class of 18th-century fiction consists of attempts to return to the humorous _fatrasie_ of the 16th century, attempts which were as much influenced by Sterne as the sentimental novel was by Richardson. The _Homme aux quarante ecus_ of Voltaire has something of this character, but the most characteristic works of the style are the _Jacques le fataliste_ of Diderot, which shows it nearly at its best, and the _Compere Mathieu_, sometimes attributed to Pigault-Lebrun (1753-1835), but no doubt in reality due to Jacques du Laurens (1719-1797), which shows it at perhaps its worst. Another remarkable story-teller was Cazotte (1719-1792), whose _Diable amoureux_ displays much fantastic power, and connects itself with a singular fancy of the time for occult studies and _diablerie_, manifested later by the patronage shown to Cagliostro, Mesmer, St Germain and others. In this connexion, too, may perhaps also be mentioned most appropriately Restif de la Bretonne, a remarkably original and voluminous writer, who was little noticed by his contemporaries and successors for the best part of a century. Restif, who was nicknamed the "Rousseau of the gutter," _Rousseau du ruisseau_, presents to an English imagination many of the characteristics of a non-moral Defoe. While these various schools busied themselves more or less with real life seriously depicted or purposely travestied, the great vogue and success of _Telemaque_ produced a certain number of didactic works, in which moral or historical information was sought to be conveyed under a more or less thin guise of fiction. Such was the _Voyage du jeune Anacharsis_ of Jean Jacques Barthelemy (1716-1795); such the _Numa Pompilius_ and _Gonzalve de Cordoue_ of Florian (1755-1794), who also deserves notice as a writer of pastorals, fables and short prose tales; such the _Belisaire_ and _Les Incas_ of Jean Francois Marmontel (1723-1799). Between this class and that of the novel of sentiment may perhaps be placed _Paul et Virginie_ and _La Chaumiere indienne_; though Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737-1814) should more properly be noticed after Rousseau and as a moralist. Diderot's fiction-writing has already been referred to more than once, but his _Religieuse_ deserves citation here as a powerful specimen of the novel both of analysis and polemic; while his undoubted masterpiece, the _Neveu de Rameau_, though very difficult to class, comes under this head as well as under any other. There are, however, two of the novelists of this age, and of the most remarkable, who have yet to be noticed, and these are the author of _Marianne_ and the author of _Julie_. We do not mention Pierre de Marivaux (1688-1763) in this connexion as the equal of Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), but merely as being in his way almost equally original and equally remote from any suspicion of school influence. He began with burlesque writing, and was also the author of several comedies, of which _Les Fausses Confidences_ is the principal.