La Bruyère, JEAN DE, was born at Paris in 1645. He belonged to a middle-class family, and was educated by the Oratorians, the rivals of the Jesuits. After leaving the Oratory he was chosen to aid Bossuet in educating the dauphin, and in 1673 was appointed treasurer of France for the city of Caen, a post which he resigned through disgust at the rapacity of his fellow-officials. He became tutor to the Duc de Bourbon, the grandson of the Great Condé, and spent much of his time at Paris and Chantilly with the Condés, from whom he received a pension until the date of his death. His Caractères appeared in 1688, ran through eight editions in seven years, and gained for its author a host of implacable enemies as well as an immense reputation. The book consisted of two parts, the one being a translation of Theophrastus, the other a collection of maxims, reflections, and character-portraits of the men and women of the time. To these portraits has been mainly due the wide and lasting popularity of the Caractères. La Bruyère, his editor Walckenaer has truly said, 'made mirrors on which by some magic property the reflected faces of a whole generation of men and women have become indelibly impressed.' Bitterly assailed for his personal satires, La Bruyère found a powerful protectress in the Duchesse de Bourbon, a daughter of Louis XIV., who is said, with what truth cannot be determined, to have aided him in the composition of the later sketches which he embodied in his work. His enemies, headed by Fontenelle and Thomas Corneille, were twice able to secure his rejection when he tried for a chair in the Academy. In 1693, however, he was elected, his success being greatly due to the energetic efforts made on his behalf by his patroness, who is said to have resorted to a stratagem by which certain Academicians were prevented from voting against him. La Bruyère—who never married—died on May 11, 1696, his death being caused by a decoction of tobacco administered to him by the king's physician with the view of relieving him from an attack of apoplexy. Reports that he had been poisoned by his enemies were at one time current, but have since been thoroughly disproved. His Dialogues sur le Quétisme were issued in 1699. They were directed against Fénelon, and show none of the literary power so conspicuous in the Caractères.
Though he cannot rank with Montaigne or Pascal, La Bruyère is a moralist of high standing and a writer of the highest excellence. Sainte-Beuve affirmed that his book should be at the hand of every author, and that to read parts of it daily would be no less helpful to every critic than the study of the Imitatio to every one of a tender and devotional spirit. In his style the clearness, precision, and classic elegance of the Louis XIV. men are united with a pithiness, a freshness of phrase, and a richness of colour suggestive of the prose of a later epoch. Like most workers in apothegm and epigram, he falls at times into triteness and exaggeration; but he has singularly few dull pages. His book is built on no regular plan, and to this its peculiar charm is in no small measure due. The writer perpetually varies his subject and his manner. You have here a pregnant maxim, a clear-cut epigram, a piquant anecdote, an old truth reset with novel felicity of phrase—here a page of acute literary criticism—here a bit of dialogue as crisp and bright as the talk in a sparkling comedy—here a character-sketch, racy with ironic malice, and humour, and wit—there a passage glowing with a sombre repressed indignation which proves how deeply the author resented his countrymen's wrongs. A great writer rather than a great thinker, his insight into character is shrewd rather than profound. It has been truly remarked by Suard that, while Montaigne has painted man as he is in all times and in all places, La Bruyère has only painted the courtier, lawyer, financier, and bourgeois of the days of Louis XIV.
The best edition of La Bruyère is that included in the series Les Grands Écrivains de la France, edited by G. Servois (3 vols. 1864-82); a recent English translation of the Caractères is that by Helen Stott (1890). See the notice by Suard prefixed to the edition of 1838, and Life by Servois in the 'Grands Écrivains' series (1882).