Somewhat more notice must be given to his work for the _Théâtre de la Foire_, not merely because it has considerable intrinsic merit, but because of its volume, of the constant labour spent on it for full a quarter of a century by the author, and last, but not least, because of its curious form. The pieces which were played at the fairs of Paris were very popular, and their popularity was the subject of constant jealousy on the part of the regular actors of the _Théâtre Français_, though the other two branches of the legitimate drama, the opera and the _Comédie Italienne_, were sometimes more or less in alliance with their little sister. Not a few of Lesage's pieces deal directly with the vicissitudes of _la Foire_. The plays represented on these boards were a curious mixture of the _commedia dell' arte_ and the old French farce. Harlequin in particular is an almost invariable character, though the full complement of Pierrot, Scaramouche, Colombine, &c., only occasionally appears. The plays were of three kinds. One of these was drama reduced to nearly its simplest terms. There was no speaking on the stage and the actors confined themselves to pantomime in dumbshow, while two little cherubs sat up aloft with a long roller of wood, from which, from time to time, they unrolled placards on which short songs, set to popular airs, were inscribed. These songs were sung by the audience, assisted by the actors and orchestra. Here, of course, the author's work was limited to the conception of the action, the expression of it by stage directions to the actors, and the composition of the songs. A second kind of piece was the _Vaudeville_ proper, in which the whole play is written in lyrical _couplets_. In the third and most elaborate, ordinary prose dialogue is mixed up with songs. This last sometimes attained considerable dimensions and was divided into acts. These popular pieces were, throughout the eighteenth century, composed by authors whose literary standing was by no means low--such as Lesage, Piron, Collé, and many others--and when a piece had a particular vogue it was not unfrequently transferred, at the command of some great personage, to the boards of the opera. Our author, as has been said, wrote a very large number of these curious compositions in all the three styles just described. Their literary value is, of course, far from great, but they display a good deal of invention, a command of easy verse, and much less indulgence in the besetting sin of the fair theatre, license of language, than most of their fellows. _La Princesse de Carizme_, one of the longest, and possessing something like a plot, is also one of the best. It turns on the well-known story of a princess whose beauty turns all who behold her mad. But, on the whole, the pieces which deal with the rivalry of the _Foire_ and the graver dramatic institutions are, perhaps, the most amusing. The contrasted display of the _Comédie