"But his taste for the ancestor of the _esprit français_ is not exclusive; he is happy to find it among their direct descendants: Regnier, whom he quotes abundantly, La Fontaine, of whom he is a disciple, Molière and Pascal, who furnish the models of his chefs-d'oeuvre. More than that, he goes back to their antique masters. The rudiments of Latin which he learned at school serve to help him to read Lucrece, Catulle, Tibulle, Horace, Ovid, and Seneca, and to take from them that salt of _citation_ with which he heightens so effectively the sallies of his Gallic wit."
Among the manuscripts of the Comédie-Française are a number of pages covered with Latin citations, elegantly translated, which Beaumarchais adapted to the circumstances of his life and works, with a precision which could not have been the result of chance.
"This is the serious side of his education, but it was not all; the unfolding and development of his talents must have been deeply influenced by that society of which he was the _bout-en-train_, and where the Prince de Conti and the Countess de Boufflers, _la divine Comtesse_, restored the ancient traditions of epicurean esprit. What did he not owe to conversation, often free, always piquant, of the aristocratic and bourgeois salons, to the foyers of the theaters and cafés which he frequented, and in which he was past-master, fencing with such skilled champions as Chamfort, as Sophie Arnould, those little kings _de l'esprit_! We must therefore give to these brilliant contemporaries of our author the honor of having shaped his genius." (M. de Loménie.)
We have spoken already of Beaumarchais's natural aversion to the heroic in literature, all his instincts led him toward the new dramatic school which was then appearing in France, and whose master was Diderot. In this school the old heroic tragedy was replaced by a domestic tragedy in which the ordinary events of daily life formed the theme. By the side of this, there was to be a serious comedy, not clearly defined from the tragic element, but which was to take the place of the "gay comedy" of the past.
More than a century of democratic ideas has so far removed the present generation from the ideas of the past, that it is difficult for us to appreciate the magnitude of the innovation made by this new style of literature when it first appeared in France. It was, however, but the natural outgrowth of that new order of things which was year by year becoming more pronounced, in which the bourgeoisie of France rises to a state of self-consciousness which demands expression. The splendor of the monarchy as upheld by Louis XIV had faded from men's minds. The people were beginning to realize that they themselves, with their joys and sorrows, their loves and hates, belonged to the realm of art.