One of the most obvious faults of the Spectateur francais was the irregular and disconnected manner of its publication.  Perhaps through natural indolence, but more likely through over conscientiousness and too high an ideal of artistic perfection, which caused him to magnify his own shortcomings and to soon tire of the subject in hand, he was inclined to abandon his work unfinished and to turn to newer interests.  This tendency may be seen in the Spectateur, which, after sundry interruptions, finally reaches the twenty-fifth leaflet, after which it suddenly, and without warning, comes to an end.

Another journal in the same vein, l’Indigent Philosophe, undertaken in 1728, fared even worse, for it was carried only through the seventh leaflet, when it too succumbed, to be revived, however, in 1734, under the title of le Cabinet du Philosophe.  The same fate awaited the latter, and Marivaux’s enthusiasm forsook him at the end of the eleventh leaflet, Fleury[81] characterizes this as the best of his three periodical publications. but I am of the opinion of Lavollee,[82] who does not consider it comparable “either in interest or variety” with the Spectateur.

It is not alone in this style of literature that our author wearies of his theme and drops his pen, for neither of his novels Marianne nor le Paysan parvenu was completed.  The former was begun in 1731, and the publication of its eleven parts was not completed until 1741, ten years later; but the periodical publication of novels was common at that epoch,[83] and the chef-d’oeuvre of Le Sage, contemporary with it (1715- 1735), was double that time in appearing.

It has long been thought that the twelfth part, which concludes the story of Marianne, was by Mme. Riccoboni; but Fleury[84] has proved quite satisfactorily that the Conclusion, which appeared in 1745, in an Amsterdam edition of Marianne, was written by one of those who, as d’Alembert says, “se sont charges, sans qu’on les en priat, de finir les romans de M. de Marivaux, et (qui) ont eu dans cette entreprise un succes digne de leurs talents:”  while a simple Continuation, written, in fact, by Mme. Riccoboni, and so cleverly, too, as to almost deceive the critics of the eighteenth century, did not appear until 1751.[85]

Marianne is a young girl, beautiful and of high birth, who, when but a small child, has the misfortune to lose her parents in an attack by robbers on the road to Bordeaux.  Sheltered by a priest and his sister, she reaches the age of fifteen, without, however, having discovered who her parents were.  Deprived by death of her guardians, she finds herself at this early age alone and unprotected in the streets of Paris.  She seeks the counsel of a kindly priest, who refers her to a rich and apparently respectable man, but in reality the personification of hypocrisy.  Of his character study of M. de Climal, Marivaux was