1831.] [ 369 ] ; 



THE CHARACTER AND ANECDOTES OF NICOLAS CHAMFORT, 



The literature of France is singularly rich in those brief yet vivid and 

 philosophic portraitures of our passing virtues, and those acute and 

 searching remarks upon the habits and peculiarities of men^ to which 

 the names of caracteres, or maxime.s, or pensees, have been indiscrimi- 

 nately given. We might look in vain among the productions of our 

 own country, many and glorious as they are in every department of 

 knowledge, for any collection of thought worthy of comparison with 

 the quaint yet living Aitmsemens de la Maison of the Abbe de Bruges ; 

 or the ReflexioJis of Vauvenargues, which passed under the revision of 

 Voltaire, who considered their author entitled to take his place by the 

 side of Fenelon and Paschal ; oi*, least of all, with the Caracteres of 

 La Bruyere, who may, without exaggeration, be said to have united 

 the most intimate acquaintance with the variable workings of the mind, 

 to the most perfect mastery of language and aptitude of illustration ; 

 and to have blended the rich and graphic humour of Moliere, with the 

 beautiful and moral grandeur of Bossuet. 



With the exception, perhaps, of one or two detached pictures in 

 Lucian, neither among the treasures of antiquity, nor in the multitude 

 of modern books, had La Bruyere any model. The philosopher, in the 

 time of Lucian, as Goldsmith with his usual felicity has observed, was 

 chiefly remarkable for his avarice, his impudence, and his beard. 



The Characters of Theophrastus, which he translated, resemble the 

 Caracteres of the French moralist in nothing but the name. The pupil 

 and successor of Aristotle, with much of vigour and animation indeed, 

 discourses of virtue, and wit, and all the inysteries of mortal passion ; 

 but it is like a professor in his college-chair ; he seems to describe what 

 he had thought, rather than what he had seen. He gives outlines, so to 

 speak, of folly, and sin, and misery, sometimes struck off by a hand not 

 wanting in knowledge of situation or decision of touch ; but Bruyere 

 brings the scene, the very life, before our eyes ; he animates the thought, 

 and personifies the idea, vmtil we cease to look upon poverty or wealth 

 as abstract blessings or misfortunes ; we cease to behold the delicate 

 links which the moralist is imperceptibly weaving into a chain of exqui- 

 site workmanship. The favourite and the outcast of nature, in their 

 contrasted splendour and misery, are called up, as by a spiritual ministry, 

 before our wondering eyes ; we see, not as in a glass darkly, but face to 

 face, the up-turned and heaven-gazing countenance and contemptuous 

 bearing of the one, and the stooping shoulders, and earth-seeking eye, 

 and the hat drawn over the brows, of tlie other ; and we exclaim in the 

 words of the painter himself, " II est pauvre ! — il est riche !" 



La Bruyere has been styled by his eulogist Victorin Fabre, the painter 

 of society and manners. Passing the earlier years of his life amid the 

 seductive influences of a gay and voluptuous metropolis, he appears to have 

 yielded to the feelings and passions of the age with a view of observing 

 them more clearly and satisiiictorily. Intellect is the eye of the soul ; and 

 never, surely, was it turned with more penetrating earnestness, than by 

 the author of the Caracteres, upon the many and strange vicissitudes 

 of life. Society may be said to have sat to him for her portrait, and 

 having, witli watchful and unwearied asssiduity, carried away in his 

 memory cacli feature and even sliiide of exi)rcssion, wliethcr of joy or 

 sorrow, or guilt or innocence, or craft or ingenuousness, which long and 



