Marivaux has been said to have held revolutionary ideas, and, in some degree, to have forecast the terrible rending of society of 1789. While the unqualified statement may give rise to a false conception, and tend to exaggerate the part that he played in the progress of social emancipation, it is not difficult to discover in him the sentiments, if not of a revolutionist,[80] at least of a reformer. The prejudice of birth is attacked in the comedies _les Fausses Confidences_, _le Prejuge vaincu_, _la Double Inconstance_ (acte III, scene IV), and in many a passage in other plays, _le Denoument imprevu_, _l'Heritier de Village_, etc., as well as in his novels and other writings, while the comedy _l'Ile des Esclaves_ is a social satire on the abuses of the day. The increasing importance and the social elevation of servants in his drama is but another tendency along the same line. One of the most obvious faults of the _Spectateur francais_ was the irregular and disconnected manner of its publication. Perhaps through natural indolence, but more likely through over conscientiousness and too high an ideal of artistic perfection, which caused him to magnify his own shortcomings and to soon tire of the subject in hand, he was inclined to abandon his work unfinished and to turn to newer interests. This tendency may be seen in the _Spectateur_, which, after sundry interruptions, finally reaches the twenty-fifth leaflet, after which it suddenly, and without warning, comes to an end. Another journal in the same vein, _l'Indigent Philosophe_, undertaken in 1728, fared even worse, for it was carried only through the seventh leaflet, when it too succumbed, to be revived, however, in 1734, under the title of _le Cabinet du Philosophe_. The same fate awaited the latter, and Marivaux's enthusiasm forsook him at the end of the eleventh leaflet, Fleury[81] characterizes this as the best of his three periodical publications. but I am of the opinion of Lavollee,[82] who does not consider it comparable "either in interest or variety" with the _Spectateur_. It is not alone in this style of literature that our author wearies of his theme and drops his pen, for neither of his novels _Marianne_ nor _le Paysan parvenu_ was completed. The former was begun in 1731, and the publication of its eleven parts was not completed until 1741, ten years later; but the periodical publication of novels was common at that epoch,[83] and the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of Le Sage, contemporary with it (1715- 1735), was double that time in appearing.