and the august body was beside itself with rage. No
pompous Academician, for instance, likes to hear, in the solemn
conclave of his colleagues, that he is so Christian and so charitable
that "writing well may be said to be among the least of his
qualities." La Bruyere summed up his attacks in a preface to the
eighth edition of the "Caracteres" in 1694. He then retired again to
his independence as a crafty old bachelor, and Saint Simon gives us a
pleasant snapshot of him in these latest years, "a very
straightforward man, capital company, simple, with nothing of the
pedant about him, and entirely disinterested."

He remained the man of one book until nearly the close of his life. It
is thought that Bossuet, who had always been his great exemplar, urged
him to undertake a reply to the heresies of Mme de Guyon and Fenelon,
and that so he was dragged into that very painful quarrel. At all
events, he started a series of "Dialogues on Quietism," in which all
the extreme doctrines of Molinos and his disciples were examined and
ridiculed. On May 8, 1696, La Bruyere dined with Antoine Bossuet, the
bishop's elder brother; after dinner he took out the MSS. from his
pocket, and read extracts to his host. Two days afterwards, after
walking in the garden at Versailles, he had a stroke, and two days
after that he died. He had had no premonition of illness, and the
rumour went round that the Quietists had poisoned him. His body was
exhumed, but of course no trace of poison was to be found. The
"Dialogues," revised and completed by the Abbe Ellies du Pin, were
published the next year. Their authenticity has been obstinately
contested, but, as I confess it seems to me, without excuse. Both
external and internal evidence go to prove, I think, that they are
substantially the work of La Bruyere, and for those who are not
alarmed at theological discussions conducted in rather a profane
spirit, they make very good reading.

One last word about our amiable author. His great book remains
eminently alive, and wields after two centuries and a half a permanent
influence. When you refer to it, you must not expect a logical
development of philosophical theory. We do not look to find a system
in a book of maxims and portraits. La Bruyere was a moralist, pure and
simple; he awakened sensibility, he encouraged refinement, and he
exposed the vicious difference which existed around him--and which no
one else had seemed to notice--that the possession o