A very minor phase of the literary activity of Marivaux remains to be considered, and that is his work in criticism.  Eulogiums of the tragedies of Crebillon pere,[150] of the Romulus[151] and the Ines de Castro[152] of La Motte, and of the Lettres persanes[153] of Montesquieu constitute almost his entire equipment in this line.

That he was not an unbiased critic, this unwarranted praise of his friend La Motte is enough to prove:  “Je sortais, il y a quelques jours, de la comedie, ou j’etais alle voir Romulus, qui m’avait charme, et je disais en moi-meme:  on dit communement l’elegant Racine, et le sublime Corneille; quelle epithete donnera-t-on a cet homme-ci, je n’en sais rien; mais il est beau de les avoir meritees toutes les deux.”  His criticism of the Lettres persanes is, after all, the only one worthy of praise.  In it he has shown himself a fair and competent judge of this first celebrated work of Montesquieu.  I realize that, in thus restricting the critical works of Marivaux, it is taking a narrow view of criticism, and that his works ridiculing the classics, l’Iliade travestie and le Telemaque travesti, together with his ideas upon the quarrel of the ancients and moderns, as seen throughout certain of his works, and particularly in le Miroir, and lastly his opinion of criticism in general, and his defense of his own style, as embodied in works already mentioned, should be taken into consideration, if we had the time to study him as critic in this broader sense.

If Marivaux, yielding to his sense of etiquette and good breeding, was sparing in his criticism of his contemporaries, he was certainly not spared by them.  The circle of his friends was small, but intimate, and his timidity with men, his suspiciousness, his lack of self-assertion, made him an easy prey to such unscrupulous opponents as Voltaire.  Fond of the refined society of the salons, and repelled by the less feeling and more boisterous set of the cafes, which he avoided, Marivaux became a convenient object of attack for the cabals set in motion by the latter, and, although, in spite of his general suspiciousness, he refused to give credence[154] to an idea so obnoxious to him, it is not unlikely that the frequent failure of his comedies on their “first night” may be most satisfactorily explained in this way.

Marivaux was ever ready to accept a criticism that seemed to him deserved.  “J’ai eu tort de donner cette comedie-ci au theatre,” he says in the preface to his Ile de la Raison:  “Elle n’etait pas bonne a etre representee, et le public lui a fait justice en la condamnant.  Point d’intrigue, peu d’action, peu d’interet; ce sujet, tel que je l’avais concu, n’etait point susceptible de tout cela....”  At another time, having been present at the first performance of one of his comedies, and noticing the undissimulated yawns of the parterre, he confessed, upon leaving the theatre, that no one had been more bored than he.[155] However, notwithstanding his readiness to acknowledge his own defects, and to defer to the opinions of others, Marivaux required the criticism to be fair-minded and impersonal.