a French and English dictionary,
and endeavored to promote a better understanding between France and
England by translating works of each nation into the language of the
other. As a historian, he recorded the principal events of English
national life from 1688 to 1729. As a literary figure, he wrote a play
that was approved by Dryden and published two collections of characters.

Coming in on the great flood of character books which reached its crest
in the seventeenth century, Boyer's collections were part of the final
surge before the character was taken over by Steele and handed on to the
novelists. The first was _Characters of the Virtues and Vices of the
Age; or, Moral reflections, maxima, and thoughts upon men and manners.
Translated from the most refined French wits ... and extracted from the
most celebrated English writers.... Digested alphabetically under proper
titles_ (1695). The second, resembling the first in design but
considerably enlarged, was published in 1702 under the title _The
English Theophrastus: Or The Manners of the Age. Being the Modern
Characters Of The Court, the Town, and the City_. No author is given on
the title page, but the work is usually ascribed to Boyer because his
name appears beneath the dedication.

That Boyer's purpose in preparing _The English Theophrastus_ was moral
is evident in the preface, where he describes the subject of his book as
the "Grand-Lesson, _deliver'd by the_ Delphian _Oracle_, Know thy Self:
_Which certainly is the most important of a Man's Life_." Distempers of
the mind, he continues, like those of the body, are half cured when well
known. Although philosophers of all ages have agreed in their aim to
expose human imperfections in order to rectify them, their methods have
differed. Those moralists who have inveighed magisterially against man's
vices generally have been "_abandon'd to the ill-bred Teachers of Musty
Morals in Schools, or to the sowr Pulpit-Orators_." Those who, by
"_nipping Strokes of a Side-wind Satyr, have endeavour'd to tickle Men
out of their Follies_," have been welcomed and caressed by the very
people who were most abused. Since self-love waves the application,
satire, unless bluntly direct, can fail as completely as reprehension.

Modern moralists, according to Boyer, have pursued a third course and
cast their observations on men and manners into the entertaining form
employed by Theophrastus, Lucian, Plutarch, and Diogenes Laertius. Among