th less hopeful and less compact
than it had been at the outset of the campaign. But some authors who had
kept aloof from the movement were not slow in reaping the moral and
intellectual profit of these tentative experiments. Among them must be
cited George de Porto-Riche, Henri Lavedan, Paul Hervieu, Maurice Donnay
and Jules Lemaitre. Alone among the authors of the Theatre Libre, E.
Brieux secured an assured position on the regular stage. Instead of
attacking the vices and follies of his times, he has made a name by
satirizing the weak points or the wrong application of certain
fundamental principles by which modern institutions are supported. He
mocked at universal suffrage in _L'Engrenage_, at art in _Menages
d'artistes_, at popular instruction in _Blanchette_, at charity in _Les
Bienfaiteurs_, at science in _L'Evasion_, and then at law in _La Robe
rouge_. Of _Les Trois Filles de M. Dupont_, one is an old maid with a
strong bent towards mysticism, another is a star in the demi-monde, and
the third is married. Neither religion, nor free love, nor marriage has
made one of the three happy. The strange fact about Brieux is that he
propounds his uncomfortable ideas with an incredible amount of dash and
spirit.

All the plays written by the above-mentioned authors, and by those who
follow in their steps, have been said to constitute the "new comedy."
But one may question the advisability of applying the same name to
literary works which present so little, if any, family likeness. It was
tacitly agreed to remove the intricacies of the plot and the forced
_denouement_. But no one will trace in those plays the uniformity of
moral purpose which would justify us in comprising them under the same
head, as products of the same school. Then, before the Naturalistic, or
half-Naturalistic, School had attained to a practical result or taken a
definite shape, a wave of Romanticism swept over the French public, and
in a measure brought back the old artistic and literary dogmas
propounded by Victor Hugo and the generation of 1830. Signs of a revival
in French dramatic poetry were not lacking. The success of _La Fille de
Roland_, by the Vicomte de Bornier, was restricted to the more
cultivated classes, but the vogue of Jean Richepin's _Chemineau_ was at
once general and lasting. _Cyrano de Bergerac_, produced in the last
days of 1897, brought a world-wide reputation to its young author,
Edmond Rostand. This play combines sparkling wit an