Voltaire's definition of the style of La Bruyere is well known, but cannot too often be repeated. He calls it "a rapid, concise, nervous style, with picturesque expressions, a wholly novel use of the French language, yet with no infringement of its rules." Fortunately, with all his admiration of others--and his great chapter "Des Ouvrages de l'Esprit" is one of the most generous and catholic examples of current criticism which we possess in all literature--with his modest and glowing appreciation of his famous predecessors, he did not attempt to imitate them in the grand manner. We are able to perceive that Bossuet, who was nearly twenty years his senior, to whom he owed his advancement in life, whose majestic genius and princely prestige were so well adapted to dazzle La Bruyere, remained his indefatigable patron and probably his closest friend. But we do not find in La Bruyere a trace of imitation of the great preacher whom he loved and honoured. If we think what the authority of Bossuet had come to be at the time when the "Caracteres" was published, how hardly its evangelical science pressed upon the convictions of all Frenchmen, and particularly upon those of men who accepted it as unquestionably as did the author of that book, that there should be no trace of Bossuet on his style is a great tribute to the originality of La Bruyere. "There is no pleasure without variety," this same mighty Bossuet had written in 1670, and his young friend had taken the axiom to heart. We find him pursuing almost beyond the bounds of good taste the search for variety of manner. He has strange sudden turns of thought, startling addresses, inversions which we should blame as violent, if they were not so eminently successful that we adopt them at once, as we do Shakespeare's. La Bruyere passes from mysterious ironies to bold and coarse invective, from ornate and sublime reflections to phrases of a roguish simplicity. He suddenly drops his voice to a shuddering whisper, and the next moment is fluting like a blackbird. The gaiety with which he mocks the ambitions of the rich is suddenly relieved by the dreadful calm with which he reveals the horror of their disappointments. He is never in the same mood, or adopting the same tone, for two pages running. It is difficult in a translation to give an idea of the surprising element in his style, but something of its oddity may be preserved in such an attempt as this-- "There are creatures of God whom we call men, who have a soul which is intelligence, and whose whole life is spent and whose whole attention is centred in the sawing of marble. This is a very simple, a very little thing. There are others who are amazed at this, but who themselves are utterly useless, and who spend their days in doing nothing at all. This is a still smaller thing than sawing marble."