" 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.
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