JOHN BUXTON

B OUT I 599 John Hoskyns gave to a young gentlemanofthcTem- ple a copy of Sidney’s Arcudiu, I 5 9 , as an example of good ~ n g - A lish prose, and he accompanied the gifi with a tract, mm-m

f.r Speech and Style, intended to instruct the young lawyer how to use the book in order to perfect his own style.’ In the tract Hoskyns I-ef;rs to various influences on Sidney’s own work, among them the Chmaders of Theophrastus: “I thinke alsoe that he had much helpe out of Theophrasti imagines.” And again he writes of Sidney “reading Aristotle and The+

In Sidney’s day only the fmt twenty-three Characters had been pub- lished. The edition of G. B. Camozzi, published at Venice in 1552, was the first to include so many and the number was not increased until 1599 when Isaac Casaubon added five more in his second edition of Themphrastus. Camozzi’s edition was the source for the edition published by Henri Estienne at Paris in 1557. and for all other editions published in Sidney’s

Thus any direct iduence on Sidney must be restricted to Char- acters I to xxm. This is impomt since two of the Characters which might otherwise have seemed most likely to interest Sidney, XXIV ‘~m-=(Ar- rogance) and xxv AcAiu (Cowardice) cannot have been known to him, so that his portrayal of the arrogant h a x i u s or of the cowardly Dametas and Clinias can owe nothing to these. This is the more remarkable in that the description of Clinias in Book rn seems rather close to Theopkastus’ description of the Coward.

phrastus.’’

I. L. B. Osborn, The Life. Letters, and Writings ofJohn Hoskyns, 1566-1638 (bndon. 1937).

2. BEOaPACTOT XAPAKTHPEC, ed R. C. Jebb and J. E. Sandys (London, rm), pp. 103-66.

p. 165-

E 79 1

80 IZylisli Litcrory Ki*iinissnricc

I-lowcvcr, tlic iiiflucncc of Thcophrastus was not solcly dependent on tlic rccovcry niid publication of tlic tcxt of dic Characters. The work had froiii tlic first bccii popular with tcnchcrs of rlictoric, and in epitomes and iiiiitntioiis Iinct bccii known throughout thc Middle Agcs. So it is that Tlioiiins Wilson, in T h Artc ofRIictoriqrrc, 1553, has an entirely Theo- plirnstnii Charnctcr of a Covctous Man, and otlicr examples of the method might bc quotcd from tlic 1560’s. Sidney no doubt discovered t h i s rhetori- cal tradition at scliool or at Oxford; later, during his travels on the Con- tincnt, Hcnri Esticnne, who had publishcd the Greek text of the Charuc- ten, may liavc directed Sidney’s attention to the source of that tradition. It would bc just like him, for almost as soon as he met Sidney, in the spring of 1573, he presented him with a book of Greek maxims transcribed in his own liiuid, wli& shows that he already recognized, and wished to en- courage, Sidney’s knowledge of Greek. And he continued to foster Sid- ney’s Greek studies in a variety of ways, in 1576 dedicating to him his im- portant edition of the Greek New Testament, in 1578 sending him a copy of his great edition of Plato, and in 1581 dedicating to him his edition of the works of two late Greek historians, Herodian and Zosimus? We do not know what the book of maxims contained, but it would be rather sur- prising if Estienne &led to draw Sidney’s attention to the Charucters.

Theophrastus’ method is “to consider a quality as embodied in a repre- sentativc man, and to describe it by a simple enumeration of actions which th is man will d0.”4 The qualities which he selects are not so much vices as social failings: he describes5 a man who falls short in some way-through garrulity, officiousness, lack of tact-of the standards of behavior expected of a reasonable man in civilized society. The Characters are thus comic or, to some degree, satirical: they affected the New Comedy of Menander and the Comedy of Humors of Ben Jonsom6 The code of social behavior which Sidney accepted was not much different &om that implied by Theophrastus, though Theophrasnui did not concern himself with the manners of women. In the Arcadia Musidorus says to Pyrocles, “Remem- ber (for I know you know it) that if we will be men, the reasonable part of our sod is to have absolute commandment.” Theophrastus, the pupil of Aristotle and his successor as head of the Peripatetic School, assumes that

3. John Buton, Sir Philip Sidilpy and the English Renaissance, 2nd ed. (London. 1964). pp. 56-39.

4. Jebb and Sandy, p. 22. 5. Cf. Cicero, Topica, 22.83. “Descriptio,. quam Graeci Xapamrijpa vocant.” 6. Cf. jonson’s Characters of the persons m Every Mart Our oJHir Humour, 1600, the title

page of wluch includes the phrase “With the severall Character of every Person.”

John Buxton 81 his readers know t h i s too: they will understand that the reasonable is neither taciturn nor loquacious, neither avaricious nor extravagant, neither rash nor cowardly, but rather one who will keep to the golden mean. a tone was perfectly acceptable in the Renaissance.

Ifthen we accept Hoskyns’ invitation to look for the influence of Thea- phrastus in the Arcadia we must look for it in comic or satiric descriptions of character. And fortunately an elaborate index to the Arcadia, made by someone fimiliar with the English imitators of Theophrastus in the early seventeenth century, survives.7 “Were ye choyce prices gathered out and sorted generally by themselves,” the compiler claims, %ey would make as good a booke of Charecters as is yett ex tan^" Whoever made the index clearly took a view of the Arcadia very similar to that of John Hoskyns, who was writing some years before Joseph Hall published his Churucters of Vertues and Vm, 1608, which is usually regarded as the first lkglish book of Characters. The page rderences in the manuscript index could refer to any edition of the Arcdiu &om 1621 to 1662, but it was most probably compiled in the early 1640’s. It is written in the same hand in a similar un- bound octavo booklet as a poem, A Draught ofsir Phillip Sidnqts Arcadi~, which can be dated on internal evidence to about 1644.~ The index is in two parts, the b t going through the book page by page, episode by epi- sode, to form a detailed “Table of Contents,” while the second part lists proper names of persons and places in alphabetical order of the initial let- ter. (Within each letter the names are not in alphabetical order: thus the first name in t h i s part of the index is Atgalus, the second Amphialus, and so oa) This second part of the index is headed “A Clavis opening the names and referring to the Charrecters.” Under the name of each person there is first (where appropriate) a Greek etymology, and then an analytic subdivision of more or less complexity.

Miso. hatred, from piuos . odium. Her Chmucter. lib.I.pag.Io.kb.z.pag.roo.16~.~63. Her chiding Philoch. kb.2.pag.113.118.137.138.193. Her eis.lib.z.pag.1p. Her tale.lib. pag.151.1~2. [Gc] Her gesture and clownish discourse lib.z.pag.1~~160.kb.3.pag.z3~.~36.~50. Her Churuter. lib.3.pag.1~5-157. [sic] Her iedousie of Dunuw.eodloc.

7. MS in the writer’s posseaFion. 8. Published by the present writer in Hisforicul Essuys, 2600-1750, Presented to David Ogg,

ed. H. E. Bell and R. L. Ollard (London, 1963), pp. -77.

82 Etglish Literary Rcrinissance Her rayling wth Danie1clr.Lib.~.pag.~~E.~~~.lib.4.pag.40~.4o6.4~. Her imprisonment by P/ii/anar.lib.+prg.416.Lib.s.pag.474.

Tlic compiler, like any good disciplc of Theophrastus, was as much inter- ested in the description of character as in its presentation through speech and action, and the emphasized entry under Character recurs throughout the index.

The cowardice of Dametas cannot derive from Theophrastus, but his boorishness may. In Book 11 when Dametas and Miso find Philodea, Dametas observes “that he would not deale in other bodies matters; but for his pan, hee did not l i e , that maids should once stirre out of their fathers houses, but if it were to mike a cow, or save a chicken from a kites foot, or some such other matter of importance.” Theophrastus’ boor simi- larly “shows surprise and wonder at nothing else. but will stand s t i l l and gaze when he sets an ox or an ass or a goat in the streets.”9 And Dametas’ behavior in the first eclogues is described in very Theophrastan terms: “Dametas, who much disdained (since his late authority) his old Com- panions, brought his servant Dorus in good acquaintance and allowance of them, and himselfe stood like a directer over them, with nodding, gaping, winking, or stamping, shewing how hee did like or mislike those things hee did not understand.” (This passage is one of those indexed for Dametas under “His Charucter.”) Again, the character of Chremes, “the rich Mizer” as the index calls him, is defined in the manner of Theophrastus though the relevant Character (XXX A1uxXpoK&pha, Avarice) was not published und 1786.

The influence of Theophrastus on Sidney must not be sought in precise echoes of the Iprue, sequur kind derided by Dr. Johnson in the preface to his edition of Shakespeare’s plays (1765). but in the method by which he describes a comic character, such as Dametas, Miso, or Mopsa, or a char- acter whom he wishes to satirize, such as Anaxius or Clinias or Chremes. It is here that Hoskyns and the anonymous indexer a generation later ob- served traces of Theophrastus. The importance of the Character books in the development of the English essay has long been recognized; perhaps it is time to consider their relevance to the early history of the novel to which the Arcudiu gave so vital an impulse.

NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD

9. Jebb and Sandys, p. 87.