erary art.

From translations for the readers of fiction and for the theatre,
he advanced to free adaptations, and from these to work which may
be called truly original. Directed by the Abbe de Lyonne to Spanish
literature, he endeavoured in his early plays to preserve what was
brilliant and ingenious in the works of Spanish dramatists, and to
avoid what was strained and extravagant. In his _Crispin Rival de
son Maitre_ (1707), in which the roguish valet aspires to carry off
his master's betrothed and her fortune, he borrows only the idea of
Mendoza's play; the conduct of the action, the dialogue, the
characters are his own. His prose story of the same year, _Le Diable
Boiteux_, owes but little to the suggestion derived from Guevara;
it is, in fact, more nearly related to the _Caracteres_ of La Bruyere;
when Asmodeus discloses what had been hidden under the house-roofs
of the city, a succession of various human types are presented, and,
as in the case of La Bruyere, contemporaries attempted to identify
these with actual living persons.

In his remarkable satiric comedy _Turcaret_, and in his realistic
novel _Gil Blas_, Lesage enters into full possession of his own genius.
_Turcaret, ou le Financier_, was completed early in 1708; the efforts
of the financiers to hinder its performance served in the end to
enhance its brief and brilliant success. The pitiless amasser of
wealth, Turcaret, is himself the dupe of a coquette, who in her turn
is the victim of a more contemptible swindler. Lesage, presenting
a fragment of the manners and morals of his day, keeps us in
exceedingly ill company, but the comic force of the play lightens
the oppression of its repulsive characters. It is the first
masterpiece of the eighteenth-century _comedie de moeurs_.

Much of Lesage's dramatic work was produced only for the hour or the
moment--pieces thrown off, sometimes with brilliance and wit, for
the _Theatres de la Foire_, where farces, vaudevilles, and comic opera
were popular. They served to pay for the bread of his household. His
great comedy, however, a comedy in a hundred acts, is the story of
_Gil Blas_. Its composition was part of his employment during many
years; the first volumes appeared in 1715, the last volume in 1735.
The question of a Spanish original for the story is settled--there
was none; but from Spanish fiction and from Spanish history Lesage
borrowed what suited his purpose, without in any way compromising
his origi