ill living and flourishing with by no means simulated life.
The attempt of La Chaussee and Diderot to widen the range and break down
the barriers of legitimate drama was premature, and not altogether well
directed; but it was the forerunner of the great and durable reaction of
nearly a century later. Still the actual dramatic accomplishment of this
period, though in many ways interesting, and to a certain extent
positively valuable, is not of the first class. It is made up either of
clever imitations and variations of modes which had already been
expressed with greater perfection, and with far greater genius, by the
preceding century, or of what may be fairly called dramatic
pamphleteering, or else of tentative and immature experiments in reform,
which came to nothing, or to very little, for the time being. Even its
most gifted practitioners regarded it as a kind of journey-work, which
was understood to lead to honour and profit, rather than as an art, in
which honour and profit, if not entirely to be ignored, are altogether
secondary considerations. Hence, in a lesser degree, the drama of the
eighteenth century shares the same disadvantage which has been noted as
characterising its poetry. Its value is a value of curiosity chiefly, a
relative value. Indeed, as a mere mechanical art, drama sank even lower
than poetry proper ever sank; and for fifty years at least before the
romantic revival it may be doubted whether a single play was written,
the destruction of which need greatly grieve even the most sensitive and
appreciative student of French literary history.

CHAPTER III.

NOVELISTS.

The peculiarity of the eighteenth century in France as regards
literature----that is to say, the application of great talents to almost
every branch of literary production without the result of a distinct
original growth in any one department----is nowhere more noticeable than
in the department of prose fiction[288]. The names of Lesage, Prevost,
Marivaux, Voltaire, Rousseau, are deservedly recorded among the list of
the best novel writers. Yet, with the exception of _Manon Lescaut_,
which for the time had no imitators, of the great works of Lesage which,
admirable in execution, were by no means original in conception, and of
the exquisite but comparatively insignificant variety of the prose
_Conte_, of which Voltaire was the chief practitioner, nothing in the
nature of a masterpiece, still less anything in the nature of an