VOLTAIRE.--In the second portion of the eighteenth century, Voltaire reigned. He multiplied historical studies (_Century of Louis XIV_), philosophies (_Philosophical Dictionary_), dramas (_Zaïre_, _Mérope_, _Alzire_ [before 1750], _Rome Saved_, _The Chinese Orphan_, _Tancred_, _Guèbres_, _Scythia_, _Irene_), comedies (_Nanine_, _The Prude_), romances(_Tales and Novels_), judicial exquisitions (the Calas, Labarre, and Sirven cases), and articles, pamphlets, and fugitive papers on all conceivable subjects. THE PHILOSOPHERS.--But the second generation of philosophers was now reached. There was Diderot, philosophical romancer (_The Nun_, _James the Fatalist_), art critic(_Salons_), polygraphist (collaboration in the Encyclopaedia); there was Jean Jacques Rousseau, philosophic novelist in _The New Héloise_, publicist in his discourse against _Literature and the Arts and Origin of Inequality_, schoolmaster in his _Emilius_, severe moralist in his _Letters to M. d'Alembert on the Spectacles_, half-romancer, charming, impassioned, and passion-inspiring in the autobiography which he called his Confessions; there was Duclos, interesting though rather tame in his _Considerations on the Manners of this Century_; there was Grimm, an acute and subtle critic of the highest intelligence in his _Correspondence_; then Condillac, precise, systematic, restrained, but infinitely clear in the best of diction in his _Treatise on the Sensations_; finally Turgot, the philosophical economist, in his _Treatise on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth_. BUFFON; MARMONTEL; DELILLE.--Philosophy, meditation on great problems, filled almost all the literary horizon, while scientific literature embraced a score of illustrious representatives, of which the most impressive was Buffon, with his _Natural History_. Nevertheless, in absolute literature there were also names to cite: Marmontel gave his _Moral Tales_, his _Belisarius_, his _Incas_, and his _Elements of Literature_. Delille, with his translation in verse of the _Georgics_ of Virgil, commenced a noble poetic career which he pursued until the nineteenth century; Gilbert wrote some mordant satires which recalled Boileau, and some farewells to life which are among the best lyrics; Saint Lambert sang of _The Seasons_ with felicity, and Roucher treated the same theme with more vivid sensibility. THE STAGE.--On the stage, a little before 1750. Gresset gave his _Wicked Man_, which was witty and in such felicitous metre that it carried the tradition of great comedy in verse; Diderot, theorist and creator of the drama in prose, followed La Chaussée, and produced _The Father of a Family_, _The Natural Son_, and _Is He Good, Is He Bad_? being the portrait of himself. Innumerable dramas by the fertile Mercier and a score of others followed, including Beaumarchais, himself a devotee of the drama, but only able to succeed in comedy, wherein he gave his two charming works, _The Barber of Seville_ and _The Marriage of Figaro_.