This suggestion of Tyrwhitt has been echoed and reëchoed by succeeding editors and commentators, but has never been seriously put to the test. Godwin, in his Life of Chaucer, called attention to the story told in Froissart's Dittié, of the birth of the daisy from the tears shed by Herés on the grave of Cepheï, but did not connect it with the transformation of Alcestis into the daisy. Mr. Skeat, in his discussion of the Prologue in the Oxford Chaucer, pointed out three specific passages in Froissart and Machault which are more or less closely parallel with certain lines of Chaucer. Vollmer added to Mr. Skeat's observations a reference to the balade at the close of Froissart's Paradys d'Amours. Beyond similar instances to these, no examination has apparently been made of Chaucer's indebtedness, in the Prologue, to the poems referred to. Yet such an examination seems to come very near doing just what Tyrwhitt suggested it might do, besides throwing welcome light on certain other problems connected with the poem.