GREAT PROSE WRITERS: MONTESQUIEU.--In prose, writers, and even great writers, were abundant at this period. Immediately after Fontenelle and Bayle appeared Montesquieu, sharp, malicious, satirical, already profound, in _The Persian Letters_, a great political philosopher and master of jurisprudence in _The Spirit of Laws_, a great philosophical historian in _The Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans_. The influence of Montesquieu on Voltaire, no matter what the latter may have said; on Rousseau, however silent the latter may have been about it; on Mably, on Raynal, on the encyclopaedists, on a large portion of the men in the French Revolution, on the greatest minds of the nineteenth century, has been profound and difficult to measure. As writer he was concise, collected, and striking, seeking the motive and often finding it, seeking the formula and invariably finding it--Tacitus mingled with Sallust. LE SAGE; SAINT-SIMON.--In considering Le Sage and Saint-Simon, it is not, perhaps, the one who is instinctively thought of as a novelist who really was the greater romancer. They each wrote at the same time as Montesquieu. Saint-Simon narrated the age of Louis XIV as an eyewitness, both with spirit and with a feeling for the picturesque that were alike inimitable, expressed in a highly characteristic fashion, which was often incorrect, always incredibly vigorous, energetic, and masterful. Le Sage, in the best of all French styles, that of the purest seventeenth century, narrated Spanish stories in which he mingled many observations made in Paris, and set the model for the realistic novel in his admirable _Gil Blas_. As a dramatist he will be dealt with later. MARIVAUX; PRÉVOST.--Marivaux also essayed the realistic novel in his very curious _Marianne_, full of types drawn from contemporary life and drawn with an art which was less condensed but as exact as that of La Bruyère, and in his _Perverted Peasant_ with an art which was more gross, but still highly interesting. The Abbé Prévost, much inferior, much overpraised, generally insipid in his novels of adventure, once found a good theme, _Manon Lescaut_, and, though writing as badly as was his wont, evoked tears which, it may be said, still flow. HISTORY: DRAMA.--In history Voltaire furnished a model of vivid, rapid, truly epic narration in his _History of Charles XII_, and an example, at least, of exact documentation and of contemporaneous history studied with zeal and passion in his _Philosophical Letters on England_. On the stage, in prose there were the pretty, witty, and biting light comedies of Dancourt, De Brueys and Palaprat, and Dufresny, then the delicious drama, at once fantastic and perceptive, romantic and psychological, of Marivaux, who, in _The Legacy_, _The False Confidences_, _The Test_, _The Game of Love and of Shame_, showed himself no less than the true heir of Racine and the only one France has ever had.