Explore "Three French Moralists and the Gallantry of France" by Edmund Gosse on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
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.