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 _Cyropædia_ by Philemon Holland in 1632; Arthur Golding's version of Cæsar'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.] [Footnote 2: 'Thucydides ... in whom (I beleeve with many others) the Faculty of writing History is at the Highest.' Thucydides, 1629, 'To the Readers.'] [Footnote 3: Philemon Holland's Livy, 1600, 'Dedication to Elizabeth.'] [Footnote 4: Sir Henry Savile's Tacitus, 1591, 'A.B. To the Reader.'] [Footnote 5: _Supplement to Burnet's History_, ed. H.C. Foxcroft, p. 451.] [Footnote 6: In 'Reflections upon Several Christian Duties, Divine and Moral, by Way of Essays', printed in _A Collection of several Tracts of Edward Earl of Clarendon_, 1727, pp. 80-1.] [Footnote 7: Letter to the Earl of Bristol, February 1, 1646 (_State Papers_, vol. ii, p. 334). Davila was very well known in England--better, it would appear, than the other three--and was credited with being more than a mere literary model. Clarendon says that from his account of the civil wars of France 'no question our Gamesters learned much of their play'. Sir Philip Warwick, after remarking that Hampden was well read in history, tells us that the first time he ever saw Davila's book it was lent to him 'under the title of Mr. Hambden's _Vade Mecum_' (_Mémoires_, 1701, p. 240). A translation was published by the authority of the Parliament in 1647-8. Translations of Strada, Bentivoglio, and Grotius followed in 1650, 1654, and 1665. Only parts of Thuanus were translated. The size of his history was against a complete version.]