_Le Vieux
Celibataire_ (1792); Fabre d'Eglantine moralised Moliere to the
taste of Rousseau by exhibiting a Philante debased by egoism and
accommodations with the world; Louis Laya, during the trial of the
King, satirised the pretenders to patriotism in _L'Ami des Lois_,
yet escaped the vengeance of the Jacobins.

Historical comedy, a novelty in art, was seen in Lemercier's _Pinto_
(1799), where great events are reduced to petty dimensions, and the
destiny of nations is satirically viewed as a vulgar game of
trick-track. In his _Christophe Colomb_ of 1809 he dared to despise
the unities of time and place, and excited a battle, not bloodless,
among the spectators. Exotic heroes suited the imperial regime.
Baour-Lormian, the translator of _Ossian_ (1801), converted the
story of Joseph in Egypt into a frigid tragedy; Hector and Tippoo
Sahib, Mahomet II., and Ninus II. (with scenes of Spanish history
transported to Assyria) diversified the stage. The greatest success
was that of Raynouard's _Les Templiers_ (1805); the learned author
wisely applied his talents in later years to romance philology. Among
the writers of comedy--Andrieux, Etienne, Duval, and others--Picard
has the merit of reproducing the life of the day, satirising social
classes and conditions with vivacity and careless mirth. In melodrama,
Pixerecourt contributed unconsciously to prepare the way for the
romantic stage. Desaugiers, with his gift for gay plebeian song, was
the master of the vaudeville.

Song of a higher kind had been heard twice or thrice during the
Revolution. The lesser Chenier's _Chanson du Depart_ has in it a
stirring rhetoric for soldiers of the Republic sent forth to war with
the acclaim of mother and wife and maiden, old men and little children.
Lebrun-_Pindare_, in his ode _Sur le Vaisseau le Vengeur_, does not
quite stifle the sense of heroism under his flowers of classical
imagery. Rouget de Lisle's improvised verse and music, _La
Marseillaise_ (1792), was an inspiration which equally lent itself
to the enthusiasm of victory and the gallantries of despair. The
pseudo-epics and the descriptive poetry of the Empire are laboured
and lifeless. But Creuze de Lesser, in his _Chevaliers de la
Table-Ronde_ (1812) and other poems, and Baour-Lormian, in his
_Poesies Ossianiques_, widened the horizons of literature. The
_Panhypocrisiade_ of Lemercier, published in 1819, but written
several years earlier--an "infernal comedy of the sixteenth