Scapin and "le beau Leandre," or ethereal persons, or figures of old
mythology, like Diana in Diane au Bois, and Deidamia in the piece
which shows Achilles among women. M. De Banville's dramas have
scarcely prose enough in them to suit the modern taste. They are
masques for the delicate diversion of an hour, and it is not in the
nature of things that they should rival the success of blatant
buffooneries. His earliest pieces--Le Feuilleton d'Aristophane
(acted at the Odeon, Dec. 26th, 1852), and Le Cousin du Roi (Odeon,
April 4th, 1857)--were written in collaboration with Philoxene
Boyer, a generous but indiscreet patron of singers.


"Dans les salons de Philoxene
Nous etions quatre-vingt rimeurs,"


M. De Banville wrote, parodying the "quatre-vingt ramuers" of Victor
Hugo. The memory of M. Boyer's enthusiasm for poetry and his
amiable hospitality are not unlikely to survive both his
compositions and those in which M. De Banville aided him. The
latter poet began to walk alone as a playwright in Le Beau Leandre
(Vaudeville, 1856)--a piece with scarcely more substance than the
French scenes in the old Franco-Italian drama possess. We are taken
into an impossible world of gay non-morality, where a wicked old
bourgeois, Orgon, his daughter Colombine, a pretty flirt, and her
lover Leandre, a light-hearted scamp, bustle through their little
hour. Leandre, who has no notion of being married, says, "Le ciel
n'est pas plus pur que mes intentions." And the artless Colombine
replies, "Alors marions-nous!" To marry Colombine without a dowry
forms, as a modern novelist says, "no part of Leandre's profligate