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XVI.—La Bruyère's Influence upon Addison

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Edward Chauncey Baldwin
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Extract

Character-writing was of Greek origin. It had its beginnings in the “ of Theophrastus, who lived between 370 and 285 B. C. Popularized by Casaubon's Latin translation of 1592, these Ethical Characters furnished a model of which the English writers were prompt to avail themselves. The first of the English writers to be influenced by Theophrastus was Joseph Hall. His Characterisms of Virtues and Vices appeared in 1608, and was translated into French in 1619. In France it contributed, along with Casaubon's translation, to make Character-writing only less popular than in England. Chief among those who felt its influence was Jean de la Bruyère, whose book, Les Caractères De Theophraste, Traduits Du Grec; avec Les Caractères ou les Mœurs de ce Siècle, was published in 1688. This, in turn, influenced the further development of English Character-writing, particularly in the form that it came to assume in the work of the periodical essayists of the eighteenth century, through which it finally merged into the novel. To point out the nature and extent of this influence of La Bruyère upon the contributors to the Spectator is the purpose of this article.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , 1904 , pp. 479 - 495
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1904

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References

page 479 note 1 A second edition followed in 1598; soon Characters became the most prolific literary form of the seventeenth century. For a bibliography of the Character-books, see my article in the Publications of the Modern Language Association of America for March, 1904, on The Development of English Character-Writing.

page 479 note 2 The extent of Hall's indebtedness to Theophrastus is pointed out in my article, The Relation of the English Character to its Greek Prototype, in the Publications of the Modern Language Association of America for July, 1903.

page 481 note 1 La Bruyère undoubtedly knew the English Character-books that had preceded his. He certainly knew that of Theophrastus, for he translated it. It is interesting to conjecture whence he derived the idea of the innovations that he introduced. A probable source is suggested by Victor Cousin in an article which appeared in La Revue des Deux Mondes, Jan., 1854, in which he says: “Mademoiselle, fille unique de Gaston, Duc d'Orléans, dit l'éminent écrivain que nous venons de citer, eut un jour à la campagne, en 1657, l'idée de demander à toutes les personnes de sa société de faire leur portrait, et sur-le-champ elle fit elle-même le sien, en commençant par une description physique assez détaillée, et passant de la peinture de son esprit, de son ame, de ses mœurs et de toutes ses qualités morales, elle fit aussi les portraits de M. Béthune, qui était son chevalier d'honneur, de M. d'Eutragues et de beaucoup d'antres. Après avoir donné l'exemple elle voulait que l'on le suivît … Tel fut le passe-temps de Mademoiselle et de ses amis pendant les années 1657 et 1658: de ce passe-temps sortit toute une littérature … Les portraits se multiplièrent à Paris et dans les provinces …: il y en eut d'excellents, il y en eut de médiocres, et aussi de détestables, jusqu'en 1688. La Bruyère renouvela et éléva le genre et, sous le nom de caractères, peignit son siècle et l'humanité.”

page 482 note 1 It seems strange that the writers of Characters had not already utilized this method. They might have learned the trick from Chaucer. In the Prologue, when describing the Pilgrims, who are each typical of a class, Chaucer repeatedly employs it, as when, for example, after describing the Monk, he adds:

“His palfrey was as broun as is a berye.” line 207.

page 482 note 2 Perhaps a single exception to this statement is Ben Jonson. That he knew Theophrastus is evident from his borrowings and from his adaptations. (Both are discussed in my article, Ben Jonson's Indebtedness to the Greek Character-Sketch, in Modern Language Notes, November, 1901). To the list of dramatis personae of two of his plays, Every Man Out of His Humour and The New Inn, he affixed short “characters of the persons,” which, because each of “the persons” is the embodiment of some “humour,” are, except for their brevity, exactly like those of Theophrastus.

page 483 note 1 Hitherto the relations of the English Character had been with the Baconian Essay; Henceforth they were to be rather with that of which Montaigne had been the originator. Nicholas Breton dedicated his Characters Upon Essays Moral and Divine (1615) to Bacon. In the Address that follows the dedication he says: “Worthy knight, I have read of many essays and a kind of charactering of them, by such, as when I looked unto the form or nature of their writing, I have been of the conceit that they were but imitators of your breaking the ice to their inventions, which, how short they may fall of your worth, I had rather think than speak, though Truth need not blush at her blame.”

page 483 note 2 The first two books of Montaigne's-Essais had appeared in 1580; La Rochefoucauld's Reflexions, ou sentences et Maximes Morales in 1665; and Pascal's Pensées in 1669.

page 484 note 1 Anecdotes, p. 184.

page 484 note 2 Guardian, 117 and 137.

page 484 note 3 It will be remembered that in 1714 Budgell published a version of the of Theophrastus, thus attesting his own interest in Character-writing.

page 484 note 4 The references are to the Édition Louandre.

page 485 note 1 De l'Homme, pp. 228-236.

page 485 note 2 Johnson said, “Addison wrote Budgell's papers in the Spectator, at least mended them so much, that he made them almost his own; and that Draper, Tonson's partner, assured Mrs. Johnson, that the much admired Epilogue to the ‘Distressed Mother,’ which came out in Budgell's name, was in reality written by Addison.”—Boswell's Life, April 26, 1776.

page 485 note 3 De la Cour, pp. 174-5.

page 486 note 1 “What a pity we cannot find the reality,” says Hazlitt; “and yet if we did, the dream would be over. I once thought I knew a Will Wimble and a Will Honeycomb, but they turned out but indifferently.”

page 486 note 2 In A Wife, now the Widow, of Sir Thomas Overbury, Being a most exquisite and singular Poem of the Choice of a Wife. Whereunto are added many witty Characters and conceited News, written by himself and other learned Gentlemen, his Friends (1614).

page 486 note 3 “Nothing but a subpœna can draw him to London; and when he is there, he sticks fast upon every object, casts his eyes away upon gazing, and becomes the prey of every cut-purse.”—Overbury.

page 487 note 1 “He speaks statutes and husbandry well enough to make his neighbors think him a wise man.”—Overbury.

page 487 note 2 “When he traveleth, he will go ten miles out of his way to a cousin's house of his to save charges; he rewards the servant by taking him by the hand when he departs.”—Overbury.

page 487 note 3 Minto (Manual of English Prose Literature, p. 387) is the only one of Addison's critics who has pointed out this obvious quality of Addison's satire. He goes so far as to say that “Not a single paper of Addison's can be pointed out that does not contain some stroke of malice.” Professor Courthope, though he sees no malignity in Addison's satire, affirms that the essence of his humor is irony. (Addison, p. 172).

page 487 note 4 It seems strange that this occasional conciseness of expression should have escaped completely the notice of Addison's critics from Johnson down. Yet they have all followed Johnson's dictum that “he is never feeble, and he did not wish to be energetic; he is never rapid, and he never stagnates. His sentences have neither studied amplitude, nor affected brevity; his periods, though not diligently rounded, are voluble and easy.”—Lives of the Poets, Vol. 2, p. 140.

page 487 note 5 Addison does not seem to have admired Montaigne. We are told that having occasion to read over some of Montaigne's Essays, and finding that the contents of the chapters bore little relation to their titles, he flung the book down in disgust saying, “If he had been a horse, he would have been pounded for straying; and why he ought to be more favored because he is a man I cannot understand.”

page 488 note 1 Doctor Johnson seems to have suspected the influence of La Bruyère upon Addison, for he praises the Tatler and Spectator by saying that they “adjusted—the unsettled practice of daily intercourse by propriety and politeness, and, like La Bruyère, exhibited the characters and manners of the age.”

Professor Courthope (Addison, in the English Men of Letters Series, p. 104) says, “La Bruyère's characters are no doubt the literary models of those which appear in the Spectator.”

page 489 note 1 Letter 21, April 14, 1711.

page 491 note 1 This is the passage that Addison's cousin, Budgell, admired so much, and translated in the Tatler, No. 57.