CORRESPONDING SECRETARY

EDNA C. DAVIS, _Clark Memorial Library_


* * * * *

INTRODUCTION


Henry Gally's _A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings_, here
reprinted, is the introductory essay to his translation of _The Moral
Characters of Theophrastus_ (1725). Of Gally's life (1696-1769) little
is known. Apparently his was a moderately successful ecclesiastical
career: he was appointed in 1735 chaplain-in-ordinary to George II. His
other published works consist of sermons, religious tracts, and an
undistinguished treatise on the pronunciation of Greek.

His essay on the character, however, deserves attention because it is
the first detailed and serious discussion by an Englishman of a literary
kind immensely popular in its day. English writers before Gally had, of
course, commented on the character. Overbury, for example, in "What A
Character Is" (_Sir Thomas Overbury His Wife..._ 1616) had defined the
character as "wit's descant on any plain-song," and Brathwaite in his
Dedication to _Whimzies_(1631) had written that character-writers must
shun affectation and prefer the "pith before the rind." Wye Saltonstall
in the same year in his Dedicatory Epistle to _Picturae Loquentes_ had
required of a character "lively and exact Lineaments" and "fast and