It cannot be denied that Crebillon was one of the remarkable men of his century. That untutored genius, so striking in the boldness and brilliancy of its creations, but which more frequently repels through its own native barbarity, was eminently the genius of Crebillon. But what, above all, characterizes the genius of the French nation--wit, grace, and polish--Crebillon never possessed; consequently, with all his vigor and all his force, he never succeeded in creating a living work. He has depicted human perversity with a proud and daring hand--he has shown the fratricide, the infanticide, the parricide, but he never succeeded in attaining the sublimity of the Greek drama. And yet J. J. Rousseau affirmed that of all the French tragic poets, Crebillon alone had recalled to him the grandeur of the Greeks. If so, it was only through the nudity of terror, for the "French Æschylus" was utterly wanting in what may be termed human and philosophical sentiment. There is a very beautiful portrait of Crebillon extant, by Latour. It would doubtless be supposed that the man, so terrible in his dramatic furies, was of a dark and sombre appearance. Far from it; Crebillon was of a fair complexion, and had an artless expression of countenance, and a pair of beautiful blue eyes. It must, however, be confessed, that by his method of borrowing the gestures of his heroes, coupled, moreover, with the habit he had acquired of contracting his eyebrows in the fervor of composition, Crebillon in the end became a little more the man of his works. He was, moreover, impatient and irritable, even with his favorite dogs and cats, and occasionally with his sweet-tempered and angelic wife, the ever cheerful partner alike of his joys and sorrows, who had so nobly resigned herself to the chances and changes of his good and ill-fortune; that loving companion of his hours of profusion and gaiety, when he aped the _grand seigneur_, as well as the devoted sharer of those days of poverty and neglect, when he retired from the world in disgust, to the old dwelling-house of the Place Maubert. HABITS OF FREDERICK THE GREAT.