THE POMPOUS MAN (XXIV.) 66 THE BRAGGART (XXIII.) 68 THE OLIGARCH (XXVI.) 71 THE BACKBITER (XXVIII.) 74 THE AVARICIOUS MAN (XXX.) 77 THE LATE LEARNER (XXVII.) 81 THE VICIOUS MAN (XXIX.) 84 [1] Numerals in parenthesis give the corresponding numbers of the characters as published in the edition of the Leipziger Philologische Gesellschaft. _Introduction_ “What stories are new?” asks Thackeray, subtle observer of men. [Sidenote: _The Antiquity of Modern Character-Types_] [Sidenote: _Accidental and Essential Types_] “All types of all characters march through all fables: tremblers and boasters; victims and bullies: dupes and knaves; long-eared Neddies, giving themselves leonine airs; Tartuffes wearing virtuous clothing; lovers and their trials, their blindness, their folly and constancy. With the very first page of the human story do not love, and lies too, begin? So the tales were told ages before Æsop; and asses under lions’ manes roared in Hebrew; and sly foxes flattered in Etruscan; and wolves in sheep’s clothing gnashed their teeth in Sanscrit, no doubt. The sun shines to-day as he did when he first began shining; and the birds in the tree overhead, while I am writing, sing very much the same note they have sung ever since there were finches. There may be nothing new under and including the sun; but it looks fresh every morning, and we rise with it to toil, hope, scheme, laugh, struggle, love, suffer, until the night comes and quiet. And then will wake Morrow and the eyes that look on it; and so _da capo_.” All this is very true; the changes which may be observed in human nature are small, and the old types of Theophrastus are all about us nowadays and really look and act much the same as they did to the eyes of the ancient Peripatetic. Offices and institutions have somewhat changed, and many character-types due to new vocations have come into being since then, _e.g._ the newsboy, the bishop, the reporter, the hotel-clerk, and the jockey. But these are only accidents of civilization, and the peculiarities of office or the type or professional character do not touch the vital essence of human nature, although they may modify its expression. When one speaks of a coward, one means an intrinsic quality in human kind which is essentially the same whether found in a hoplite or in a modern infantryman, but which may express itself differently in the two cases. The types described by Theophrastus are types of such intrinsic qualities, and his pictures of ancient vices and weaknesses show men much as we see them now. They are not merely types of professions or callings. [Sidenote: _Similarity between Greek and Modern Types_] [Sidenote: _The Flatterer_] [Sidenote: _The Officious Man_]