Matches of eloquence are made at the very foot of the altar, and in the presence of the mysteries. He who listens sits in judgment on him who preaches, to condemn or to applaud, and is no more converted by the discourse which he praises than by that which he pronounces against. The orator pleases some, displeases others, and has an understanding with all in one thing,—that as he does not seek to render them better, so they do not think of becoming better.
The almost cynical acerbity of the preceding is ostensibly relieved of an obvious application to certain illustrious contemporary examples among preachers by the following open allusion to Bossuet and Bourdaloue:—
The Bishop of Meaux [Bossuet] and Father Bourdaloue make me think of Demosthenes and Cicero. Both of them, masters of pulpit eloquence, have had the fortune of great models; the one has made bad critics, the other, bad imitators.
Here is a happy instance of La Bruyère's successful pains in redeeming a commonplace sentiment by means of a striking form of expression; the writer is disapproving the use of oaths in support of one's testimony:—
An honest man who says, Yes, or No, deserves to be believed; his character swears for him.
Highly satiric in his quiet way, La Bruyère knew how to be. Witness the following thrust at a contemporary author, not named by the satirist, but, no doubt, recognized by the public of the time:—
He maintains that the ancients, however unequal and negligent they may be, have fine traits; he points these out; and they are so fine that they make his criticism readable.
How painstakingly, how self-consciously, La Bruyère did his literary work, is evidenced by the following:—
A good author, and one who writes with care, often has the experience of finding that the expression which he was a long time in search of without reaching it, and which at length he has found, is that which was the most simple, the most natural, and that which, as it would seem, should have presented itself at first, and without effort.
We feel that the quality of La Bruyère is such as to fit him for the admiration and enjoyment of but a comparatively small class of readers. He was somewhat over-exquisite. His art at times became artifice—infinite labor of style to make commonplace thought seem valuable by dint of perfect expression. We dismiss La Bruyère with a single additional extract,—his celebrated parallel between Corneille and Racine:—