ms of conduct and
digging to the root of action, to make people upright, candid and
magnanimous on a new basis of truth. So we come at last to see the
significance of Voltaire's dark saying of the "Maximes": "This book is
one of those which have contributed most to form the taste of the
French nation, and to give it the spirit of accuracy and precision."

LA BRUYERE

La Bruyere was thirty-five years of age when La Rochefoucauld died,
and twenty when the "Maximes" were published. We have no evidence that
he ever met the former, but he certainly read the latter, and in spite
of his eager denial that Pascal or La Rochefoucauld suggested his
method to him--"I have followed neither of these paths," he says--it
is impossible to doubt that the example of the "Maximes" had a great
deal to do with the form of the "Caracteres." His own disciple,
Brillon, tells us of La Bruyere that, "the author of the work which
this age has most admired was at least ten years writing it, and about
as long hesitating whether he would write it or not." The "Caracteres"
was finished in 1687; Brillon's estimate takes us back to 1667 or
earlier, and the brilliant success of the "Maximes" dates from 1665.
Every author imagines that he loses some dignity by being supposed to
follow the lead of another author, although the entire history of
literature is before him to show that the lamp of genius has always
been handed on from hand to hand. La Bruyere, in particular, was not
exempt from this amiable weakness, but his ghost needs feel no
displeasure if we insist on connecting him with the effort of La
Rochefoucauld.

It is very amusing to see how anxious La Bruyere is not to seem to owe
anything to La Rochefoucauld. He speaks of his own writings as "less
delicate" than those of the Duke, and in his own opening words he
declares that he has had no wish to write maxims, "which are laws in
morals," as he has no legislative authority. I suppose that in
describing the tone of La Rochefoucauld as "delicate" La Bruyere
really meant supercilious, and deprecated any idea that he, the
typical bourgeois, should seem to lay down the law like the architype
of intellectual aristocracy. He scoffs at the Duke for making his
reflections "like oracles," so short are they and so concise; and he
is quite correct when he boasts of the extreme variety and versatility
of his own manner. He accuses La Rochefoucauld of browbeating his
r