In the next generation (that of Voltaire) comedy gradually--but only gradually--surrendered for a time the very essence of its vitality to the seductions of a hybrid species, which disguised its identity under more than a single name. A. R. le Sage, who as a comic dramatist at first followed successfully in the footsteps of Molière, proved himself on the stage as well as in picturesque fiction a keen observer and inimitable satirist of human life.[126] The light texture of the playful and elegant art of J. B. L. Gresset was shown on the stage in a character comedy of merit;[127] and in a comedy which reveals something of his pointed wit, A. Piron produced something like a new type of enduring ridiculousness.[128] P. C. de Marivaux, the French _Spectator_, is usually supposed to have formed the connecting link between the "old" French comedy and the "new" and bastard variety. Yet, though his minute analysis of the tender passion excited the scorn of Voltaire, it should not be overlooked that in _marivaudage_ proper the wit holds the balance to the sentiment, and that in some of this frequently misjudged writer's earlier and most delightful plays the elegance and gaiety of diction are as irresistible as the pathetic sentiment, which is in fact rather an ingredient in his comedy than the pervading characteristic of it.[129] Some of the comedies of P. H. Destouches no doubt have a serious basis, and in his later plays he comes near to a kind of drama in which the comic purpose has been virtually submerged.[130] The writer who is actually to be credited with the transition to sentimental comedy, and who was fully conscious of the change which he was helping to effect, was Nivelle de La Chaussée, in whose hands French comedy became a champion of the sanctity of marriage, and reproduced the sentiments--in one instance even the characters--of Richardson.[131] To his play _La Fausse Antipathie_ the author supplied a _critique_, amounting to an apology for the new species of which it was designed as an example.