66 scholasticism of the age. Deficient both in dignity and solidity, they displayed an indigested erudition, citing promiscuously the Bible, the fathers of the church, the Roman and canon laws, and occasionally the classics. The university of Paris, which in 1624 had obtained an arrêt, prohibiting on pain of death the publication of any work impugning the authority of Aristotle, could not fail to supply much of the ridiculous. There were scholars of that time who, armed at all points with syllogisms, professed to dispute de omni scibili, maintaining their positions with a fury quite proportionate to their pretensions. One of them, the original of the philosopher in the Bourgeois Gentilhomme, who delivered a course of lectures on eloquence and philosophy, in a room in Paris which he called L'académie des philosophes orateurs, and himself the "moderateur" thereof. When these pedants fell in love the picture was complete. One of Racine's lawyers proposes to take his mistress to see the torture inflicted,“donner la question," and Molière makes Thomas Diaforus desirous to treat Angelique with a sight of the dissection of a woman! These pictures were not overcharged. Of Molière's literary contemporaries, he has left us too exquisite a sketch to be omitted. In the play from which we have already more than once quoted, "La Critique de l'Ecole des Femmes," Dorante, the sensible critic of the piece, thus describes them: "La cour a quelques ridicules, j'en demeure d'accord; et je suis, comme on voit, le premier à les fronder; mais, ma foi, il y en a un grand nombre parmis les beaux esprits de profession; et, si l'on joue quelques marquis, je trouve qu'il y a bien plus de quoi jouer les auteurs, et que ce seroit une chose plaisante à mettre sur le théâtre, que leurs grimaces savantes, et leurs raffinemens ridicules, leur vicieuse coutume d'assassiner les gens de leurs ouvrages, leur friandise de louanges, leurs ménagements de pensées, leur trafic de réputation, et leur ligues offensives et défensives, aussi bien que leurs guerres d'esprits, et leurs combats de prose et de vers.' The character of the aristocracy, who figured in the Court of Louis, is too well known to require much description. It was formed very much upon the character of the sovereign himself. Louis had the art, probably without having one really great quality, to make himself adored while he lived, and he has even drawn upon the admiration of posterity. He knew well the value of ceremony, for the purpose of securing the respect of those who surrounded him. Governed throughout his whole reign by his mistresses, one of whom he had the weakness to marry when both were past the middle age, he was, nevertheless, as absolute in the management of his court, as they were of his kingdom. He never appeared even to his domestics but in full dress; and he would keep his ministers in waiting, however urgent might be their business, until he had adjusted his peruke. He carried his politeness so far, as to lift his hat to his female domestics, when he met them in his palace; and if he met a lady, he would not replace it until he had passed her. He has been said to have been fond of the arts; but with such men as Racine, Molière, and Le Brun around him, he could scarcely have been otherwise; as with such captains as Turenne and the great Condé, there was no great merit in being victorious. His taste we are much disposed to doubt. He was fond of show, which, like Napoleon, he used as an instrument of empire, and he was fond of the arts so far as they contributed to the splendor of the pageant. He looked on Le Brun in the light of a superb gilder; and on Molière as an ingenious contriver of spectacles. If ever he dreamed of their immortality, it was when he thought of his own. In a list of pensions which he gave to the littérateurs of his reign, we find one thousand francs awarded to Molière, and three thousand to Chapelaine, now known only for his wretched "La Pucelle," but for which, as a French wit once observed, he might have had some fame. The one is described as "excellente poète comique," the other as, "le plus grand poète Français, qui ait jamais été, et du plus solide jugement.' And yet in this list occur the names of Corneille and Racine, to the latter of whom is given eight hundred francs. Boileau is altogether omitted. The truth is, that Louis affected a love of literature and art as necessary to complete his character, without feeling much of it. As Frederick of Prussia said of him, "Ayant plus de jugement que d'esprit, il cherchoit plutôt l'un que l'autre." The Court followed closely in his footsteps. A love of show and ceremony gave a stiff and artificial tone to the manners, which was relaxed somewhat only by the flexibility of morals. There was much politeness, but it was pushed to extravagance. The courtier professed the most profound respect and esteem for people scarcely known to him. "Theognis," says Le Bruyère, "embrasse un homme qu'il trouve sous sa main; il lui presse la tête contre sa poitrine; il demande 40 ensuite quel est celui qu'il a embrasse ;" and "Je vous vois accabler un homme de caresses A peine pouvez vous dire comme il se nomme; De s'abaisser ainsi, jusqu'à trahir son ame." Gallantry was the prevailing passion, but it was not that of Bayard. It was a sensual and licentious amour carried on by intrigue, and in defiance of common decency. Its grossness was ill-disguised by an affectation of romance, vented in sonnets and madrigals. Many of the gallants of the period were professed beaux esprits; but their taste was as affected as their manners, and as corrupted as their morals. This literary affectation gave rise to a celebrated sect of female pretenders to literature, whom Molière at once extinguished and immortalized, under the name of les Précieuses,- -an association of Blues, who met in Paris, at the Hotel Rambouillet, to discuss literary affairs; and affected to take particular cognizance of the French language and grammar. Of his contemporaries, such as they were, Molière had full opportunity for observation; and never was there a more industrious or accurate observer. The son of a Parisian upholsterer, he spent his youth among the bourgeoisie, and had scarcely embraced the profession of player, at the age of twentythree, when the troubles of the Regency drove him to the provinces, where he acted for thirteen years. The rest of his life was spent at Court, where he united the profession of comedian to the duties of valet de chambre to Louis, a post to which he had hereditary claims. The fidelity of his portraits of character (for many of his parts were drawn from living originals), and his merciless exposure of folly and hypocrisy, raised him many enemies, but it is only doing justice to his patron to say, that he ever found a steady friend and protector in the king. It was in the latter part of his life that he produced almost the whole of his pieces. Many of them were written with extraordinary rapidity, some of them having been composed and acted within a few days. They were in general made to order of Louis, who commanded their exhibition, as he did that of fireworks or triumphal arches, as parts of the gorgeous fêtes given at Versailles, to celebrate his victories,—or, "à la Reine et à la Reine-mère selon l'histoire,—à mademoiselle de la Vallière selon la chronique." There, like a magnificent picture in tawdry frame, appeared the immortal delineations of Molière, among Floras and Zephyrs, and satyrs and naiads, and shepherds and shepherdesses, with hooks and crooks, and artificial rocks, cascades, and jets d'eau. Occasionally this buckram was manufactured by the great comedian himself, but he never appears to advantage in it. Take for example the following from the Prologue to "Le Malade Imaginaire." SCENE I. Flore; Deux Zéphyrs dansans. It must be allowed that such a state of society as we have described exhibits not an inconsiderable field for the writer of comedy. But its general features were too artificial to permit nature to appear much under other than conventional forms, and a writer who like Molière painted men as he found them, wanted those universal models, the study of which leads to the highest perfection of art. He copied nature, but it was nature in disguise, and under forms by which it was cribbed, cabined, and confined. Instead of studying the naked figure, he drew it. as it appeared under the stiff and formal costume of the age. La décoration représente un lieu champêtre et We cannot blame him for this, though with higher genius he would have penetrated deeper. The fault lay chiefly in his models, and there is no reason to suppose that had they been of a less artificial character, he would have failed in copying them. This must be kept in view in every estimate of the literary character of Molière, otherwise we will be apt to consider as a peculiarity of his genius what was more owing to the factitious characteristics of the subjects which he studied. néanmoins fort agréable. Flore. Quittez, quittez vos troupeaux: Quittez, quittez vos troupeaux: Poetry was not what Molière excelled in, for he had more judgment than imagination, and more humor than wit. But his sentiment was apt to become verbose, and his humor to degenerate into farce. His forte lay in the delineation of character rather than in the expression of passion, and of his characters those are the best which depart from native simplicity the least; when they affect gravity they are apt to become dull, and affected when they would be thought wise. Their simplicity often borders upon facility, and the ease with which they can be duped represses our sympathy, and disarms our resentment. Many of them are too unintellectual to be interesting, and more too clever to be beloved. But whatever be their character, their modes of expressing passion are much the same. Feux and yeux are in the mouths of every lover, and if the piece be in verse they are sure to meet in rhyme. He generally accomplishes most when he labors least, and hence the short speeches are better than the long, and the prose than the verse. His variety of passion is exceedingly limited, and within these limits it is seldom profound. Love is the universal agent in his plays, sometimes superinduced upon some other passion, but generally unmixed, and almost always the ruling one. When it is determined that the lover shall not obtain his object, he submits to his fate with the most becoming resignation; and the raptures of his more fortunate rival may be conceived, but are neither expressed nor described. There is more humor in his situations than fable in his plots. But an intricate plot is little indispensable to good comedy; it is sufficient that the plot affords a vehicle for the dialogue, and furnishes as much incident as prevents it from becoming languid. Many of his plots and incidents are borrowed from other writers, but he seldom fails to improve upon them. He does not much study the probability of occurrences, in which he is right, for the drama is a fairy-land where we willingly submit to the wand of the enchanter, rather expecting what is wonderful, than requiring what is true. His style cannot always be recommended as a model of composition, but its apology is to be found in the rapidity with which he was often compelled to write, and in the necessity incidental to every writer of comedy, of adapting his language to the character. Many of his plays were not published until after his death, and several he had expressed his intention to revise. He has been accused of indelicacy, but we think unjustly. Although love in one phasis or another is the ruling passion of all his plays, there scarcely occurs an instance of obscenity. There are indeed expressions which are rejected by modern decorum, but there can be no doubt that they were current in the best society of his age. These expressions are not confined to any particular class of persons. Le mot expressif, which denotes the dishonored husband, is constantly used by his characters of every rank, and occurs in the title of one of his plays. But it also occurs frequently in Madame de Sévigné's Letters, even in those to her daughter. Molière painted too correctly to put a word into the mouth of a fine lady, which fine ladies of the day did not use; and he had too much respect for his patron to offend him by any breach of that external decorum which it was the policy of Louis to preserve. In plays where so much gallantry prevails, it was impossible to exclude incidents and situations of an immoral character; but there is none of them so equivocal as the admired screen scene in the "School for Scandal," and many other exhibitions of the English stage. With all his faults, Molière is yet one of the most entertaining of dramatists. His acuteness of observation and power of discrimination, his knowledge of the human heart and accuracy in painting it, and above all his good sense and exquisite perception of the ridiculous, carried him triumphantly through the dangers from bad taste and artificial manners by which he was surrounded. Though many of his portraits are sketches, the character is generally complete, and the features are seldom inconsistent. Whatever defects may be in the conception of the part, there are seldom any in the execution. He sometimes fails to place virtue in its proper light, and more often overlooks vice when it ought to have been reproved; but he never renders ridiculous what is not so in itself. Every stroke tells, and tells in the proper place. We are apt at first sight to think some of his pictures overdrawn, but the more we come to know of the originals, the more we find that the portraits are correct. It is an inconvenience common to all writers on manners, that what illustrates their meaning to their contemporaries tends to obscure it to posterity. To judge of the comic literature of any age, we require to know in minute detail its habits, customs, domestic history, and generally those circumstances to which allusion, and merely allusion, is made, more constantly in comedy than in any other department of literature. Now these things have generally been reckoned beneath the dignity of history, and thus there is com or paratively little record of what is absolutely | sistent reproduction of character according requisite to explain the comedy of any past to conventional rules. To our writers of the age. What in the hands of Aristophanes or Restoration he bears little resemblance, many Molière would have set Athens in a roar, or of his pieces being far more elaborate as upset the decorous gravity of the court of works of art, and, it must be admitted, far Louis XIV., probably by the most distant superior in their moral tone and in their deallusion to it, now appears to us to be unin- velopment of character, but inferior in point, teresting, if it does not altogether escape repartee, and comicality of situation; though our observation. No past age, however, has in these the French are seldom deficient. been more copiously illustrated than that of The best comedies of Farquhar, Vanburgh, Molière, on which contemporary memoirs or Congreve, are mere sketches in compariand letters, and ultimately, the brilliant son with "Le Tartuffe" or "Le Misanthrope,' sketch of Voltaire, have thrown much light, to match which, with any approach to rethough nothing has done so more than his semblance, we must go back to "The Alchyown comedies themselves. And judging mist" or The Volpone" of Ben Jonson, from all these lights, we are compelled to come down to " The Rivals" or "The form the highest opinion of the fidelity with School for Scandal" of Sheridan. The truth which he has reflected in his characters, if is, that the comedies of Molière were formed not human nature in its more general forms, in a great degree upon the strict rules which as Shakspeare has done, at least, the modes regulated French tragedy, and hence they of acting and thinking of those who came are more stiff and formal than comports with within the sphere of his observation. our notions of the sock. They are, indeed, in general, elaborate specimens of art, and, thanks to the genius of Molière, not inferior in real value, while they are superior in interest, to the best productions of Corneille or Racine. They are dignified by an eminently didactic tone, and, making fair allowance for the manners of the age, and the levities incidental to comedy, their composition is, on the whole, not unworthy of the object they profess to have in view. Of his vis comica, or the peculiarity of his comic genius, it is not easy to convey an idea by description, and as little by comparison, for it did not much resemble that of any other writer of comedy, ancient or modern. He is neither so bold, so daring, nor so grotesque, as Aristophanes, and as little does he soar into those regions of poetry and lofty intellect which go far to redeem all the faults of that extraordinary man. There is in the Frenchman, as in the Athenian, IIoλλà μèv yéλoià, roλλà dì σrovdaĩa, much of jest, and much of earnest; but there is much less breadth in the character of either. If, however, the mirth of Molière is less boisterous than that of Aristophanes, it is much less frigid than that of Menander. He is more natural than Terence, and more dignified and refined than Plautus. He is said to have studied both of those Latin writers in his youth, but when he had tried his own strengh he renounced them and betook himself to the study of living models, though his mannerism always retained much of the tone of his juvenile studies. There is no comic writer of the English school whom he much resembles, for, except Shakspeare, our writers of comedy have excelled more in the brilliancy of the dialogue than in the development of character, and the middle path between what we call the genteel comedy and farce has been little trod, though that is the most legitimate sphere of the comic muse. To our great dramatist he is much inferior in ideality and in wit, but he is equal in humor, and superior in regularity and correctness, meaning by the latter term the con "Le Tartuffe" has, in public opinion, been commonly reckoned his chef d'œuvre, and we are by no means about to dispute the justice of the fiat, though we think that it must be received with considerable reservations. There can be no doubt that it owes much of its fame to the opposition which it encountered from the powerful party in the church, against whose hypocrisy it was directed. It indeed carried on the same warfare that Pascal's "Provincial Letters" had begun, and ultimately with similar success. When it was first represented before the Court at Versailles, such was the fury of those whom it assailed, that even the king, though sensible of the good intentions of the author, was obliged to yield for a time, by prohibiting its public representation; and this interdict continued until after Pope Clement IX. had interposed, to arrange the disputes which agitated the French Church. Meantime, the piece continued to be acted at the Court, and its prohibition elsewhere, while it enhanced the enjoyment of those who were privileged to be present, served to sharpen the desire of those who were not. When Molière ultimately triumphed, by the repre sentation in public being permitted, it was received with the most unbounded applause, by audiences which probably did not number many of the dévots, whether false or true. The piece has, however, retained its popularity on the stage and elsewhere, and not without great claims to high consideration. The chief character is most elaborately drawn, and with great originality of conception. The oily, sanctimonious, sensual hypocrite, the consummate villain under the disguise of religion, though frequently portrayed by painters of character, has by none been depicted in more brilliant colors than in this piece. But it must be allowed that it is brought out somewhat undramatically; it is rather described than reproduced. During the first two acts, we only hear of the great hypocrite, and he does not appear till the third, and scarcely at all in the fifth. Our anxiety is on the stretch to get a glimpse of a person we hear so much about, and though, when he does come, we are not disappointed, we would rather have formed our idea of him from our own observation, than have taken the description, however good, of Dorine. Of the other characters Marianne is the most interesting. There are few scenes in any of the author's plays better than that in the second act between her and Valere, where she struggles between duty to her father and love for her betrothed, her abhorrence of Tartuffe not being allowed to share in the conflict. Orgon, like many others of Molière's dupes, is too credulous to be interesting. He is quite "à mener par nez," as his guest says, and this simplicity not only spoils his own dramatic character, but detracts from that of Tartuffe, since a much less clever villain would have sufficed to impose upon so easy a dupe. His wife, Madame Elmire, is too cool for our taste; we cannot admire a woman who, even in France, in the ageof Molière, takes as she does, a declaration of love from another than her husband, and we do not understand the discretion which makes her when urged to disclose it, say Ce n'est point mon humeur de faire des éclats; Of "Le Misanthrope," we cannot join so cordially in the common estimation. It seems to us to be one of those pieces which the author has spoiled by making too elaborate. Alceste is morose without being philosophic, and melancholy without being amiable. At first, he is somewhat sensible in exposing the false politeness which presented the same silken aspect to virtue and to vice; but he speedily falls into extravagance and repulsive peevishness. His misanthropy is that of a man of fashion, with as much sense as enables him to observe character with acuteness, but not enough to make a good use of his observations. He is not even, as Dr. Johnson would have said, a good hater. He falls in love with a woman the least likely to please him, an inveterate flirt, with his eyes open to her faults, and relying on the forlorn hope of his being able to cure them. trouve; L'amour que je sens pour cette jeune veuve Ne ferme point mes yeux aux défauts qu'on lui Et je suis, quelque ardeur qu'elle m'ait pu donner, Le premier à les voir, comme à les condamner. Mais avec tout cela, quoique je puisse faire, Je confesse mon foible; elle a l'art de me plaire : J'ai beau voir ses défauts, et j'ai beau l'en blâmer, En dépit qu'on en ait elle se fait aimer, Sa grace est la plus forte; et sans doute ma De ces vices du temps pourra purger son ame. flamme Acte I. Sc. 1. Yet he throws her off when she refuses to renounce the world, and go with him into the desert: a plan of life for a new-married couple of which no one would have become sooner tired than himself. This character marks the limit of Molière's mind in original conception. He fails when he does not draw from the life, which he did not do in this instance. The French Court did not contain a genuine misanthrope. There might, indeed, be some worn-out fop, tired of the follies of his youth, and disposed to show his wisdom by his sourness; but there was no Timon, no man-hater, whose misanthropy was formed by that morbid philosophy which works upon a mind originally generous. Molière may have aimed at such a character, but he has drawn a coxcomb. The other characters of the piece are better conceived. Celimene's remarks upon her acquaintances, in the second act, are spirited and graphic; but the dialogue, upon the whole, is rather tiresome. The long declamations in verse are altogether intolerable to any one who has not been drilled into such exercises by the serious productions of the French stage. The dénouement, also, is most undramatic; and, upon the whole, we are not disposed to rank this piece very high, though it is one of the most elaborate of Molière's works. He has, we think, been more successful in "L'Avare," in superinducing love upon a |