e of his earlier performances--"The
Barber of Seville." He finished it about the end of the year 1781, and, as
the manager of the theatre was willing to act it, he at once applied for
the necessary license. But it had already been talked about: if one party
had pronounced it lively, witty, and the cleverest play that had been seen
since the death of Moliere, another set of readers declared it full of
immoral and dangerous satire on the institutions of the country. It is
almost inseparable from the very nature of comedy that it should be to
some extent satirical. The offense which those who complained of "The
Marriage of Figaro" on that account really found in it was, that it
satirized classes and institutions which could not bear such attacks, and
had not been used to them. Moliere had ridiculed the lower middle class;
the newly rich; the tradesman who, because he had made a fortune, thought
himself a gentleman; but, as one whose father was in the employ of
royalty, he laid no hand on any pillar of the throne. But Beaumarchais, in
"The Marriage of Figaro," singled out especially what were called the
privileged classes; he attacked the licentiousness of the nobles; the
pretentious imbecility of ministers and diplomatists; the cruel injustice
of wanton arrests and imprisonments of protracted severity against which
there was no appeal nor remedy; and the privileged classes in consequence
denounced his work, and their complaints of its character and tendency
made such an impression that the court resolved that the license should
not he granted.

The refusal, however, was not at first pronounced in a straightforward
way; but was deferred, as if those who had resolved on it feared to
pronounce it. For a long time the censor gave no reply at all, till
Beaumarchais complained of the delay as more injurious to him than a
direct denial. When at last his application was formally rejected, he
induced his friends to raise such a clamor in his favor, that Louis
determined to judge for himself, and caused Madame de Campan to read it to
himself and the queen. He fully agreed with the censor. Many passages he
pronounced to be in extremely bad taste. When the reader came to the
allusions to secret arrests, protracted imprisonments, and the tedious
formalities of the law and lawyers, he declared that it would be necessary
to pull down the Bastile before it could be acted with safety, as
Beaumarchais was ridiculing every thing which ought t