Note 20 — INTRODUCTION.

It will, of course, be impossible to give “chapter and verse” for every passage of the “Spectator” which is faintly like one of La Bruyèreʼs observations, nor do I mean to say that Addison, Steele, and the other contributors to the English paper borrowed literally, and without acknowledgment, from the French author. But what I intended to convey was that, though the humour of the Spectator and its Sir Roger de Coverley, Sir Andrew Freeport, Will Honeycomb, Captain Sentry, &c., are preeminently English, several of the remarks and portraits to be found there are more or less inspired by a careful study of La Bruyère. Compare for example Addisonʼs paper about the opera, Spectator No. 5, to § 47 of La Bruyèreʼs Chapter “Of Works of the Mind;” and the remarks in No. 10 of the Spectator, about the occupations of the female world, and Nos. 144, 156, and No. 265 of the same paper, with some paragraphs of La Bruyèreʼs Chapter “Of Women.” Nos. 45, 57, 77, 88, 98, 100, 129, 193, 236, 238, and 494, appear to me somewhat like several of La Bruyèreʼs paragraphs. The “fair youth” in No. 104 of the “Spectator” is not unlike a reverse picture of La Bruyèreʼs portrait of Iphis in the Chapter “Of Fashion,” page 389, § 14; whilst the remark in No. 226, “Who is the better man for beholding the most beautiful Venus,” &c., reminds one of La Bruyèreʼs remark on obscene “pictures painted for certain princes of the Church,” in his Chapter “Of Certain Customs,” page 409, § 17. Steeleʼs opinions about corporal punishments (Spectator, No. 157) are very much in advance of those of La Bruyère on the same subject; the English author remarks about Louis XIV. (Spectator, No. 180 and 200) should be compared with La Bruyèreʼs glorification of the same monarch.