more by fits and starts. His first attempt at prose fiction is
said to have been--for the authenticity of the attribution is not
certain--a romance in a kind of pseudo-Spanish style, called _Les Effets
surprenants de la Sympathie_, published six years later. Then he took to
the sterile and ignoble literature of travesty, attacking Homer and
Fenelon in the style of Scarron and Cotton. This brought him, through La
Motte, under the influence of Fontenelle, to whom he owed not a little.
He made a fortune and lost it in Law's bubble. Then he turned
journalist, and after writing social articles in the _Mercure_, started
a periodical himself, the nature of which is sufficiently shown by its
borrowed title, _Le Spectateur Francais_, 1722. At a later period he
began another paper of the same kind, _Le Cabinet du Philosophe_, 1734.
His plays, which have been already noticed, were written partly for the
Comedie Francaise, and partly for a very popular Italian company which
appeared in France during the second quarter of the century. But for the
present purpose his works which concern us are the famous romance of
_Marianne_, 1731-1742, and the less-known one of the _Paysan Parvenu_,
1735. His dramas, rather than his fictions, procured him a place in the
Academy in 1742, and he died in 1763.

_Marianne_ has been said to be the origin of _Pamela_, which may not be
exactly the fact, though it is difficult not to believe that it gave
Richardson his idea. But it is certain that it is a remarkable novel,
and that it, rather than the plays, gave rise to the singular phrase
_Marivaudage_, with which the author, not at all voluntarily, has
enriched literature. The plot is simple enough. A poor but virtuous girl
has adventures and recounts them, and the manner of recounting is
extremely original. A morally faulty but intellectually admirable
contemporary, Crebillon the younger, described this manner excellently
by saying that the characters not only say everything that they have
done and everything that they have thought, but everything that they
would have liked to think but did not. This curious kind of mental
analysis is expressed in a style which cannot be defended from the
charge of affectation notwithstanding its extreme ingenuity and
occasional wit. The real importance of _Marianne_ in the history of
fiction is that it is the first example of the novel of analysis rather
than of incident (though incident is still prominent), and the f