If we wish to study the masterpieces of French comedy in the eighteenth century, we shall promptly shut up the volumes of Diderot, and turn to the ease and soft gracefulness of Marivaux's _Game of Love and Chance_, to the forcible and concentrated sententiousness of Piron's _Metromanie_, to the salt and racy flavour of Le Sage's _Turcaret_.

Gresset, again, and Destouches wrote at least two comedies that were really fit for the stage, and may be read with pleasure to-day.

Neither of these compliments can fairly be paid to _The Natural Son_ and _The Father of the Family_.

Diderot's plays ought to be looked upon merely as sketchy illustrations of a favourite theory; as the rough drawings on the black board with which a professor of the fine arts may accompany a lecture on oil painting.
One radical part of Diderot's dramatic doctrine is wholly condemned by modern criticism; and it is the part which his plays were especially designed to enforce.

"It is always," he says, "virtue and virtuous people that a man ought to have in view when he writes.