CHARACTERS (Caracteres). The of Jean de la Bruyere are a col lection of reflections on human nature and conduct and of "portraits" of different types of character or varieties of moral development, studied with patient and penetrating observa tion and drawn with extraordinary skill in a few precise, significant and revealing lines. They are distributed over 16 chapters: Works of the mind, personal merit, women, the heart, society and conversation, material possessions, the city, the court, persons in high station, the sovereign or the state, man, judgments, fashion, certain usages, the pulpit, the strong-minded. They derive in part from the 'Characters' of Theophrastus and appeared for the first time (1688) as an appendix to a translation that La Bruyere had made of that work, modestly hid ing behind the Greek even in the title: 'The Characters of Theophrastus, translated from the Greek, together with the Characters or the Manners of this Century.' They also continue the °portraits" that had long been popular in the novels of the time and in the literary recreations of certain salons. But these por traits are no longer complimentary and flatter ing, as those had been. Instead they insist pitilessly on the unlovely realities of motive' that too often lie behind the smiling mask of manners. La Bruyere was a sharp-eyed ob server of the brilliant society of court and salon. Indeed, there were many complaints
from those who saw themselves in the satiric pictures he drew, though he disclaimed the intention of painting particular persons. His view of human nature is less embittered than that of his great contemporary La Rochefou cauld, in the Maxims, but it is stern and hard, lacking in pity and tenderness. To the com position of his 'Characters' he brought a rart command of the French language, which he cultivated with infinite pains, and the judgment of M. Vallery Radot is often quoted with ap proval: you wish to take an inventory of the riches of our language, if you wish to know all its ins and outs, its movements, its figures, its resources, there is no need to have recourse to a hundred volumes; read, reread La Bruyere." The 'Characters,' by the progress they mark in the art of psychological observation and moral characterization, also contributed substantially to the development of the novel, and their influence was clearly seen presently in England in Addison and Steele. Several translations were made, one by Nicholas Rowe (1709). None, however, is at present current. The standard edition is that of M. G. Servois, in the series of the 'Grands Ecrivains de la France' (3 vols., Paris 1865-68).