French Gentlemen, who have themselves writ with Applause in this Language, entertain the same Sentiments, and have ingenuously confess’d to me, that they could never read ten Pages together of Mr. de la Bruyere, without feeling such an Uneasiness and Pain, as arises from a continued Affectation and a perpetual Constraint.  But the Reader is still left free.  To form a right Judgment on Correctness is an easy Matter by the ordinary Rules of Grammar, but to do the same concerning the Turn and Air, and peculiar Beauties of Style, depends on a particular Taste:  They are not capable of being prov’d to those who have not this Taste, but to those who have it, they are immediately made sensible by a bare pointing out.

The running Title which Mr. de la Bruyere has given to his Book does, by no Means, square with the several Parts of it.  With Relation to my present Purpose I observe, that, strictly speaking, this Performance is, but in Part, of the Characteristic-Kind.  The Characters, which are interspers’d in it, being reducible to a very narrow Compass, and the main Body of it consisting of miscellaneous Reflexions.  And these are not confin’d, as is pretended, only to the present Age, but extend themselves both to past and present Times.  So that if Mr. de la Bruyere had, with his View, chosen another Title for his Book, tho’ it wou’d not have been so uncommon, yet wou’d it have been more proper than the present Title; and the Performance it self wou’d then, in some Measure, have less deserv’d Censure.

Tho’ Mr. de la Bruyere’s Work is not perfect in that Kind, in which it is pretended to excel, it must nevertheless be confess’d, that it has many Beauties and Excellencies.  To deny this, wou’d be an Affront to the Judgment of the Gentlemen of the French Academy:  But yet our Complaisance ought not, cannot go so far, as to prejudice our own Judgment.  We cannot think, as [X]some of ’em did, that Mr. de la Bruyere has excell’d Theophrastus, the great Original which he propos’d to himself.  Mr. de la Bruyere had a more modest Opinion of himself:  He wou’d have been proud of the Title of little Theophrastus.  And in Truth, it deserves no small Share of Praise, to come up to Theophrastus in any Degree of Comparison.—­If then Mr. de la Bruyere has committed some Faults, ’tis nothing but what others have done, both before and since him:  But if he has, as I have already allow’d him to have, some considerable Beauties; ’tis more than a great many other Authors have, tho’ of greater Bulk:  And these Excellencies ought in Justice to be admitted as some Excuse for those Defects.

  [X:  Discours de l’Abbe Fleury deja cite.]

SECT.  V.