IT is a common practice for translators to state to the public that the author they are going to introduce, and whom they sometimes traduce, is one of the greatest men of the age, and that already for a long time a general desire has been felt to make the acquaintance of such a master-mind. It would be an insult to French scholars to speak thus of La BruyÈre, for the merits of his “Characters” are known; but, for the benefit of those who are not so well acquainted with our author, I may state that he is neither so terse, epigrammatic, sublime, nor profound as either Pascal or La Rochefoucauld are, but that he is infinitely more readable, as he is always trying to please his readers, and now and then sacrifices even a certain depth of thought to attain his object.

La BruyÈre takes good care to tell us that he has not imitated any one; Pascal “makes metaphysics subservient to religion, explains the nature of the soul, its passions and vices; treats of the great and serious motives which lead to virtue, and endeavours to make a man a Christian;” La Rochefoucauld's “mind, instructed by his knowledge of society, and with a delicacy equal to his penetration, observed that self-love in man was the cause of all his errors, and attacked it without intermission, wherever it was found; and this one thought, multiplied as it were in a thousand different ways by a choice of words and a variety of expression, has always the charm of novelty.”1 Our author, on the contrary, openly declares: “I did not wish to write any maxims, for they are like moral laws, and I acknowledge that I possess neither sufficient authority nor genius for a legislator.”2

What is the plan and idea of the book of “Characters?” Let La BruyÈre himself answer this: “Of the sixteen chapters which compose it, there are fifteen wholly employed in detecting the fallacy and ridicule to be found in the objects of human passions and inclinations, and in demolishing such obstacles as at first weaken, and afterwards extinguish, any knowledge of God in mankind; therefore, these chapters are merely preparatory to the sixteenth and last, wherein atheism is attacked, and perhaps routed, wherein the proofs of a God, such at least as weak man is capable of receiving, are produced; wherein the providence of God is defended against the insults and complaints of freethinkers.”3

La BruyÈre is not a speculative moralist, but an observer of the manners of men, or, as he likes to call himself a philosopher, and above all a Christian philosopher, such as a friend of Bossuet ought to be. He was the first to make morality attractive, and to paint characters in a literary and delicate manner; he does not dogmatise, and above all shows neither personal hatred nor venom; in other words, to use his own expressions, he “gives back to the public what it lent”4 him.

Underneath the literary man people often look for the man, with all his passion, his likes and dislikes; hence the many “Keys” of the “Characters,” published during the author's lifetime and after his death, in which all kinds of allusions were attempted, and all sorts of hypothetical explanations ventured on.

Of the concocters of the “Keys” La BruyÈre speaks as follows:

“They make it their business, if possible, to discover to which of their friends or enemies these portraits can apply; they neglect everything that seems like a sound remark or a serious reflection, though almost the whole book consists of them; they dwell upon nothing but the portraits or characters, and after having explained them in their own way, and after they imagine they have found out the originals, they publish to the world long lists, or, as they call them, ‘Keys,’ but which are indeed ‘false keys,’ and as useless to them as they are injurious to the persons whose names are deciphered, and to the writer who is the cause of it, though an involuntary one.”5

And yet some of these “Keys” have been of great use to modern commentators, and served to elucidate several traits in the “Characters” which otherwise would not have been discovered.

It would be ridiculous to deny that La BruyÈre never had any particular personage in view in delineating a certain character, but, as he himself says: “If I might be allowed to be a little vain, I should be apt to believe that my “Characters” have pretty well portrayed men in general, since they resemble so many in particular; and since every one thinks he finds there his neighbour or his countryman. I did indeed paint after the life, but did not always mean to paint, in my book of “Characters,” one individual or another. I did not hire myself out to the public to draw only such portraits as should be true and like the originals, for fear that sometimes they would be thought incredible, and appear feigned or imaginary ones. Becoming yet more difficult I went farther, and took one lineament from one person and one from another, and from these several lineaments, which might be found in one and the same person, I drew some likely portraits, studying not so much to please the reader by describing the characters of certain people, or, as the malcontents would say, by satirising them, as to lay before him what faults he ought to avoid, and what examples to follow.”6

Our author, therefore, did not wish to depict individuals, but men in general; for man is the same in all seasons and at all times, and is swayed by the same motives and passions, though they exercise a different influence in various ages, produce different results amongst many races, and do not even act in precisely the same manner in divers centuries, climates, and under heterogeneous circumstances. He had no intention of presenting a series of historical events,7 but of depicting Frenchmen at the end of the seventeenth century as they lived, breathed, and moved; not animated by violent likes and dislikes, as those of the Ligue or the Fronde were, nor filled by the importance of their own overweening individualities. When we read him, we behold in our mind's eye the subdued subjects of Louis XIV., slavishly obeying the “Roi Soleil,” admitting the King can do no wrong, becoming devout to please His Majesty and Madame de Maintenon, inaugurating the reign of courtly hypocrisy, embracing the principle of one religion in one state, and seeing the royal sun gradually decline, and the star of William III. in its ascendancy.

The notes of the present edition are necessary, I imagine, to assist in illustrating the life of a past age, for “no usages or customs are perennial, but they vary with the times.... Nothing can be more opposed to our manners than all these things; but the distance of time makes us relish them.” The “Characters” themselves, as well as the notes, represent a “history of ... times,” when the usual custom was “the selling of offices; that is to say, the power of protecting innocence, punishing guilt, and doing justice to the world, bought with ready money like a farm.” They will also make my readers acquainted with “a great city,” which at the end of the seventeenth century was “without any public places, baths, fountains, amphitheatres, galleries, porticoes, or public walks, and this the capital of a powerful kingdom; they will be told of persons whose whole life was spent in going from one house to another; of decent women who kept neither shops nor inns, yet had their houses open for those who would pay for their admission,8 and where they could choose between dice, cards, and other games, where feasting was going on, and which were very convenient for all kinds of intercourse. They will be informed that people crowded the street only to be thought in a hurry; that there was no conversation nor cordiality, but that they were confused, and, as it were, alarmed by the rattle of coaches which they had to avoid, and which drove through the streets as if for a prize at some race. People will learn, without being greatly astonished, that in times of public peace and tranquillity, the inhabitants went to church and visited ladies and their friends, whilst wearing offensive weapons; and that there was hardly any one who did not have dangling at his side wherewith to kill another person with one thrust.”9

La BruyÈre, though a shrewd observer, has the daring of an innovator, but always remains very guarded in his language. When now and then his feelings get the better of him, he expresses his opinions like a man, and attacks the vices of his age with a boldness which none of his contemporaries has surpassed. Nearly the whole of his chapter “Of the Gifts of Fortune” is an attack on the financiers; in the chapter “Of the Great,” he certainly does not flatter the courtiers, whilst he himself never pretends to be anything else but “a plebeian,”10 and almost always sides with his own class. If he flatters the king, it is because he thinks him necessary to the state, and, perhaps, also because he wishes to have a defender against the many enemies his book had raised up. He was, moreover, very cautious, and in the endless alterations he made in the various editions of the “Characters,”11 published during his lifetime, he but seldom envenomed the barb he had shot, or boasted of it if he did so.12 Though he touched on all the passions of men, he did not set one class against another, a task which was left to the so-called philosophical authors of the eighteenth century.

The style of La BruyÈre has been praised by competent judges for its conciseness and picturesqueness; he always employs the right word in the right place, is correct in his expressions, varied in his thoughts, highly imaginative, and, therefore, maybe called a perfect literary artist.13 A few words and expressions, which I have noticed, have become antiquated, or have changed their meaning, but the “Characters” will still, I think, be read for many ages, be found very entertaining, and, what cannot be said of the works of every classical French author, will be better liked the more they are read. If sometimes one of the characters is portrayed with too many details, it is because it is taken not from one man, but composed of a series of shrewd and clever observations made on different personages; and hence our author calls them “Characters,” and not “portraits.”

Since La BruyÈre's death many editions of the “Characters” have appeared; I have collated and compared the best of them, amongst which those edited by Mons. G. Servois and Mons. A. Chassang have laid me under great obligations. I am indebted to these two editions for many of the notes, and for a few to those of MM. Destailleur and HÉmardinquer.

Several imitations of the “Characters” have also been published, amongst others a Petit la BruyÈre, ou CaractÈres et moeurs des enfants de ce siÈcle, and a Le la BruyÈre des domestiques, prÉcÉdÉ de considÉrations sur PÉtat de domesticitÉ en gÉnÉral, both by that voluminous author, Madame de Genlis, a Le la BruyÈre des jeunes gens, and a similar work for jeunes demoiselles, which attract the attention by the oddity of their titles.

La BruyÈre's “Characters” have also been translated several times into English.

1. A translation seems to have been published in London as early as 1698.14

2. The “Characters of Theophrastus,” translated from M. BruyÈre's French version by Eustace Budgell, Esq., London, 1699; and another edition of the same work published in 1702.15

3. The “Characters of Theophrastus,” together with the Characters of the Age, by La BruyÈre, with a prefatory discourse and key: London, 1700.16

4. The “Characters, or the Manners of the Age,” by Monsieur de la BruyÈre of the French Academy, made English by several hands, with the “Characters of Theophrastus,” translated from the Greek, and a prefatory discourse to them, by Monsieur de la BruyÈre, the third edition, corrected throughout, and enlarged, with the Key inserted in the margin: London, Leach, 1702.

5. The Works of Monsieur de la BruyÈre, containing: I. The Moral Characters of Theophrastus; II. The Characters, or the Manners of the Present Age; III. M. BruyÈre's Speech upon his Admission into the French Academy; IV. An Account of the Life and Writings of M. BruyÈre, by Monsieur Coste, with an original Chapter of the Manner of Living with Great Men, written after the method of M. BruyÈre, by N. Rowe, Esq. This translation seems to have been very successful, for the sixth edition, the only one I have seen, was published in two volumes in 1713: London, E. Curll.

6. The Moral Characters of Theophrastus, by H. Gaily: London, 1725.

7. The Works of M. de la BruyÈre, in two volumes, to which is added the Characters of Theophrastus, also The Manner of Living with Great Men, written after the manner of BruyÈre, by N. Rowe, Esq.: London, J. Bell, 1776.

I have consulted the edition mentioned in No. 2, and printed in 1702, in which the attacks of La BruyÈre on William III. in the Chapter “Of Opinions,” §§ 118 and 119, are omitted; the sixth edition of the “Characters,” given in No. 5, and published in 1713; and the edition referred to in No. 7.

In the “Advertisement concerning the new edition” of 1713, printed with the “Characters,” it is stated, “We procured the last English edition to be compared verbatim with the last Paris edition (which is the ninth), and ... all the Supplemental Reflections ... we got translated, and added to this present edition; and that it might be as complete as possible, we have not scrupled to translate even those parts which at first sight may perhaps disoblige some who have a just veneration for the memory of our Glorious Deliverer, the late King William.” La BruyÈre's speech upon his admission into the French Academy was in this edition “made English by M. Ozell.”

In the edition of 1776, the “parts” reflecting on William III. are again omitted. It greatly differs from the one of 1713, and is dedicated to the Right Honourable Henry, Earl of Lincoln, Auditor of the Exchequer, Knight of the most noble order of the Garter, &c. &c.

Many faults may be found in the old translations, but I have endeavoured to amend them; and I never scrupled to adopt any expressions, turn of thought, or even page of any or every translation of my predecessors, whenever I found I could not improve upon them.

Translations of the “Characters” have appeared in several other languages; four of these were published in German, the last one printed in 1872, whilst already the final chapter of La BruyÈre's book “Of Freethinkers” had come out in a German dress in 1739; moreover, La BruyÈre's book has been translated twice into Italian, once into Spanish, and once into Russian.

The imitations of the “Characters” into English are—

1. “The English Theophrastus, or the Manners of the Age, being the modern Characters of the Court, the Town, and the City,” by Boyer: London, 1692 and 1702.

2. The Chapter “Of the Manner of Living with Great Men,” written after the method of M. BruyÈre, by N. Rowe, mentioned already.

3. Imitations of the Characters of Theophrastus: London, 1774.

I imagine that the author of the “English Theophrastus” was M. Abel Boyer, the compiler of the well-known dictionary, born at Castres in 1664, who fled to England at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and died at Chelsea in 1729.

The direct influence of La BruyÈre's writings on English literature is not easily to be traced. Swift may, possibly, have studied him, though he never mentions him,17 and so may, perhaps, Anthony Cooper, third earl of Shaftesbury,18 “who spoke French so fluently, and with so perfect an accent, that in France he was often mistaken for a native.”19 I venture to think that Addison and Steele were also acquainted with our Frenchman;20 but the English author who in expression, turn of thought, art of delineating character, and in his mixture of seriousness and familiarity, is most like him, is a doctor of divinity, R. South, Prebendary of Westminster, and Canon of Christ Church, and yet he wrote before La BruyÈre, and therefore cannot have imitated him.21

I am not aware La BruyÈre knew English, though his successor at the French Academy states that he spoke several foreign languages;22 he was well acquainted with German, Italian, and I think also Spanish; nor do I know if any of Dr. South's sermons were published separately before La BruyÈre wrote, and if he, therefore, could have seen them. I should imagine he never read any of them.

Six portraits, which adorn these volumes, have been specially etched for this edition by M. B. Damman, whilst the portrait of La BruyÈre, and the vignettes at the head of each chapter, have been drawn and etched by M. V. Foulquier.

In the biographical memoir of La BruyÈre, I have only stated what is known of him, which is very little.

HENRI VAN LAUN.