I do not think this fact has
been noted, but surely it is almost certain that in their talks about
literature Phelippeaux must have described La Bruyere to Addison?
Another contributor to the _Spectator_, Eustace Budgell, translated
Theophrastus and knew La Bruyere's book. Dr. Johnson mentions that the
French moralist is the source of Addison's effort, but English
critical opinion then, and since, has held that La Bruyere wrote
without any of the earnestness of the moral reformer. I have
indicated, I hope, the hasty error contained in such a judgment.

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 "Caracteres." In that volume, the chapter "Des Femmes"
is perhaps the least agreeable to a sensible reader of to-day. It is
crowded with types of pretentious and abnormal womanhood, which it
caricatures very effectively. Addison had manifestly studied it, for
here we see the origin of his coquettes and prudes, with their
"brocade petticoat which rises out of the mines of Peru, and the
diamond necklace out of the bowels of Indostan." But what we miss
completely in La Bruyere is that cordial recognition of women as the
proper companions of men and the organizers of intelligent society
which is so admirably sustained in the _Spectator_. It was Addison,
and not La Bruyere, who broke down once for all, and finally, the
monkish conception of women as the betrayers of the human species,
which had lingered on so detestably from the Middle Ages.

The influence of La Bruyere on Steele is apparent, and may have
preceded that on Addison. We may observe that Steele says, in the
general preface to the _Tatler,_ "the elegance, purity and correctness
which appeared in [Mr. Addison's] writings were not so much to my
purpose as... to rally all those singularities of human life, through
the different professions and _characters_ in it, which obstruct
anything that is truly good and great," The similarity of expression
here is certainly not accidental; La Bruyere stood before Steele as a
model when he wrote, for instance, in 1709, Mr. Isaac Bickerstaffs
"portraits" of Chloe and Clarissa, or the "lucubration" on Deference
to Public Opinion. W