[Sidenote: _The Earliest Attempt at Character-writing_]
It is largely for this reason that these slight sketches are here produced in English, exhibiting as they do, when we compare them with what we see around us, the essential identity of human nature in ages widely separated from each other in time and manners.[2] There is, furthermore, an accidental interest in the work of Theophrastus, due to the fact that it is the first recorded attempt at systematic character-writing. Characters, to be sure, are portrayed in Homer and in the tragedians, but they are incidental to the narrative or to the dramatic plot, whereas in Theophrastus the business is with the delineation of a character as such.
[Sidenote: _The Influence of Theophrastus_]
He tells us what a man does, simply as an illustration of what he is, and this method of writing had a very intimate bearing on the evolution of the New Comedy under the leadership of Menander. There is a tradition, in fact, that Theophrastus was the teacher of Menander, who in turn furnished models for Terence in his delineation of conventional dramatic types. The influence of Theophrastus was further directly and potently exerted on the so-called character-writers of the seventeenth century in England and France. The simple methods of these character-writers and their uninvolved sketches were succeeded by the more elaborate art of the novelists, in whose works individuals rather than types are described by exhibiting their development in long periods of time and under great diversity of circumstances.
[Sidenote: _Theophrastus Chosen by Aristotle to be President of the Lyceum_]