MARIVAUX, PIERRE CARLET DE CHAMBLAIN DE, one of the most prolific and ingenious writers of the eighteenth century in the department of comedy and romance, was descended from an ancient family of Rouen, and was born at Paris in the year 1688. Young Marivaux early gave evidence of the subtlety and activity of his genius, which was carefully developed by all the appliances of an excellent education. The society to which he was introduced on his entrance into life exercised a sensible influence on the character of his writings. Admitted into the salons of the opulent females of the capital, who then vied with each other in protecting men of letters, he there contracted that affectation of wit, of which the comedies of Molière had not yet entirely cured the précieuses of the age. It was there that he became acquainted with Lamotte and the numerous writers who composed the salon of Madame de Tencin, and whom that celebrated woman familiarly called her "beasts." It was in this society that Marivaux, naturally inclined to controversy, and fond of paradox, though otherwise gentle and tolerant, amused himself in titling with the partisans of antiquity, depreciating poetical talent, and deriding the admirers of Voltaire. He even went so far as to maintain that Molière did not understand comedy, and pretended that he could not conceive how people should admire the Tartuffe and the Femmes-Savantes. Living in the world at a period when Pyrrhonism in matters of religion was the fashion, he combatted, without asperity, but with laudable zeal, that truly deplorable mania. "Ab, my God," said he on one occasion to a freethinker, who was otherwise an honest man, "take not from poor humanity that consolation which Providence has reserved for it." If he was slightly tinctured with vanity, he was also distinguished for magnanimous disinterestedness and severe probity. He died at Paris on the 12th of February 1763, at the age of seventy-five. He had been unanimously admitted a member of the French Academy in 1743, and had Voltaire for a competitor. Marivaux's dramatic pieces, while displaying much talent, are nevertheless inferior to his romances. He never surpassed his Marianne, or his Paysan Parvenu; delineations which, although characterized by the peculiar
manner of the writer,—what the French call marivaudage,—yet interest and charm the reader by their subtle knowledge of the human heart, and by their accurate and masterly touches of character.
To the Théâtre-Italien he contributed—L'Amour et la Vérité, 1720; Arlequin poli par l'Amour, 1720; La Surprise de l'Amour, 1722; La Double Inconstance, 1723; Le Prince Traviest, 1724; L'Île des Esclaves, 1725; L'Héritier de Villages, 1725; Le Triomphe de Plutus, 1725; La Nouvelle Colombe, ou la Lâche des Femmes, 1729; Jean de l'Amour et du Hazard, 1730; Le Triomphe de l'Amour, 1732; L'École des Mères, 1732; L'Heureux Stratagème, 1732; La Méprise, 1734; La Mère Confidante, 1735; Les Fausses Confidantes, 1736; La Jolie Impriante, 1738; Les Sincères, 1739; and L'Épreuve, 1740. The dramatic works of Marivaux, originally represented at the Théâtre-Français, are somewhat less numerous. They consist of Annibal, a tragedy, 1720; Le Densément Impriant, a comedy, 1724; L'Île de la Raison, ou les Petits Hommes, derived from the romance of Gulliver, 1727; La Surprise de l'Amour, 1727; La Réunion des Amours, 1731; Les Serments Indiscrets, 1732; Le Petit-Maître Corrigé, 1734; Le Legs, 1735; La Dispute, 1744; and Le Préjugé, 1746. His romances consist of—Don Quichotte Moderne; Évêque Surprenant de la Sympathie; La Vie de Mariannæ; La Paysan Parvenu; Le Philosopher Indigent. His works were collected and published in 12 vols., Paris 1781, in 8vo.