At the heels of the "Character" came the periodical essay of Addison and Steele.

Their interest in contemporary types was of the same quality as Earle's or Hall's, but they went a different way to work.

Where these compressed and cultivated a style which was staccato and epigrammatic, huddling all the traits of their subject in short sharp sentences that follow each other with all the brevity and curtness of items in a prescription, Addison and Steele observed a more artistic plan.

They made, as it were, the prescription up, adding one ingredient after another slowly as the mixture dissolved.

You are introduced to Sir Roger de Coverley, and to a number of other typical people, and then in a series of essays which if they were disengaged from their setting would be to all intents a novel and a fine one, you are made aware one by one of different traits in his character and those of his friends, each trait generally enshrined in an incident which illustrates it; you get to know them, that is, gradually, as you would in real life, and not all in a breath, in a series of compressed statements, as is the way of the character writers.