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Did any novelist of the eighteenth century reveal a subtler insight into the hidden recesses of feminine psychology than Marivaux? It may be true enough that, in the nineteenth century, prose-fiction has been more fortunate than the drama and that the novelists have achieved triumphs of insight and of subtlety denied to the dramatists.

One has all the advantages of variety, and change of incident and scenery, without any exertion; all the lazy pleasures for such they must be called of boat life, without any of the monotony which makes a long sea voyage so unendurable. I think it was Gray who said that his idea of paradise was "To lie on a sofa and read eternally new romances of Marivaux and Crebillon."

For such is Georges Feydeau. His method is not that of the Seventeenth Century master, nor yet that of Mirbeau; nevertheless, aside from these two figures, Beaumarchais, Marivaux, Becque, Brieux at his best, and Maurice Donnay occasionally, there has not been a single writer in the history of the French theatre so inevitably au courant with human nature.

Silvia was the adoration of France, and her talent was the real support of all the comedies which the greatest authors wrote for her, especially of, the plays of Marivaux, for without her his comedies would never have gone to posterity.

You see, Félicie, what you must do above all, when you are playing in La Mère confidente, which is a delightful play " "Oh," interrupted Félicie, "so long as I have a good part, I don't care a fig for the play. Besides, I am not particularly in love with Marivaux What are you laughing at, doctor? Have I put my foot in it? Isn't La Mère confidente by Marivaux?" "To be sure it is!" "Well, then?

Haywood managed to exist fourteen years longer and during that time wrote the best remembered of her works. Copy from her pen supplied her publisher, Thomas Gardner, with a succession of novels modeled on the French fiction of Marivaux and De Mouhy, with periodical essays reminiscent of Addison, with moral letters, and with conduct books of a nondescript but popular sort.

In France, for some ten years past there had been writers Crébillon, Marivaux, Prévost who had essayed this delicate analysis of emotion, but these men were the first to admit the superiority of their rough English rival.

The first artist of the new type was a Frenchman, Marivaux, and his Vie de Marianne is a study of a young woman who is the embodiment of sensibility and self-consciousness, an amiable and virtuous girl, who is hardly able to enjoy the good that life brings her, for fear lest she should miss the opportunity of renunciation.

Are you acquainted with Marivaux, who has certainly studied, and is well acquainted with the heart; but who refines so much upon its 'plis et replis', and describes them so affectedly, that he often is unintelligible to his readers, and sometimes so, I dare say, to himself?

Marivaux, the Abbe Malby, and Fontenelle, were almost the only persons whom I sometimes went to see. To the first I showed my comedy of Narcissus. He was pleased with it, and had the goodness to make in it some improvements. Diderot, younger than these, was much about my own age.