Française_, her solemn tragic airs and the mannerisms of her lighter mood, with the impudent coquettishness of the personified _Foire_, gave Lesage a good opportunity, of which he did not scruple to avail himself. The contrast, of course, is an old one, and something like it had been frequently brought with success on the popular stage, even in early times. _La Querelle des Théâtres_ has something in it which reminds the reader of the old morality of _Science et Anerye_. The music of the pieces, too, has its interest, because it shows the remarkable conservatism of the French populace in these matters. Now-a-days new airs are a _sine quâ non_ for a comic opera that is to be successful. Lesage's pieces are all written to a few score tunes, which remained on duty during the whole eighteenth century, and may be still seen at the head of Béranger's songs a hundred years and more afterwards. But it must, of course, be understood that only regular students of literature can be recommended to attack Lesage's _Théâtre de la Foire_. It has received some mention here chiefly because most of his critics have been content to give second-hand judgments of it, and a second-hand judgment in matters literary has a habit of going farther and farther from the truth as it passes from pen to pen. The two pieces of Lesage which, if they have not actually kept the stage, have at least secured their place in collections of the French drama, demand a longer mention. I say if they have not kept the stage, for I have no positive knowledge as to the question whether _Crispin_ and _Turcaret_ have of late years been represented. They are certainly amusing enough to read, and _Turcaret_ is something more than amusing. _Crispin Rival de son Maître_ is a much less ambitious piece than _Turcaret_. It is, in fact, only a longish farce in one act, but in a great number of scenes. Something of what an English critic once very unjustly called the "exaggerated manner of Molière" may be observed in it. Indeed, this phrase of Hazlitt has a good deal of truth when applied to this little piece; it is Molière's manner exaggerated by recourse to the Spanish style of comedy, from which the great playwright had refined and purified his own. There is the usual impecunious and unlucky lover, but the usual valet, instead of backing his master, enters with another valet into a wild plan for marrying the heroine himself. By playing into each other's hands the two rascals succeed for a time in hoodwinking the father, and, by gross flattery, in winning over the mother to their side. The scheme is upset by the simple fact that the father of the suitor whom Crispin personates soon appears, and by the still simpler one that the master, of course, recognizes and identifies his servant. But the intrigue, impossible as it is, is very briskly kept up, and the short bustling scenes hardly allow the audience to reflect on the improbability of the thing. The dialogue is full of