[15] Wattʼs “Bibliotheca Britannica.”
[16] According to M. Servois, this edition is mentioned in Lowndesʼ “The Bibliographerʼs Manual,” but I have not been able to find it there.
[17] I imagine I can observe slight traces of La Bruyère in Swiftʼs “Account of the Empire of Japan, written in 1728,” beginning with the words: “Regoge was the 34th emperor of Japan;” in nearly all he wrote for the Tatler; in many of the portraits to be found in the Examiner, for example in the portrait of “Laurence Hyde, late earl of Rochester,” beginning with the words: “The person who now presides at the Council, etc.” Compare also “A Short Character of Thomas, Earl of Wharton;” the “Narrative of Guiscardʼs Examination;” and in the “True Relation of the Intended Riot,” the passage beginning with “the surprising generosity, and fit of housekeeping the German princess has been guilty of this summer.” Swift, moreover, possesses a far more trenchant style than the French author, but I imagine the latter did as much execution, though he used a rapier, whilst Swift employed a bludgeon.
[18] There are few portraits in Shaftesburyʼs “Characteristics;” one of the few exceptions being the portrait of “a notable enthusiast of the itinerant kind,” supposed to be Van Helmont; now and then, however, he seems to have borrowed a few ideas of La Bruyère, as for example, in the second section of “A Letter concerning Enthusiasm,” his remarks on criticism and ridicule. Compare also Shaftesbury in section 2, saying: “The vulgar, indeed, may swallow any sordid jest, any mere drollery or buffoonery; but it must be a finer and truer wit which takes the men of sense and breeding,” to La Bruyèreʼs Chapter “Of Works of the Mind,” §§ 51, 52; the whole of this “Letter” is somewhat like La Bruyère, as in section iv. the crafty beggars, addressing some one they meet in a coach, and of whose quality they are ignorant. In Shaftesburyʼs “Sensus Communis, an Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour,” part 1, section 3, his remarks about true raillery; and the opening of the second part, section 1: “If a native of Ethiopia were of a sudden transported into Europe,” etc., as well as in the “Soliloquy,” the allegory of the love-spent nobleman, and in the “Moralists” the portraits of Palemon, Philocles, and Theocles, and the opening of the third part, “it was yet deep night,” appear somewhat like reminiscences of the French author.
[19] “English Philosophers:” Shaftesbury and Hutcheson. By Thomas Fowler, President of Corpus Christi College: London, 1882.
[20] It will, of course, be impossible to give “chapter and verse” for every passage of the “Spectator” which is faintly like one of La Bruyèreʼs observations, nor do I mean to say that Addison, Steele, and the other contributors to the English paper borrowed literally, and without acknowledgment, from the French author. But what I intended to convey was that, though the humour of the Spectator and its Sir Roger de Coverley, Sir Andrew Freeport, Will Honeycomb, Captain Sentry, &c., are preeminently English, several of the remarks and portraits to be found there are more or less inspired by a careful study of La Bruyère. Compare for example Addisonʼs paper about the opera, Spectator No. 5, to § 47 of La Bruyèreʼs Chapter “Of Works of the Mind;” and the remarks in No. 10 of the Spectator, about the occupations of the female world, and Nos. 144, 156, and No. 265 of the same paper, with some paragraphs of La Bruyèreʼs Chapter “Of Women.” Nos. 45, 57, 77, 88, 98, 100, 129, 193, 236, 238, and 494, appear to me somewhat like several of La Bruyèreʼs paragraphs. The “fair youth” in No. 104 of the “Spectator” is not unlike a reverse picture of La Bruyèreʼs portrait of Iphis in the Chapter “Of Fashion,” page 389, § 14; whilst the remark in No. 226, “Who is the better man for beholding the most beautiful Venus,” &c., reminds one of La Bruyèreʼs remark on obscene “pictures painted for certain princes of the Church,” in his Chapter “Of Certain Customs,” page 409, § 17. Steeleʼs opinions about corporal punishments (Spectator, No. 157) are very much in advance of those of La Bruyère on the same subject; the English author remarks about Louis XIV. (Spectator, No. 180 and 200) should be compared with La Bruyèreʼs glorification of the same monarch.
[21] I have consulted the edition of Dr. R. Southʼs sermons, eleven vols., the first six published by H. Lintot, 1732; the last five by Charles Bathurst, 1744. In the sermon preached at Westminster Abbey, February 22, 1684-85, on Prov. xvi. 33: “The lot is cast into the lap,” &c., the passage about Alexander the Great, in his famed expedition against Darius, the remarks about Hannibal and Cæsar, Agathocles, the potter who became King, Masaniello, and finally what the Doctor says about Cromwell: “and who, that had beheld such a bankrupt beggarly fellow as Cromwell first entering the Parliament House, with a threadbare, torn cloak, and a greasy hat (and perhaps neither of them paid for), could have suspected that in the space of so few years, he should, by the murder of one king, and the banishment of another, ascend the throne, be invested in the royal robes, and want nothing of the state of a king, but the changing of his hat into a crown,” seem like some expressions of La Bruyère. Compare also sermon x.: “Good Intentions no Excuse for Bad Actions,” full of pithy characteristics in word-painting, and his sermons: “The Fatal Imposture and Force of Words,” Isaiah v. 20, “Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil,” which are very La Bruyèresque, and somewhat like several paragraphs of the Chapter “Of Certain Customs.” See also in “The Nature and Measures of Conscience,” a sermon preached Nov. 1, 1691, the portrait of the “potent sinner upon earth,” and a sermon on “Pretence of Conscience no Excuse for Rebellion,” preached before Charles II., 13th January, 1662-63, the anniversary of the “execrable murder” of Charles I., in which South says, “I wonder where the blasphemy lies which some charge upon those who make the kingʼs suffering something to resemble our Saviourʼs.” Compare finally the portrait of the “cozening, lying, perjured shop-keeper” in the second sermon, “On Avarice as contradictory to Religion,” with La Bruyèreʼs tradesman in his Chapter “Of the Gifts of Fortune,” § 43.
[22] The Abbé Claude Fleury, the learned author of the Histoire Ecclésiastique, who succeeded La Bruyère as a member of the French Academy, said of his predecessor in his opening speech: “Il savait les langues mortes et les vivantes.”