Casimir Delavigne (1793-1843) is remembered in lyric poetry by his patriotic odes, _Les Messeniennes_, suggested by the military disasters of France. His dramatic work is noteworthy, less for the writer's talent than as indicating the influence of the romantic movement in checking the development of classical art. Had he been free to follow his natural tendencies, Delavigne would have remained a creditable disciple of Racine; he yielded to the stream, and timidly approached the romantic leaders in historical tragedy. Once in comedy he achieved success; _L'Ecole des Vieillards_ has the originality of presenting an old husband who is generous in heart, and a young wife who is good-natured amid her frivolity. Comedy during the second quarter of the century had a busy ephemeral life. The name of Eugene Scribe, an incessant improvisator during forty years, from 1811 onwards, in comedy, vaudeville, and lyric drama, seems to recall that of the seventeenth-century Hardy. His art was not all commerce; he knew and he loved the stage; a philistine writing for philistines, Scribe cared little for truth of character, for beauty of form; the theatrical devices became for him ends in themselves; of these he was as ingenious a master as is the juggler in another art when he tosses his bewildering balls, or smiles at the triumph of his inexplicable surprises. CHAPTER IV THE NOVEL I The novel in the nineteenth century has yielded itself to every tendency of the age; it has endeavoured to revive the past, to paint the present, to embody a social or political doctrine, to express private and personal sentiment, to analyse the processes of the heart, to idealise life in the magic mirror of the imagination. The literature of prose fiction produced by writers who felt the influence of the romantic movement tended on the one hand towards lyrism, the passionate utterance of individual emotion--George Sand's early tales are conspicuous examples; on the other hand it turned to history, seeking to effect a living and coloured evocation of former ages. The most impressive of these evocations was assuredly Hugo's _Notre-Dame de Paris_. It was not the earliest; Vigny's _Cinq-Mars_ preceded _Notre-Dame_ by five years. The writer had laboriously mastered those details which help to make up the romantic _mise en scene_; but he sought less to interpret historical truth by the imagination than to employ the material of history as a vehicle for what he conceived to be ideal truth. In Merimee's _Chronique de Charles IX._ (1829), which also preceded Hugo's romance, the historical, or, if not this, the archaeological spirit is present; it skilfully sets a tale of the imagination in a framework of history.