Since Theophrastus, this form of character-writing has been cultivated at various times, but it flourished most amongst the minor essayists of the seventeenth century. It is of too slight a nature in itself to make a serious impression on any literary epoch. It suited, however, the temper of the seventeenth century, as the sprightly essay possessing no serious depth and aiming to touch life at many points. The chief imitators of Theophrastus and exponents of character-writing at this time were Bishop Hall, Bishop Earle, Sir Thomas Overbury, Nicholas Breton, Samuel Butler, and La Bruyère. Bishop Hall, contrary to the example of Theophrastus, includes virtues as well as vices in his book entitled _Characters of Vertues and Vices_ (London, 1608). In the general structure of his composition he follows the model of Theophrastus closely. In the description of vices, however, he is much more entertaining than in his sketches of virtues, which are rather homilies and, as the panegyrics of a tedious preacher, provoke one to yawn. Virtue is not fitting material for this species of writing. The brilliant but ill-starred Sir Thomas Overbury, in his _Characters or Witty Descriptions of the Properties of Sundry Persons_ (London, 1614; went through eighteen editions), departs from the usage of Theophrastus in depicting for the most part amusing accidents of character and humorous peculiarities of trades and professions. Bishop Earle, on the other hand, in his _Micro-cosmographie_ (London, 1628) confined his character delineation to _mores hominum_, to ethical types of men as such, in a spirit similar to that of his Greek model. The best known of all the imitators of Theophrastus, if he can be called an imitator at all, is La Bruyère, in his _Les caractères ou les mœurs de ce siècle_ (Paris, 1688). The _caractères_ of La Bruyère are really satires on certain thinly disguised contemporaries of his own and are executed in a spirited method totally different from that of Theophrastus, but to which a translation of _The Characters_ of Theophrastus is added. La Bruyère was a lover of the ancient classics, although his translation or paraphrase was hardly more than a pretext for writing down his own description of the manners of his time. It furnished him, perhaps, the first suggestion and the first impulse to the portrayal of the vices and weaknesses of his contemporaries on a much larger scale than Theophrastus had attempted. [2] “I gather, too, from the undeniable testimony of his [Aristotle’s] disciple, Theophrastus, that there were bores, ill-bred persons, and detractors even in Athens, of a species remarkably corresponding to the English, and not yet made endurable by being classic; and, altogether, with my present fastidious nostril, I feel that I am the better off for possessing Athenian life solely as an inodorous fragment of antiquity.” George Eliot in _Theophrastus Such_, p. 27, Cabinet Edition.