like ourselves suffer, and that their misfortunes put us in fear of
similar calamities, is it not also true that we can be more strongly
moved by disasters arriving to people of our own rank, having resemblance
to ourselves, than by the picture of the overthrow from their thrones of
the greatest monarchs, who can have no relation to us except in so far as
we are susceptible to the passions that overwhelmed them, which is not
always the case?" This domestic tragedy La Chaussee wrote in verse, which
is not against French rules, and which has been done by dramatists a
hundred and twenty years later; but it is probably an error, being even
more unlikely that citizens would express themselves in metre than that
kings and heroes should give utterance with a certain solemnity which
entails rhythm. Thus he wrote _The Fashionable Prejudice_, _The School of
Friends_, _Melanide_, very pathetic, _The School of Mothers_, etc. It
must be stated that he wrote his plays in verse somewhat systematically;
he had made his first appearance in literature by a defence of
versification against the doctrines of La Motte.

PIRON.--According to the old system, but in original verse, Piron, after
having met with scant success in tragedy, wrote the delicious
_Metromania_ which, with _The Turcaret_ of Le Sage, _The Bad Man_ of
Gresset, the masterpieces of Marivaux and the two great comedies
of Beaumarchais rank among the seven or eight superior comedies produced
in the eighteenth century.

GREAT PROSE WRITERS: MONTESQUIEU.--In prose, writers, and even great
writers, were abundant at this period. Immediately after Fontenelle and
Bayle appeared Montesquieu, sharp, malicious, satirical, already
profound, in _The Persian Letters_, a great political philosopher and
master of jurisprudence in _The Spirit of Laws_, a great philosophical
historian in _The Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans_. The influence of