has ever since been characteristic of French literature, was or was not due to the predilection of Richelieu, the main protector if not exactly the founder of the Academy, for the theatre. Among the immediate successors and later contemporaries of the three great dramatists we do not find any who deserve high rank as tragedians, though there are some whose comedies are more than respectable. It is at least significant that the restrictions imposed by the academic theory on the comic drama were far less severe than those which tragedy had to undergo. The latter was practically confined, in respect of sources of attraction, to the dexterous manipulation of the unities; the interest of a plot attenuated as much as possible, and intended to produce, instead of pity a mild sympathy, and instead of terror a mild alarm (for the purists decided against Corneille that "admiration was not a tragic passion"); and lastly the composition of long tirades of smooth but monotonous verses, arranged in couplets tipped with delicately careful rhymes. Only Thomas Corneille (1625-1709), the inheritor of an older tradition and of a great name, deserves to be excepted from the condemnation to be passed on the lesser tragedians of this period. He was unfortunate in possessing his brother's name, and in being, like him, too voluminous in his compositions; but _Camma_, _Ariane_, _Le Comte d'Essex_, are not tragedies to be despised. On the other hand, the names of Jean de Campistron (1656-1723) and Nicolas Pradon (1632-1698) mainly serve to point injurious comparisons; Joseph Francois Duche (1668-1704) and Antoine La Fosse (1653-1708) are of still less importance, and Quinault's tragedies are chiefly remarkable because he had the good sense to give up writing them and to take to opera. The general excellence of French comedy, on the other hand, was sufficiently vindicated. Besides the splendid sum of Moliere's work, the two great tragedians had each, in _Le Menteur_ and _Les Plaideurs_, set a capital example to their successors, which was fairly followed. David Augustin de Brueys (1640-1723) and Jean Palaprat (1650-1721) brought out once more the ever new _Advocat Patelin_ besides the capital _Grondeur_ already referred to. Quinault and Campistron wrote fair comedies. Florent Carton Dancourt (1661-1726), Charles Riviere Dufresny (c. 1654-1724), Edmond Boursault (1638-1701), were all comic writers of considerable merit. But the chief comic dramatist of the latter period of the 17th century was Jean Francois Regnard (1655-1709), whose _Joueur_ and _Legataire_ are comedies almost of the first rank. Heroic Romance.