To this world the "Caracteres"
was now offered, modestly, as though it were a summing up of the
moralizations of the last fifty years. The author begins by
deprecating the idea that he has anything new to impart. His trick is
rather subtle; he concentrates our attention on the sayings of an
ancient Aristotelian philosopher, and then, as if to fill up the time,
he ventures to repeat a few reflexions of his own. These he introduces
with the words: "Everything has been said, and we arrive too late into
a world of men who have been thinking for more than seven thousand
years. In the field of morals, all that is fairest and best has been
reaped already; we can but glean among the ancients and among the
cleverest of the moderns." In this insinuating manner, he leads the
reader on to the perusal of his own part of the book, and soon we
become aware how cold and dry and pale the Greek translation seems
beside the rich and palpitating world of the new French morality.
Whether he perceived it or not--and I for one am convinced that he did
perceive it--La Bruyere introduced a new thing into French literature;
he opened out, we may almost say, a new world.
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