La Bruyère, though a shrewd observer, has the daring of an innovator, but always remains very guarded in his language. When now and then his feelings get the better of him, he expresses his opinions like a man, and attacks the vices of his age with a boldness which none of his contemporaries has surpassed. Nearly the whole of his chapter “Of the Gifts of Fortune” is an attack on the financiers; in the chapter “Of the Great,” he certainly does not flatter the courtiers, whilst he himself never pretends to be anything else but “a plebeian,”[10] and almost always sides with his own class. If he flatters the king, it is because he thinks him necessary to the state, and, perhaps, also because he wishes to have a defender against the many enemies his book had raised up. He was, moreover, very cautious, and in the endless alterations he made in the various editions of the “Characters,”[11] published during his lifetime, he but seldom envenomed the barb he had shot, or boasted of it if he did so.[12] Though he touched on all the passions of men, he did not set one class against another, a task which was left to the so-called philosophical authors of the eighteenth century. The style of La Bruyère has been praised by competent judges for its conciseness and picturesqueness; he always employs the right word in the right place, is correct in his expressions, varied in his thoughts, highly imaginative, and, therefore, maybe called a perfect literary artist.[13] A few words and expressions, which I have noticed, have become antiquated, or have changed their meaning, but the “Characters” will still, I think, be read for many ages, be found very entertaining, and, what cannot be said of the works of every classical French author, will be better liked the more they are read. If sometimes one of the characters is portrayed with too many details, it is because it is taken not from one man, but composed of a series of shrewd and clever observations made on different personages; and hence our author calls them “Characters,” and not “portraits.” Since La Bruyèreʼs death many editions of the “Characters” have appeared; I have collated and compared the best of them, amongst which those edited by Mons. G. Servois and Mons. A. Chassang have laid me under great obligations. I am indebted to these two editions for many of the notes, and for a few to those of MM. Destailleur and Hémardinquer. Several imitations of the “Characters” have also been published, amongst others a _Petit la Bruyère, ou Caractères et mœurs des enfants de ce siècle_, and a _Le la Bruyère des domestiques, précédé de considérations sur Pétat de domesticité en général_, both by that voluminous author, Madame de Genlis, a _Le la Bruyère des jeunes gens_, and a similar work for _jeunes demoiselles_, which attract the attention by the oddity of their titles. La Bruyèreʼs “Characters” have also been translated several times into English.