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. It is very amusing to see how anxious La Bruyere is not to seem to owe anything to La Rochefoucauld. He speaks of his own writings as "less delicate" than those of the Duke, and in his own opening words he declares that he has had no wish to write maxims, "which are laws in morals," as he has no legislative authority. I suppose that in describing the tone of La Rochefoucauld as "delicate" La Bruyere really meant supercilious, and deprecated any idea that he, the typical bourgeois, should seem to lay down the law like the architype of intellectual aristocracy. He scoffs at the Duke for making his reflections "like oracles," so short are they and so concise; and he is quite correct when he boasts of the extreme variety and versatility of his own manner. He accuses La Rochefoucauld of browbeating his readers into subjection to his thought; while, La Bruyere says, "for my part I am quite willing that my reader should say sometimes that I have not observed correctly, provided that he himself will observe better." The reader, on the other hand, must not be taken in by all this, which is very characteristic of La Bruyere's timid self-confidence. His reputation loses nothing by our discovering that he owes much to Montaigne and still more to La Rochefoucauld.