[5] Preface to La Bruyèreʼs “Speech upon his Admission as a Member of the French Academy, June 15, 1693.”
[6] Preface to La Bruyèreʼs “Speech upon his Admission as a Member of the French Academy, June 15, 1693.”
[7] Sir Walter Scott, in his introduction to Drydenʼs “Absalom and Achitophel,” says: “He who collects a gallery of portraits disclaims, by the very act of doing so, any intention of presenting a series of historical events.”
[8] It was the custom in Paris, at the time La Bruyère wrote, for any gentleman or lady to leave part of their gains on the table, to pay, as it were, for the cards; hence the allusion.
[9] All the passages on pages 15 and 16 between inverted commas (“ ”) have been taken from La Bruyèreʼs “Prefatory Discourse concerning Theophrastus.”
[10] See the Chapter “Of the Great,” page [230], § 25. When, in the Chapter “Of Certain Customs,” page [408], § 14, he speaks of his “descent from a certain Godfrey de la Bruyère,” he does so jocularly.
[11] Compare “Preface,” page iv., “I did not hesitate,” till page v., “and more regular.”
[12] In his “Introduction to the Reader,” printed before “Absalom and Achitophel,” and published in 1681, Dryden openly admits: “I have laid in for those, by rebating the satire, where justice would allow it, from carrying too sharp an edge. They who can criticise so weakly as to imagine I have done my worst, may be convinced at their own cost that I can write severely with more ease than I can write gently.” La Bruyère would never have ventured to speak so plainly, and this difference between the French and English author seems very characteristic of the two nations. Compare also Drydenʼs poetic delineation of Buckingham as Zimri to La Bruyèreʼs portrait of Lauzun as Straton.
[13] Perhaps no author is more quoted in Littréʼs Dictionnaire de la langue française than La Bruyère is.
[14] M. G. Servois, in his bibliographic Notice of La Bruyèreʼs works, &c., vol. iii., first part, quotes a passage from the London correspondent of the Histoire des Ouvrages des savants (see page [19], note 68) in affirmation of this statement, and seems to think this translation to have been the first edition of the one mentioned in No. 4.