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 the moderns, La Rochefoucauld, Saint-Evremond, and La Bruyere are admired by all judicious readers.  From these French writers Boyer has selected materials for the groundwork of his collection.  He has added passages from Antoninus, Pascal, and Gratian; from the English authors Bacon, Cowley, L’Estrange, Raleigh, Temple, Dryden, Wycherley, Brown and others; and from his own pen.  They range from a single line to a passage of several pages.  Those of English origin are distinguished by “an Asterism,” his own remarks by inverted commas.  Other matter is unmarked.

Although Boyer has used as his title The English Theophrastus, examination of the sections here reprinted will show that he has departed from the way of the Greek master.  Instead of sharply defined portraits, Boyer offers maxims, reflections, and manners, after the French pattern.  Gathered from a variety of sources, these observations are sometimes related to one another only by their common subject matter, but often they have been altered and rearranged by Boyer for sharper focus and unity.  A few examples will make his method clear.

Of the paragraphs that begin on page eight of the first selection, the second and fourth are taken from An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex (1696), perhaps the work of Mrs. Judith Drake.  The first of these is the last half of a paragraph from Drake, but minus her concluding figure, “as Fleas are said to molest those most, who have the tenderest Skins, and the sweetest Blood” (p. 78).  Into the first line of the second paragraph from Drake, “Of these the most voluminous Fool is the Fop Poet,” Boyer inserts a reference to Will’s.  Thereafter, he follows Drake rather closely, but replaces the final portion of the paragraph with two or three sentences from other parts of her essay.  The Drake material ends at the paragraph break on page nine.  Between these two paragraphs Boyer places the single statement, “There’s somewhat that borders upon Madness in every exalted Wit,” which may be his own version of Dryden’s line, “Great Wits are sure to Madness near allied” (Absalom and Achitophel, l. 248).  By means of these alterations in his sources, Boyer has compiled a passage that has focus and direction, and gives little evidence of its patchwork origin.