rkable that it
had no successors of importance or merit in France. This is probably to
be accounted for by the cosmopolitan tone which has been already
remarked upon. Indeed Lesage, as a rule, has had less justice done to
him by his countrymen than any other of their great writers. Yet his
style, looked at merely from the point of view of art, is excellent, and
perhaps superior to that of any of his contemporaries properly so
called.

Close in the track of Madame de la Fayette followed Madame de Fontaines
(Marie Louise Charlotte de Givri), the date of whose birth is unknown,
but who died in 1730. She was a friend of Voltaire's youth, and her best
work is named _La Comtesse de Savoie_, the date of the story being the
eleventh century. She also wrote a short story of less merit called
_Amenophis_. Madame de Tencin (Claudine Alexandrine Guerin), the mother
of D'Alembert, the friend of Fontenelle, and one of the most famous
salon-holders of the early eighteenth century, was a more fertile and a
cleverer writer. She was born in 1681, and died in 1749. She had a bad
heart, but an excellent head, and she showed her powers in the _Memoires
du Comte de Comminges_ and the _Siege de Calais_, besides some minor
works. The fault of almost all romances of the La Fayette school, the
habit of throwing the scene into periods about which the writers knew
nothing, appears in these works.

[Sidenote: Marivaux.]

But the first writer of fiction after Lesage who is worthy of separate
mention at any length (for in these later centuries of our history there
are, as any reader of books will understand, vast numbers of
practitioners in every branch of literary art who are entirely unworthy
of notice in a compendious history of literature) is Marivaux, an
original and remarkable novelist, who, though by no possibility to be
ranked among the great names of French literature, occupies a not
inconsiderable place among those who are remarkable without being great.
Pierre Carlet de Marivaux, whose strict paternal appellation was simply
Pierre Carlet, was born at Paris on the 8th of February, 1688. His
father was of Norman origin, and held employments in the financial
branch of the public service. Very little is known of the son's youth,
and indeed not much of his life. He is said to have produced his first
play, _Le Pere Prudent et Equitable_, at the age of eighteen, and his
dramatic industry was thenceforward considerable. As a romancer he
worked