ois-
Robert, Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, and later Perrault, Fontenelle, La
Motte, and others ranged on the side of the latter, while Boileau,
Corneille, Racine, Rollin, Mme. Dacier, and followers strenuously upheld
the honor of antiquity, had dragged on through the seventeenth and into
the eighteenth century, until apparently the last word had been said by
Mme. Dacier in her _Preface a la traduction de l'Odyssee_ (1716).
Marivaux, however, by turn of mind and training a modern, and ever the
champion of his friend La Motte, and, perhaps more to avenge him for the
"grosses paroles de Mme. Dacier"[33] than to depreciate _le divin Homere_
(whom he made a point of always mentioning in that way), would not let the
matter rest, and, in 1717, composed a burlesque poem entitled _l'Iliade
ravestie_. Had he been familiar with the Greek language, he might never
have committed this piece of literary impudence, but he knew Homer only
through La Motte's reduction of the Iliad, which in turn was based upon
Mme. Dacier's translation. If his object was to overthrow the great Greek
poet, it must have been a bitter disappointment to Marivaux to see that
his burlesque passed almost unnoticed by his contemporaries and was soon
forgotten. The same year he wrote a _Telemaque travesti_, a parody on the
masterpiece of Fenelon. This work was not published until 1736, when it
was received with such disapprobation that he hastened to disavow its
authorship.[34]

Marivaux was now some twenty-nine years of age, and had had but little
success as a writer. He must have felt that parody was not his forte, and,
with his connection with _le Mercure_, an opportunity was presented to
deal with actualities, where his powers of observation might come into
play. He was, as he says of himself, born an observer. "Je suis ne de
maniere que tout me devient une matiere de reflexion; c'est comme une
philosophie de temperament que j'ai recue, et que le moindre objet met en
exercice."[35] With his keen eyes constantly on the watch and his subtle
mind ever ready to ferret out the eccentricities, defects, or hidden
motives which some glance or gesture in his neighbor has revealed to him,
and which a less delicate mind would have failed to grasp, going so far
sometimes as to impute finesse where he has seen but the reflection of his
own nature, he, nevertheless, presents to us, as no other author of the
time, a vivid picture of the brilliant and refined society in which h