the French _Spectator_,
is usually supposed to have formed the connecting link between the "old"
French comedy and the "new" and bastard variety. Yet, though his minute
analysis of the tender passion excited the scorn of Voltaire, it should
not be overlooked that in _marivaudage_ proper the wit holds the balance
to the sentiment, and that in some of this frequently misjudged writer's
earlier and most delightful plays the elegance and gaiety of diction are
as irresistible as the pathetic sentiment, which is in fact rather an
ingredient in his comedy than the pervading characteristic of it.[129]
Some of the comedies of P. H. Destouches no doubt have a serious basis,
and in his later plays he comes near to a kind of drama in which the
comic purpose has been virtually submerged.[130] The writer who is
actually to be credited with the transition to sentimental comedy, and
who was fully conscious of the change which he was helping to effect,
was Nivelle de La Chaussee, in whose hands French comedy became a
champion of the sanctity of marriage, and reproduced the sentiments--in
one instance even the characters--of Richardson.[131] To his play _La
Fausse Antipathie_ the author supplied a _critique_, amounting to an
apology for the new species of which it was designed as an example.

The new species known as _comedie larmoyante_ was now fairly in the
ascendant; and it would be easy to show how even Voltaire, who had
deprecated the innovation, had to yield to a power greater than his own,
and introduced the sentimental element into some of his comedies.[132]
The further step, by which _comedie larmoyante_ was transformed into
_tragedie bourgeoise_, from which the comic element was to all intents
and purposes extruded, was taken by a great French writer, D. Diderot;
to whose influence it was largely due that the species which had
attained to this consummation for more than a generation ruled supreme
in the dramatic literature of Europe. But the final impulse, as Diderot
himself virtually acknowledged in the _entretiens_ subjoined by him to
his _Fils naturel_ (1757), had been given by a far humbler citizen of
the world of letters, the author of _The London Merchant_. Diderot's own
plays were a literary rather than a theatrical success. _Le Fils naturel
ou les epreuves de la vertu_ was not publicly performed till 1771, and
then only in deference to the determination of a single actor of the
Francais (Mole); nor was the performance of