Even at the tolerant era of its production, the Marriage of 'Figaro' was thought to carry theatrical licence too far. Horace Walpole, in a letter to Lady Ossory, expresses indignation at a rumour that ladies of character had concealed themselves with masks or in secret boxes when they visited the theatre to see the Marriage of Figaro.' It is well known,' says that high authority, that on the Parisian stage indecorum is unknown.' He might have quoted the candid protest of Cherubin to Almaviva :-Je fus léger dans ma conduite, il est vrai, mon'seigneur; mais jamais la moindre indiscrétion dans mes paroles. The report was, nevertheless, perfectly true. M. de Loménie has preserved a letter written by Beaumarchais to the President Dupaty, in answer to a request for a box for certain persons who have their reasons for not showing themselves in public; i. e. for a mother and her daughters.' The reply contains a dignified reproof: - Je n'ai nulle considération, M. le Président, 'pour des femmes qui se permettent de voir un spectacle qu'elles 'jugent malhonnête, pourvu qu'elles le voient en secret. Je ne 'me prête point à des pareilles fantaisies. J'ai donné ma pièce au public pour l'amuser et pour l'instruire, non pour offre à des bégueules mitigées le plaisir d'en aller penser du bien en 'petite loge, à condition d'en dire du mal en société. Les plaisirs du vice et les honneurs de la vertu, telle est la pruderie du 'siècle. Ma pièce n'est point un ouvrage équivoque; il faut l'avouer ou la fuire.' The grossness of the dialogue was, however, considerably corrected between the first performance before the Count of Artois and the production of the play at the

theatre.

Beaumarchais was perhaps sincere in his belief that his comedy was moral, and instructive as well as amusing; but the best characteristic of the Figaro plays is the hearty merriment which pervades them. Like greater comic writers, like Aristophanes, Rabelais, Swift, and Sterne, the author of the Goezman Memoirs,' and of the Barber of Seville,' is evidently enjoying himself while he amuses his readers. In the mixture of wit and broad humour he perhaps resembles Sheridan more than any other English dramatist. The repartees of Figaro may recall the best parts of the School for Scandal;' and the pleading before Don Guzman or Goezman Bridoison, is worthy of the reasoning of the Critic.' A farther parallel might be drawn between the patriotic balderdash of Pizarro and the opera of Tarare,' which was produced in 1787. The poetry of this curious composition is on a level with that of an ordinary libretto: the philanthropic and liberal sentiments belong to the time at which it appeared. Two years before the meeting of

the States General, France was still conventionally credulous both of royalty and of freedom. The opinions expressed in Tarare,' and echoed by the nation at large, are comprehensively summed up by the Chaur Général near the end of the opera: Roi, nous mettons la liberté Aux pieds de ta vertu suprême, Règne sur ce peuple qui t'aime, Par les lois, et par l'équité.

[Danse des premiers sujets dans tous les genres.]'

The plot was afterwards republicanised to suit the taste of the Revolution, then brought into harmony with the despotic tastes of the Empire, and finally imbued with the reverential loyalty which became a fashion at the Restoration.

The Guilty Mother,' produced in 1792, forms an unworthy conclusion to the Figaro trilogy. A literary parent has no Roman prerogative of life and death over his offspring. The later history of the Almaviva family must be rejected as ápocryphal. It was not the destiny of Cherubin to court a melodramatic death under the influence of remorse; nor was Rosine left for twenty years a gloomy and repentant devotee. The touching prayers (to the Source éternelle des bienfaits), of which Voltairian authors are so prodigal on the stage, always raise a suspicion of unreality. Worthless, however, as • Tarare,' and the Guilty Mother' may appear to literary criticism, their theatrical merit is proved by the fact that they are still occasionally performed.

The Revolution, which influenced the fortune of every Frenchman, put an end to some of the vexations of which Beaumarchais had long complained. He had found at last the equality which he desired with those above him; but he had more to lose than to gain by a general process of levelling, when at last chacun 'n'était pas plus égaux l'un que l'autre.' He was rich, and on the verge of threescore he had little appetite for novelties. Within the last few years he had been exposed to several malignant attacks which had rendered him unpopular. Mirabeau assailed him in a mercenary libel for the crime of proposing to supply Paris with water; and an advocate named Bergasse sought and won notoriety by promoting a scandalous lawsuit against the celebrated conqueror of Goezman. The name of Bergeasse, given to the Irish villain in the Guilty Mother,' records the just resentment of the injured party. Mirabeau afterwards courted a reconciliation by applying for a favour which his generous victim willingly bestowed. The effect of these unfortunate controversies might probably have been forgotten, but Beaumarchais lived in a palace opposite the Bastille,

and the splendour of his abode was a standing offence people. The violence of the Revolution alarmed and rep him, and he ridiculed the affectations and pedantry of the in the same spirit in which he had satirized the abuses of monarchy. In common with many of his contemporarie had in former times often followed the fashion of designa himself as a citizen, and in one of the Goezman memoirs justifies the use of the title: Je prends avec autant de jus que de plaisir le nom de citoyen partout où je parle de moi c 'cette affaire; ce nom est doux à ma bouche, et flatteur à 1 'oreille. Hommes simples dans la société, sujets heureux d'un 'cellent monarque; chacun de nous, Français, a l'honneur d'é. 'citoyen dans les tribunaux; c'est là seulement où nous pouv soutenir les droits d'égalité.' When the excellent monai Louis XV. had long ceased to reign, and the rights of equal had been asserted with more than needful clamour, the fa tastical name of citizen was no longer pleasant on the lips, soothing to the ear. On the contrary, the Citizen Caron, who ha lost his legal claim to the title of Beaumarchais, remarked wit unanswerable truth that the members of the French communit were in no sense inhabitants of a city, and on every safe an suitable occasion he used the old-fashioned forms of courtesy Si vous êtes mes sieurs, et moi votre sieur à vous tous, qu peut donc être blessé?' With no enthusiasm for royalty, and with still less love for aristocracy, he would willingly have acquiesced in any system of government in which order and common sense were dominant. In the anarchy which ensued he might think himself comparatively fortunate in escaping with his life, at the cost of temporary exile and of the greater part of his wealth.

At the beginning of 1792, Beaumarchais was employed by the Government to procure a large number of muskets, which were deposited at Tervère, in Holland. In consideration of an advance of 300,000 francs, he was obliged to deposit in the Treasury securities of more than double the value; and the Ministers of War who succeeded each other with incessant rapidity, neglected the business and retained the money. The patriotic people, with their habitual accuracy and love of justice, hearing that muskets were in question, assumed that they were concealed for treasonable purposes in the cellars of the splendid hotel which offended their tastes as often as they emerged with their pikes from the Faubourg St. Antoine. Finding nothing in their search, they logically insisted on sending the suspected traitor to the Abbaye, where they would have massacred him on the 2nd of September, but for a theatrical

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it which occurred to Manuel, the Procureur of the
In melodramatic revenge for certain jokes which
er had formerly made at his expense, Manuel fortu-
ased him from prison on the 30th of August. It is
on that the Terrorist assassins were fully equal in
Aty to the most refined Opera bandit. A few days
2, Danton could not help laughing at the tenacity
ich Beaumarchais, instead of attending to his own
ressed the affair of the muskets on the Assembly. His
As were so far successful, that he was declared to have
red well of his country, and instructed to proceed to Hol-
or the purpose of completing the transaction. The
ser Lebrun promised to furnish him with funds at the
and took steps to render his success impossible.

So after the meeting of the Convention, he found that he Tatused of conspiracy and of other crimes, that his property Laler sequestration, and his life in imminent danger. As sted on returning to defend himself he would probably e been guillotined if a kind creditor, unwilling to lose at the time his friend and his money, had not taken the opporof his passage through London to imprison him in the gs Bench. Having paid his creditor and induced him to me the nominal owner of the ill-omened muskets, Beauarchais returned to Paris in the spring of 1793, and addressed the Convention a memoir, in which he denounced the The Committee of sting evils with surpassing boldness. Public Safety once more despatched him to Holland as a Comsioner of the Republic; but the co-ordinate Committee of Geral Security (Sureté Générale) sequestrated his real proerty, confiscated his personalty, and placed him on the list of igrants. The English Government, deriving its information from the discussions in the Convention, finally made the success of the affair impossible, by taking possession of the muskets. After the fall of Robespierre, the proscription was continued, on the singular ground that Beaumarchais ought not to have been placed on the list of emigrants, and that he was therefore not entitled to the benefit of the amnesty by which they profited. In 1796 he at last returned to enjoy the society of his family, and to exert himself in saving the wreck of his fortune. He had learned by experience that the crimes and follies of the Reign

The majority of the Committee of Public Safety were members of the Mountain. The Committee of General Security was influenced by the Girondists, and the persecutions to which Beaumarchais was subjected were principally originated by that puritanical faction.

of Terror were incomparably more atrocious than the worst abuses of the monarchy; but convulsions, in which the scum of society for a moment rises to the surface, are not to be compared to the organised corruption of established and permanent systems. The deep-rooted nature of the previous disease was proved by the beneficial effects which, on the whole, resulted from the delirious paroxysm of the Revolution.

The last years of Beaumarchais' life were employed in efforts to obtain justice from the Government, and to recover some fragments of his property. His only child, Eugénie, was married about the time of his return from exile to M. Delarue, who still survives. Notwithstanding the failure of her more brilliant prospects, the fortune which she ultimately inherited must have considerably exceeded 100,000l. Her father never lost the gaiety of temperament which had accompanied him through life; and he enjoyed in his own domestic circle a degree of happiness which he well deserved. Mme. de Beaumarchais was an accomplished and amiable woman; and his favourite sister, Julie, preserved to the last her devotion to her brother, and her cheerful character. On her death-bed, in 1798, she amused herself by singing extemporised verses to a lively air. Her friends and relatives answered in the same strain, occasionally deviating into impropriety, and Beaumarchais noted down with tender solicitude the swan-like words and music. From his earliest manhood he had made it his duty and his pleasure to provide for all his family. His father resided in his house to the end of his life; and his sisters and their children were in a great degree dependent on his untiring generosity. At the time of his American undertaking an envious rival complained to M. de Vergennes that the confidential agent of the Government was dissipated and extravagant. Beaumarchais, never unwilling to call attention to his own good actions, replied with considerable point and humour, Eh! que fait à nos affaires que je sois un homme répandu, fastueux, et qui entretient des filles? Les filles que j'entretiens depuis vingt ans, Monsieur, sont bien vos très-humbles servantes. Elles étaient cinq, dont quatre sœurs et une nièce. Depuis trois ans, deux de ces filles entre' tenues sont mortes à mon grand regret. Je n'en entretiens plus que trois, deux sœurs et ma nièce, ce qui ne laisse pas d'être encore assez fastueux pour un particulier comme moi.' He adds that he also maintains two nephews, et même le trop 'malheureux père qui a mis au monde un aussi scandaleux entreteneur.' The descriptions of the interior life of the Caron family are among the pleasant est parts of M. de Loménie's work. Their tastes were social, refined, and even intellectual, and the

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