IV INTRODUCTION

contînued to réside with the family, with the title of "gentilhomme," and the probable office of secretary and librarian. An idea of his true occupation at this time may be inferred from the publication in 1688 of the first édition of Les Caractères, This édition was accompanied by a translation of the ^^Characiers^ of his Greek model, Theophrastus, and an essay on that author (Discours sur Théophraste). The success of the book seems to hâve been immédiate. Editions, revised and enlarged, f oUowed each other in rapid succession — nine in seven years. It won for its author an élection to the French Academy (1693), and it constitutés today La Bruyère 's title to famé. A controversial work (Dialogues sur le Quiétisme\ begun later at Bossuet's request, could not be finished. A stroke of apoplexy brought his career to a sudden end on May 10, 1696, in the Condé résidence at Versailles.

La Bruyère's study of contemporaneous manners is not an easy book to judge. The literature of the seventeenth century in France is especially characterized by simplicity and directness. Neither of thèse qualities can be said to predominate in Les Caractères, They are indeed engrossed with the thème of humanity, which had become the great concem of the Renaissance, and, formulated in so many wajrs by Montaigne's Essays, had shaped the entire thought of succeeding générations. But they do not study humanity purely from the objective standpoint. The environment of their author had f ostered préjudices which often afîect the correctness of his observations, partiçularly when they are made on the nobility and the enriched tradesmen of the day. So that the daim made by La Bruyère in his Préface that he " retums to the public what it had loaned" him (page i) is not to be accepted without many réservations. He is a portrait painter, to be sure, but he is also a moralist. His portraits are frequently drawn with a satirical hand, influenced by personal expérience. They are not to be considered true to life in every instance.