the complete collection of Labiche's comedies.

Édouard Pailleron (1834-1899) was a comic dramatist of more aspiration
than inspiration; and yet he succeeded in writing one of the most
popular pieces of his time;--the 'Monde où l'on s'énnuie.'

Victorien Sardou (1831-1908) was probably the French playwright who was
most widely known outside of France. In the course of fifty years he was
successful in almost every kind of playwriting, from lively farce to
historic drama. His first indisputable triumph was with 'Pattes de
Mouche,' known in English as the 'Scrap of Paper' and as widely popular
in our language as in the original.

Émile Zola (1840-1902) was a novelist who repeatedly sought for success
as a dramatist, attaining it only in the adaptations of his stories made
by professional playwrights. Yet one of his earlier pieces, 'Thérèse
Raquin' is evidence that he might have mastered the art of the
playwright, if he had not allowed himself to be misled by his own
unfortunate theory of the theatre as set forth in his severe studies of
'Nos Auteurs Dramatiques' (1881).

In the 'Année Psychologique' for 1894 the distinguisht physiological
psychologist, the late Alfred Binet,--to whom we are indebted for the
useful Binet tests--publisht a series of papers dealing with the
psychology of the playwright, in the preparation of which he was aided
by M.J. Passy. The two investigators had a series of interviews with
Sardou, Dumas _fils_, Pailleron, Meilhac, Daudet, and Edmond de
Goncourt. Altho Daudet and Goncourt had written plays they were
essentially novelists with no instinctive understanding of the drama as
a specific art. Nor did either Pailleron and Meilhac make any