nality. To the picaresque tales (and among these may be noted
a distant precursor of _Gil Blas_ in the _Francion_ of Charles Sorel)
he added his own humanity, and in place of a series of vulgar
adventures we are given a broad picture of social life; the comedy
of manners and intrigue grows, as the author proceeds, into a comedy
of character, and to this something of the historical novel is added.
The unity of the book is found in the person of Gil Blas himself:
he is far from being a hero, but he is capable of receiving all
impressions; he is an excellent observer of life, his temper is bright,
he is free from ill-nature; we meet in him a pleasant companion, and
accompany him with sympathy through the amusing Odyssey of his varied
career.

As a moralist Lesage is the reverse of severe, but he is far from
being base. "All is easy and good-humoured," wrote Sir Walter Scott,
"gay, light, and lively; even the cavern of the robbers is illuminated
with a ray of that wit with which Lesage enlightens his whole narrative.
It is a work which renders the reader pleased with himself and with
mankind, where faults are placed before him in the light of follies
rather than vices, and where misfortunes are so interwoven with the
ludicrous that we laugh in the very act of sympathising with them."
In the earlier portion incidents preponderate over character; in the
close, some signs of the writer's fatigue appear. Of Lesage's other
tales and translations, _Le Bachelier de Salamanque_ (1736) takes
deservedly the highest rank.

With PIERRE CARLET DE CHAMBLAIN DE MARIVAUX (1688-1763) the novel
ceases to be primarily a study of manners or a romance of adventures;
it becomes an analysis of passions to which manners and adventures
are subordinate. As a journalist he may be said to have proceeded
from Addison; by his novels he prepared the way for Richardson and
for Rousseau. His early travesties of Homer and of Fenelon's
_Telemaque_ seem to indicate a tendency towards realism, but
Marivaux's realism took the form not so much of observation of society
in its breadth and variety as of psychological analysis. If he did
not know the broad highway of the heart, he traversed many of its
secret paths. His was a feminine spirit, delicate, fragile, curious,
unconcerned about general ideas; and yet, while untiring in his
anatomy of the passions, he was not truly passionate; his heart may
be said to have been in his head.

In the opening of the eight