mme est
celui qui ne se pique de rien'; and it is clear that he followed his own
dictum. His attitude was eminently detached. Though what he says reveals
so intensely personal a vision, he himself somehow remains impersonal.
Beneath the flawless surface of his workmanship, the clever Duke eludes
us. We can only see, as we peer into the recesses, an infinite ingenuity
and a very bitter love of truth.

A richer art and a broader outlook upon life meet us in the pages of LA
BRUYERE. The instrument is still the same--the witty and searching
epigram--but it is no longer being played upon a single string. La
Bruyere's style is extremely supple; he throws his apothegms into an
infinite variety of moulds, employing a wide and coloured vocabulary,
and a complete mastery of the art of rhetorical effect. Among these
short reflections he has scattered a great number of somewhat lengthier
portraits or character-studies, some altogether imaginary, others
founded wholly or in part on well-known persons of the day. It is here
that the great qualities of his style show themselves most clearly.
Psychologically, these studies are perhaps less valuable than has
sometimes been supposed: they are caricatures rather than
portraits--records of the idiosyncrasies of humanity rather than of
humanity itself. What cannot be doubted for a moment is the supreme art
with which they have been composed. The virtuosity of the language--so
solid and yet so brilliant, so varied and yet so pure--reminds one of
the hard subtlety of a Greek gem. The rhythm is absolutely perfect, and,
with its suspensions, its elaborations, its gradual crescendos, its
unerring conclusions, seems to carry the sheer beauty of expressiveness
to the farthest conceivable point. Take, as one instance out of a
multitude, this description of the crank who devotes his existence to
the production of tulips--

Vous le voyez plante et qui a pris racine au milieu de ses tulipes
et devant la _Solitaire_: il ouvre de grands yeux, il frotte ses
mains, il se baisse, il la voit de plus pres, il ne l'a jamais vue
si belle, il a le coeur epanoui de joie: il la quitte pour
l'_Orientale_; de la, il va a la _Veuve_; il passe au _Drap d'or_,
de celle-ci a _l'Agathe_, d'ou il revient enfin a la _Solitaire_,
ou il se fixe, ou il se lasse, ou il s'assied, ou il oublie de
diner: aussi est-elle nuancee, bordee, huilee a pieces emportees;
elle a un beau vase