La vie que je mene aujourd'hui n'est point batarde, elle vient bien en ligne droite de celle que je menais._ 4. A phrase ending in a surprise: _Je gage que tu m'aimes.--Je ne parie jamais, je perds toujours._ 5. A metonymy put into action: _Voyez-vous cette figure tendre et solitaire qui se promene la-bas en attendant la mienne?_ 6. A rough comparison, which will not admit of examination: _Si j'etais roi, nous verrions qui serait reine, et comme ce ne serait pas moi, il faudrait que ce fut vous._ Although these divisions are not altogether satisfactory, they, with the examples cited, will serve to convey an accurate enough idea of this side of the _marivaudage_. Such expressions, or, at least, those in which the exaggeration of the figure is most apparent, are usually found in the mouths of servants and peasants, to which class such complicated language is not unnatural.[149] A very minor phase of the literary activity of Marivaux remains to be considered, and that is his work in criticism. Eulogiums of the tragedies of Crebillon _pere_,[150] of the _Romulus_[151] and the _Ines de Castro_[152] of La Motte, and of the _Lettres persanes_[153] of Montesquieu constitute almost his entire equipment in this line. That he was not an unbiased critic, this unwarranted praise of his friend La Motte is enough to prove: "Je sortais, il y a quelques jours, de la comedie, ou j'etais alle voir _Romulus_, qui m'avait charme, et je disais en moi-meme: on dit communement _l'elegant Racine_, et le _sublime Corneille_; quelle epithete donnera-t-on a cet homme-ci, je n'en sais rien; mais il est beau de les avoir meritees toutes les deux." His criticism of the _Lettres persanes_ is, after all, the only one worthy of praise. In it he has shown himself a fair and competent judge of this first celebrated work of Montesquieu. I realize that, in thus restricting the critical works of Marivaux, it is taking a narrow view of criticism, and that his works ridiculing the classics, _l'Iliade travestie_ and _le Telemaque travesti_, together with his ideas upon the quarrel of the ancients and moderns, as seen throughout certain of his works, and particularly in _le Miroir_, and lastly his opinion of criticism in general, and his defense of his own style, as embodied in works already mentioned, should be taken into consideration, if we had the time to study him as critic in this broader sense.