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I mean, 'Les Reflections Morales de Monsieur de la Rochefoucault, and Les Caracteres de la Bruyere': but remember, at the same time, that I only recommend them to you as the best general maps to assist you in your journey, and not as marking out every particular turning and winding that you will meet with. There your own sagacity and observation must come to their aid.
In their own day, Cureau de la Chambre, Coëffeteau and Senault were considered the first of moral philosophers, but there must be few who turn over the pages of the "Usages des Passions" now, whereas the "Caractères" enjoys a perpetual popularity.
We have no evidence that he ever met the former, but he certainly read the latter, and in spite of his eager denial that Pascal or La Rochefoucauld suggested his method to him "I have followed neither of these paths," he says it is impossible to doubt that the example of the "Maximes" had a great deal to do with the form of the "Caractères."
Cette simplicite, cette severite de style, jointes a l'idee de force et de puissance qu'eveillent les dimensions enormes des materiaux employes, sont des caracteres que nous avons deja signales dans les monumens funeraires d'Amrith." From the shrines of the Phoenicians we may now pass to their temples, of which, however, the remains are, unfortunately, exceedingly scanty.
The next morning Michael went feebly down the prison steps, calm and wan, leaning on Wentworth's careful arm, and smiling affectionately at him. Les caractères faibles ne montrent de la décision que quand il s'agit de faire un sottise.
There is one point, however, on which it must be admitted that Addison shows himself much in advance of his French precursor, or rather perhaps we should consider it a proof of the advantage of English society under Anne over French society under Louis XIV. The delicacy and sympathy with which women are treated in the Spectator has no parallel in the "Caractères."
Dans le voisinage de ce petunt-fé est une argile micacée, qui en est peut-être une décomposition: on essaya en ma présence d'en faire de la poterie qui avoit tous les caractères du meilleurs biscuit de porcelaine.»
If we think what the authority of Bossuet had come to be at the time when the "Caractères" was published, how hardly its evangelical science pressed upon the convictions of all Frenchmen, and particularly upon those of men who accepted it as unquestionably as did the author of that book, that there should be no trace of Bossuet on his style is a great tribute to the originality of La Bruyère.
Vergennes therefore sought not only to dictate the final terms of peace but also to say what the American commissioners should and should not demand. Of the latter gentlemen he said that they possessed "caracteres peu maniables!" Among these "illusions" were America's desires in regard to the fisheries and to the western territory.
There is a note of sadness, a mysterious melancholy, which frequently recurs in the "Caractères," and this produces a constant variety in its appeal to the feelings. We find the author amusing himself by detailing the weaknesses of his fellow-beings, but the entertainment they offer him soon leaves him dissatisfied and sad.
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