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Updated: May 9, 2025
Such was in England the fortune of the stage play. At a time when Chaucer was writing character-sketches that were really dramatic, the formal drama consisted of rude miracle plays that had no literary quality whatever. These were taken from the Bible, and acted at first by the priests as illustrations of Scripture history and additions to the church service on feasts and saints' days.
Two or three of the party were brilliant narrators, and delighted us with accounts of personal experiences, quaint character-sketches, novels in a nutshell. One of the guests was, without exception, the most ready-witted man I ever met.
Especially in the early part of the book, we are constantly drawn away front the story by delightful little essays, sometimes read to us by the author himself, sometimes wrought into the conversations by playful anecdotes, by effective character-sketches, and vivid scene and scenery-paintings. They do not always materially help forward the story, nor do they always hinder it.
During this period, while the South excelled in the production of statesmen, orators, trained politicians, great judges, and brilliant lawyers, it produced almost no literature, that is, no indigenous literature, except a few poems and a few humorous character-sketches; its general writing was ornately classic, and its fiction romantic on the lines of the foreign romances.
A still more modern instance of the kind is George Eliot's Impressions of Theophrastus Such, which derives its title from the Greek philosopher, Theophrastus, whose character-sketches were the original models of this kind of literature. The most popular character-book in Europe in the 17th century was La Bruyère's Caractères. But this was not published till 1688.
Yet it cannot be by accident that an undefinable air of the old-fashioned clings to that most delightful of all Chaucer's character-sketches, the "Knight" of the "Canterbury Tales."
It is a collection of stories, of ana, of quotations in verse and prose, of original matter, of character-sketches, of small adventures, of table-talk, and of other things besides, if other things, indeed, there be. If you know Patchwork by heart you are well equipped. It is intensely original throughout, and never more original than when its matter is borrowed.
He was at his best in satirical character-sketches, such as the brilliant portraits in this poem of Shaftesbury, as the false counselor Ahitophel, and of the Duke of Buckingham as Zimri.
The incomparable little conversation scenes and character-sketches scattered among the Introductions to the novels especially the history of Crystal Croftangry show that he could perfectly well have dispensed with all out-of-the-way incident had he chosen. But, as a rule, he did not so choose: and, in the majority of cases, he preferred to take his out-of-the-way incident from historical sources.
Young men with knobbly and bulging foreheads were turned on by their editors to write character-sketches of the two generals. All was stir and activity. Meanwhile, those who look after London's public amusements were busy with telephone and telegraph. The quarrel had taken place on Friday night. It was probable that, unless steps were taken, the battle would begin early on Saturday.
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