Page:Musset - On ne badine pas avec l'amour, 1884.djvu/21

THE PROGRESS OF FRENCH COMEDY. 9 M. Arsene Houssaye’s assurance that the common belief as to Musset’s habits was greatly exaggerated, the symptoms of his illness being frequently mistaken for symptoms of another sort. On May 1, 1857, he died quietly in his sleep at St. Cloud. His genius was unique, although, as has been said, having regard to the dissimilarity of language, it bears a singu- lar likeness to Shakespeare’s in some points. In poetry as in prose his style combined an appearance of the most abso- lute spontaneousness with the most perfect finish. His work is full of passion, always tempered by and to the completest art. He had humour, wit, invective, satire, pathos — in short, the whole gamut of human emotion at command. What is known as the great tragic style indeed he never tried, and might have failed if he had tried it. But within his own limits he was one of the first of poets. His character, strange and sometimes twisted as it was, had in it much that was beautiful ; he has had no successor, and is not likely to have one, in the form of drama which he may be justly said to have invented. II. The Progress of French Comedy. THE history of French comedy is of peculiar importance in reference to the progress of the drama in France, though its stages have not been illustrated by any such striking changes, or, with the exception of Moliere, by any names of such importance as those which illustrate the annals of French tragedy. A hasty reader might decide that there is nothing in common between the tragedy of Racine and of Hugo : a reader who is not at all hasty might come to the same decision between the tragedy of Racine and cf the mystery writers. But from the very earliest farces, indeed from thtjeu de Robin et Marion and the/eu de la Feuillie of Adam de la Halle in the thirteenth century, the progress of French comedy is constant and unintcr-