men of whom we have just spoken is Beaumarchais,1 the most important dramatic figure in the latter part of the century, though he was the author of but two really successful plays. Beaumarchais had seen more of social life than any of his predecessors; for though, like Rousseau, the son of a watchmaker, he had ingratiated himself by skill and good fortune in court circles, where he made a wealthy marriage and influential connections in banking circles, while his "Memoirs," by their scathing exposure of the corruption of an unpopular Parlement, made him popular also with the influential bourgeoisie. A visit to England, undertaken in the government interest, had much influence on the relations of France to the North American colonies, then about to revolt from England; and its literary effect on Beaumarchais was almost as determining as it had been on Voltaire, for it needed only that to his knowledge of society and the recklessness characteristic at once of the spirit of the time and of his own, there should be added the art of English comedy to inspire his native wit with the epochmaking" Barber of Seville" (1775) and the " Marriage of Figaro" (1784). Barber Figaro, the hero of both plays, is a light hearted, versatile, shrewd scapegrace, with a good deal of that worldly philosophy which was assisting in the disintegration of society, and preparing the Revolution which these comedies, by their levelling tendencies, did much to provoke and to hasten; though Beaumarchais had probably no more serious purpose than delight in his own wit. He wished to fire a squib and exploded the magazine.2

1 See Lintilhac, Beaumarchais.

2 Modern types of Figaro are to be found in Augier's "Les Effrontés" and "Le Fils de Giboyer." The political satire finds a more serious parallel in Sardou's "Ragabas." See Brunetière, l. c. 297.

These comedies mark a decided advance in the development of dialogue, which becomes more precise, epigrammatic, and clear-cut. Beaumarchais' sparkling verve is sustained in a way till then approached only by Molière, and hardly attained even by him. Indeed, it will often seem that the author is too prodigal, or that his hearers were men of quicker wits than ours; for we hardly conceive that such keenness and brilliancy should be fully valued at one reading, still less when heard but once on the stage. If it were not a paradox, one would be inclined to say that the chief fault of Beaumarchais is the monotony of his scintillating brilliancy. But, besides this, in construction and the management of intrigue, the plays touched the high-water mark of the century. "Original, incomparable, inimitable, unique," they earned. an unparalleled success, and left a tradition that after four decades of woful mediocrity was revived by Hugo and Dumas, and inspired the operas of Mozart and

Rossini.

This intervening mediocrity was due in great measure to the deadening effect of sentimentality,1 and to the engrossing interest of politics. From 1789 till the end of the century, plays were more often praised and damned for their sentiments than for their merits. The history of the stage during these years is of great interest, but it belongs no longer to the history of literature. 2 Yet the drama of the century as a whole, though in no sense great, was at least superior to its poetry, and showed surer signs of the Romantic awakening.

1 See Diderot as cited by Brunetière, 1. c. 294.

2 See Lumière, Le Théâtre français pendant la révolution; Welschinger, Le Théâtre de la révolution; and Brunetière, Études critiques,

ii. 322.

During this whole period prose had been encroaching on the domain of dramatic poetry, and after its close the alexandrine enjoyed only an asthmatic revival. It is in this century that prose becomes the natural vehicle of almost every phase of thought and feeling, occupying a far more varied, vast, and important field than ever before, and for the first time surpassing verse in literary value. This is pre-eminently the century of the " philosophers," the age of scientific inquiry and of comparative study of history and institutions. And though it is true that none of these fields belongs to pure literature, many of these works show such intrinsic beauty and had such influence on imaginative prose that no literary study can ignore them.

The first of the historians of this century belongs rather to the preceding. The "Memoirs" of SaintSimon (1678-1755) show the unreconciled feudal noble, while his treatment of language is as autocratic as though Balzac and Vaugelas had lived in vain. As a contemporary said, "Saint-Simon saw the nation in the nobility, the nobility in the peerage, and the peerage in himself." These " Memoirs," often amusing, sometimes exasperating, are always valuable for the history of their time; but they are not characteristic of its literary or intellectual movement. In Rollin (1661– 1741), on the other hand, the literary instinct wholly predominated. Entirely engrossed in making himself clear and his subject interesting, he does not rise above the amiable raconteur. This would apply also to Voltaire's " Charles XII." and " Peter the Great; but in his "Essai sur les mœurs et l'esprit des nations," Voltaire shows, and is first to show, a genuine effort to study the development of civilization under

the varying conditions of character and destiny; and thus, though he could not emancipate himself from the passions of his time nor observe without prejudice, though the age of Louis XIV. was to him" the most glorious epoch of the human mind" in spite of “the tricky and meddling clergy that marred it," though the story of Charles Martel and Roland" deserved no more to be written than that of bears and wolves," though he saw in religion everywhere and always the chief obstacle to human progress, yet he inaugurated in this essay the science of comparative history.

In this field he was almost immediately followed by Montesquieu, a far more catholic spirit, and without a trace of the iconoclastic optimism so general in his time. Already, in 1721, his "Lettres persanes" had shown him a keen critic of contemporary society, its foibles, its government, and its creed. A more serious and truly philosophic mind appeared in his " Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans" (1734); and this was but a foretaste of the great" Spirit of Laws" (1748), where the relations of law to government, manners, climate, religion, and trade were discussed with a sweep of vision that embraced every age and country. In it all, however, Montesquieu was a student much more than a reformer, more eager to see how what is came to be than to think how he can make it better. But though he was not himself a revolutionist, nor incited to change, his book, by calling attention to the superiority of the English constitution, had an immense and enduring influence in determining the destinies of France and of the whole Continent, which has come more and more to the constitutionalism of which he was the greatest herald.

Another historian, who left a far different impress

on the time, was Mably, whose perversely persistent exaltation of a false classicism took a hold on the popular fancy that explains much of the masquerading of the early revolutionary period. More directly political in its tone was Raynal's "Histoire philosophique des Indes," a co-operative work, that pretends to be a colonial history and is really a demagogic declamation, of which a single example may suffice. "Cowardly people, imbecile herd," says the historian, " you are content to groan when you should roar." What must the philosophic princes have thought of this, the Austrian Joseph, the Czarina Catherine, and King Frederic, who had trusted the charmer of Ferney when he said that “the cause of the philosophers was the cause of the princes"? They might see now that the attack on the Church inevitably reacted on the divine right of royalty, and that history was only a pulpit for the "philosophers," who soon found their voices drowned by the revolutionary orators, Mirabeau, Barnave, Vergniaud, Danton, a race silenced and superseded by the man of the 18th Brumaire.

Never have self-styled " philosophers " exercised so direct an influence on society as in France at this time. Among them Voltaire holds the chief and central place; but the radical group at his left is more witty, keen, vigorous, and loud than the conservatives who make but a poor and timid show in defence of inherited faith. This new philosophy drew its inspiration from England, chiefly from Locke; and, like him, the French metaphysicians aimed to be clear rather than profound, gliding over difficulties and aspiring to systematic completeness at the cost sometimes of common-sense. Voltaire almost boasts of his superficiality. "Throw my work into the fire," he exclaims, " if it is