[18] There are few portraits in Shaftesburyʼs “Characteristics;” one of the few exceptions being the portrait of “a notable enthusiast of the itinerant kind,” supposed to be Van Helmont; now and then, however, he seems to have borrowed a few ideas of La Bruyère, as for example, in the second section of “A Letter concerning Enthusiasm,” his remarks on criticism and ridicule. Compare also Shaftesbury in section 2, saying: “The vulgar, indeed, may swallow any sordid jest, any mere drollery or buffoonery; but it must be a finer and truer wit which takes the men of sense and breeding,” to La Bruyèreʼs Chapter “Of Works of the Mind,” §§ 51, 52; the whole of this “Letter” is somewhat like La Bruyère, as in section iv. the crafty beggars, addressing some one they meet in a coach, and of whose quality they are ignorant. In Shaftesburyʼs “Sensus Communis, an Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour,” part 1, section 3, his remarks about true raillery; and the opening of the second part, section 1: “If a native of Ethiopia were of a sudden transported into Europe,” etc., as well as in the “Soliloquy,” the allegory of the love-spent nobleman, and in the “Moralists” the portraits of Palemon, Philocles, and Theocles, and the opening of the third part, “it was yet deep night,” appear somewhat like reminiscences of the French author. [19] “English Philosophers:” Shaftesbury and Hutcheson. By Thomas Fowler, President of Corpus Christi College: London, 1882. [20] It will, of course, be impossible to give “chapter and verse” for every passage of the “Spectator” which is faintly like one of La Bruyèreʼs observations, nor do I mean to say that Addison, Steele, and the other contributors to the English paper borrowed literally, and without acknowledgment, from the French author. But what I intended to convey was that, though the humour of the Spectator and its Sir Roger de Coverley, Sir Andrew Freeport, Will Honeycomb, Captain Sentry, &c., are pre-eminently English, several of the remarks and portraits to be found there are more or less inspired by a careful study of La Bruyère. Compare for example Addisonʼs paper about the opera, Spectator No. 5, to § 47 of La Bruyèreʼs Chapter “Of Works of the Mind;” and the remarks in No. 10 of the Spectator, about the occupations of the female world, and Nos. 144, 156, and No. 265 of the same paper, with some paragraphs of La Bruyèreʼs Chapter “Of Women.” Nos. 45, 57, 77, 88, 98, 100, 129, 193, 236, 238, and 494, appear to me somewhat like several of La Bruyèreʼs paragraphs. The “fair youth” in No. 104 of the “Spectator” is not unlike a reverse picture of La Bruyèreʼs portrait of Iphis in the Chapter “Of Fashion,” page 389, § 14; whilst the remark in No. 226, “Who is the better man for beholding the most beautiful Venus,” &c., reminds one of La Bruyèreʼs remark on obscene “pictures painted for certain princes of the Church,” in his Chapter “Of Certain Customs,” page 409, § 17. Steeleʼs opinions about corporal