To the maker of Poirier and Fabrice, of Seraphine and Giboyer, of Olympe and the Marquis d'Auberive, there were analogies between the genius of Labiche and the genius of Teniers. 'C'est au premier abord,' says he, 'le meme aspect de caricature; c'est, en y regardant de plus pres, la meme finesse de tons, la meme justesse d'expression, la meme vivacite de mouvement.' For myself, I like to think of Labiche as in some sort akin to Honore Daumier. Earnestness and accomplishment apart, he has much in common with that king of caricaturists. The lusty frankness, the jovial ingenuity, the keen sense of the ridiculous, the insatiable instinct of observation, of the draughtsman are a great part of the equipment of the playwright. Augier notes that truth is everywhere in Labiche's work, and Augier is right. He is before everything a dramatist: an artist, that is, whose function is to tell a story in action and by the mouths of its personages; and whimsical and absurd as he loves to be, he is never either the one or the other at the expense of nature. He is often careless and futile: he will squander--(as in _Vingt-neuf Degres a l'Ombre_ and _l'Avare en Gants_ _Jaunes_)--an idea that rightly belongs to the domain of pure comedy on the presentation of a most uproarious farce. But he is never any falser to his vocation than this. Now and then, as in _Moi_ and _le Voyage de M. Perrichon_, he is an excellent comic poet, dealing with comedy seriously as comedy should be dealt with, and incarnating a vice or an affectation in a certain character with impeccable justness and assurance. Now and then, as in _les Petits Oiseaux_ and _les Vivacites du Capitaine Tic_, he is content to tell a charming story as pleasantly as possible. Sometimes, as in _Celimare le Bien-Aime_ (held by M. Sarcey to be the high-water mark of the modern _vaudeville_), _le Plus Heureux des Trois_, and _le Prix Martin_, he fights again from a humouristic point of view that triangular duel between the wife, the husband, and the lover which fills so large a place in the literature of France; and then he shows the reverse of the medal of adultery--with the husband at his ease, the seducer haunted by the ghosts of old sins, the erring wife the slave of her unsuspecting lord. Or again, he takes to turning the world upside down, and--as in the _Cagnotte_, the _Chapeau de Paille_, and the _Trente Millions_--to producing a scheme of morals and society that seems to have been dictated from an Olympus demoralised by champagne and lobster. But at his wildest he never forgets that men and women are themselves. His dialogue is always right and appropriate, however extravagant it be. His vivid and varied knowledge of life and character supplies him with touches enough of nature and truth to make the fortune of a dozen ordinary dramatists; and withal you feel as you read that he is writing, as Augier says of him, to amuse himself merely, and that he could an if he would be solemn