BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.
[Footnote: The first biographical and literary study upon Marivaux is that of the Abbé de la Porte, published four years before the former's death in the Observateur littéraire of 1759, vol. 1, p. 73, etc., reprinted with additional details in the edition of the Oeuvres diverses de Marivaux, published in 1765 by Duchesne, and again in the edition of the Oeuvres complètes, published in 1781 by the widow Duchesne. It is to this last- named text that I refer in the introduction. This essay by De la Porte is quite fair and trustworthy. It is particularly interesting as being the first. It is followed by an Éloge, or, rather, a contemptuous sketch, for it is anything but a eulogy, published by Palissot (and de Sivry) in the Nécrologe des hommes célèbres of 1764. In 1769 Lesbros de la Versane published l'Esprit de Marivaux ou Analectes de ses ouvrages, preceded by an Éloge historique de cet auteur, "a panegyric without reservation upon the man and the writer." It is to a reprint of this Éloge, published by Gogué et Née de la Rochelle, Paris, 1782, that I make my references. These are the sources from which d'Alembert drew most of the matter for his Éloge, which is characterized by a kindly criticism, that, though sometimes too severe, does not offend. These four are the principal early sources from which Marivaux's biographers have drawn, and, if we add Desfontaines' Dictionnaire néologique, published in 1726 (and several times reprinted), Grimm's Correspondance littéraire (1753-1790), Collé's Journal et mémoires (1748-1772), Marmontel's Mémoires, published in 1804, those of the President Henault, published by the Baron de Vigan, Paris, 1854, those of the Abbé de Trublet, published in Amsterdam, 1759, and La Harpe's Cours de littérature ancienne et moderne (see edition by Buchon, Paris, 1825-1826), we shall have almost covered the ground of early sources. Much of the first part of this note is taken from Larroumet's Marivaux, p. 14, note 2.]