an when he seemed most _naif_.[145]

Modern schools.

The romantic school was not destined to exercise a permanent control
over French public taste; but it can hardly be said to have been
overthrown by the brief classical revival begun by F. Ponsard, and
continued, though in closer contact with modern ideas, both by him[146]
and by E. Augier, a dramatist who gradually attained to an extraordinary
effectiveness in the self-restrained treatment of social as well as of
historical themes.[147] While the theatrical fecundity and the
remarkable constructive ability of E. Scribe[148] supplied a long series
of productions attesting the rapid growth of the playwright's mastery
over the secrets of his craft the name of his competitors is legion.
Among them may be mentioned, if only as the authors of two of the most
successful plays of the historical species produced in the century, two
writers of great eminence--C. Delavigne[149] and E. Legouve.[150] Later
developments of the drama bore the impress of a period of social decay,
prepared to probe its own sufferings, while glad at times to take refuge
in the gaiety traditional in France in her more light-hearted days, but
which even then had not yet deserted either French social life or the
theatre which reflected it. After a fashion which would have startled
even Diderot, while recalling his efforts in the earnestness of its
endeavour to arouse moral interests to which the theatre had long been a
stranger, A. Dumas the younger set himself to reform society by means of
the stage.[151] But the technical skill which he and contemporary
dramatists displayed in the execution of their self-imposed task was
such as had been undreamt of by Diderot. O. Feuillet, more eminent as a
novelist than on the stage, applied himself, though with the aid of
fewer prefaces, to the solution of the same or similar problems; while
the extraordinary versatility of V. Sardou and his unfailing
constructive skill was applied by him to almost every kind of serious,
or serio-comic, drama--even the most solid of all.[152] In the same
period, while E. Pailleron revived some of the most characteristic
tendencies of the best French satirical comedy in ridiculing the pompous
pretentiousness of learning for its own sake,[153] the light-hearted
gaiety of E. Labiche changed into something not altogether similar in
the productions of the comic muse of L. Halevy and H. Meilhac, ranging
from the licence of the musica