The main Beauty of _Characteristic-Writings_ consists in a certain
Life and Spirit, which the Writer ought to endeavour to keep up, by
all the Arts which he is Master of. Nothing will contribute to this
more, than the Observance of a strict Unity in the very Conception of
a Character: For Characters are Descriptions of Persons and Things, as
they are such: And, as [O]Mr. _Budgell_ has very judiciously observ’d,
“If the Reader is diverted in the midst of a Character, and his
Attention call’d off to any thing foreign to it, the lively Impression
it shou’d have made is quite broken, and it loses more than half its
Force.” But if this Doctrine be applied to the Practice of Mr. _de la
Bruyere_, it will find him Guilty. He sometimes runs his Characters
to so great a Length, and mixes in ’em so many Particulars and
unnecessary Circumstances, that they justly deserve the Name, rather
of Histories than Characters.--Such is the [P]Article concerning
_Emira_. ’Tis an artful Description of a Woman’s Vanity, in pretending
to be insensible to the Power of Love, merely because she has never
been exposed to the Charms of a lovely Person; and there is nothing in
this Character, but what is agreeable to Nature, and carried on with a
great deal of Humour. But the many Particulars which Mr. _de la
Bruyere_ has drawn into the Composition of it, and which, in Truth,
are not essential to the main Design, have quite chang’d the Nature of
the Character, and converted it into a History, or rather a little
Romance.--’Tis true, Histories are Pictures as well as Characters; but
yet there will ever be as wide a Difference between ’em, as there is
between a Picture at full Length, and one in Miniature.

[O: Preface to _Theophrastus_.]
[P: C. des Femmes. ad fin.]