surprise:

_Je gage que tu m'aimes.--Je ne parie jamais, je perds toujours._

5. A metonymy put into action:

_Voyez-vous cette figure tendre et solitaire qui se promene la-bas en
attendant la mienne?_

6. A rough comparison, which will not admit of examination:

_Si j'etais roi, nous verrions qui serait reine, et comme ce ne serait
pas moi, il faudrait que ce fut vous._

Although these divisions are not altogether satisfactory, they, with the
examples cited, will serve to convey an accurate enough idea of this side
of the _marivaudage_. Such expressions, or, at least, those in which the
exaggeration of the figure is most apparent, are usually found in the
mouths of servants and peasants, to which class such complicated language
is not unnatural.[149]

A very minor phase of the literary activity of Marivaux remains to be
considered, and that is his work in criticism. Eulogiums of the tragedies
of Crebillon _pere_,[150] of the _Romulus_[151] and the _Ines de
Castro_[152] of La Motte, and of the _Lettres persanes_[153] of
Montesquieu constitute almost his entire equipment in this line.

That he was not an unbiased critic, this unwarranted praise of his friend
La Motte is enough to prove: "Je sortais, il y a quelques jours, de la
comedie, ou j'etais alle voir _Romulus_, qui m'avait charme, et je disais
en moi-meme: on dit communement _l'elegant Racine_, et le _sublime
Corneille_; quelle epithete donnera-t-on a cet homme-ci, je n'en sais
rien; mais il est beau de les avoir meritees toutes les deux." His
criticism of the _Lettres persanes_ is, after all, the only one worthy of
praise. In it he has shown himself a fair and competent judge of this
first celebrated work of Montesquieu. I realize that, in thus restricting
the critical works of Marivaux, it is taking a narrow view of criticism,
and that his works ridiculing the classics, _l'Iliade travestie_ and _le
Telemaque travesti_, together with his ideas upon the quarrel of the
ancients and moderns, as seen throughout certain of his works, and
particularly in _le Miroir_, and lastly his opinion of criticism in
general, and his defense of his own style, as embodied in works already
mentioned, should be taken into consideration, if we had the time to study
him as critic in this broader sense.

If Marivaux, yielding to his sense of etiquette and good breeding, was
sparing in his criticism of his contemporaries, he was certainly not
spared by them. The circ