OF JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE. FOR a long time it has generally been taken for granted that our author first saw the light at Dourdan, a small town in the department of Seine-et-Oise, but it has only lately been discovered that he was born in Paris in the month of August 1645. His father, Louis de la BruyÈre, was contrÔleur des rentes de la ville, a sort of town-tax collector, whilst his mother, Elizabeth Hamonin, belonged to a respectable family of Parisian burgesses. His grandfather and great-grandfather on the father's side, declared partisans of the Ligue, were both exiled from France when Henri IV. came to the throne. Perhaps, therefore, the feelings our author entertained for the people may be explained by atavism. A younger brother of his father and our author's godfather, a very wealthy man, and most likely a money-lender, as well as interested in the farming of certain taxes, seems to have produced no favourable impression on his god-son, for the latter always attacks the farmers of the revenue. Jean de la BruyÈre was educated at the Oratorians in Paris, and two years before his father died, in the On the recommendation of Bossuet, La BruyÈre, in 1684, had been appointed teacher of history to the Duke de Bourbon; and remained with the CondÉs for twelve years, until the day of his death. He instructed his pupil not only in history, but also in geography, literature, and philosophy; yet his lessons appear to have produced no great impression, and moreover, they did not last very long, for the youthful duke married in 1685 a daughter of Madame de Montespan and Louis XIV., Why La BruyÈre ever accepted the post of teacher, and afterwards of “gentleman in waiting,” cannot be elucidated at the present time; he may have suffered reverses of fortune, which compelled him to gain a livelihood, but in any case he made the best use of his residence with a noble family, by studying the personages whose vices and ridicules he so admirably portrayed. Living with the CondÉs at their hotel at Paris, at their country seats at Chantilly and Saint Maur, or when they were visiting the Court, at Versailles, Marly, Fontainebleau, or Chambord, amidst the noble and high-born of the land, without being considered one of them, he had the best opportunity of penetrating the characters of those men who strutted about in gaudy trappings, and lorded it over the common herd, whilst soliciting offices or dignities; and for observing that these men were neither superior in feelings nor intellect to the “common people.” All his reflections and observations he arranged under a certain number of headings, called the whole of them “Characters,” and read some passages to a few of his friends, who seem not to have been greatly smitten by them. But this did not discourage La BruyÈre; he translated into French the “Characters” of Theophrastus, a Greek philosopher of the peripatetic school, the successor of Aristotle as the head of the Academy, who seems to have lived until about the year 285 B.C., wrote a prefatory discourse to them, in which he displayed more satirical power than in any of his other It is certain that the publication of the “Characters” in 1688 made its author many enemies, but he calmly pursued the even tenor of his way, and increased the number of his paragraphs during the remaining portion of his life. In 1691 he endeavoured to be elected a member of the French Academy, and to become the successor of Benserade, The speech he delivered at his reception seems not to have given general satisfaction, for La BruyÈre defended the partisans of the classical and attacked those of the modern school, proclaimed Boileau a judicious critic, and hardly admitted Corneille to be the equal of Racine. This speech, preceded by a very satirical preface, But if he had bitter enemies he had also warm friends, amongst whom, besides the illustrious men I have already named, must be reckoned: PhÉlypeaux, the son of de Pontchartrain; the Marquis de Termes; Bossuet, and his nephew the AbbÉ Bossuet; FÉnelon; de Malesieu; Renaudot; de Valincourt; Regnier-Desmarais; La LoubÈre, and Bouhier, nearly all present or future members of the French Academy; the poet Santeuil, and the historian Caton de Court. We hardly know anything for certain of the character of La BruyÈre except by the glimpses we get now and then in his book, or by what is told of him in some of the letters and writings of his friends and enemies. He was unmarried, and seems to have been a man of a modest disposition, fond of his books and his friends, He was scarcely fifty when, according to some reports, he became suddenly deaf; a few days afterwards, during the night of the 10th of May 1696, he died of an attack of apoplexy at the hotel of the CondÉs at Versailles. In 1699 were published some Dialogues sur le QuiÉtisme, attributed to La BruyÈre; but as the editor, the AbbÉ du Pin, admitted he had partly altered them, as well as added some of his own, it is difficult to judge what was the original share of our author in their composition. Only twenty-one authenticated letters of La BruyÈre are in existence, of which seventeen are in the collection of the Duke d'Aumale, at Twickenham. THE AUTHOR
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