that, centuries before, had characterised the romantic courts of love in the South of France. All this was conducted in an affected jargon, in which the most common things, instead of being called by their usual names, were signified by ridiculous periphrases; which, while it required neither wit not ingenuity to invent them, could have had no other merit, even in their own eyes, than that of being unintelligible to the vulgar. To this was superadded a tone of exaggerated sentiment, and a ridiculous code of etiquette, by which the intercourse of these exclusives was to be regulated with each other, all borrowed from the absurd romances of Calprenede and Scuderi. Even the names of the parties underwent a metamorphosis; and Madame de Rambouillet's christian name of Catherine, being found too trite and unpoetical, was converted into Arthenice, by which she was so generally recognised, as to be designated by it in Flechier's eloquent funeral oration on her daughter."

Dictionaries were compiled, and treatises written illustrative of this precious vocabulary; all were desirous of being initiated into the mysteries of so elegant a science, even such men as Corneille and Bossuet did not disdain to frequent the saloons where it was studied; the spirit of imitation, more active in France than in other countries, took possession of the provinces; every village had its coteries of précieuses, after the fashion of the capital; and a false taste and criticism threatened to infect the very sources of pure and healthful literature.

It was against this fashionable corruption that Molière aimed his wit, in the little satire of the "Précieuses Ridicules:" in which the valets of two noblemen are represented as aping their masters' tones of conversation, for the purpose of imposing on two young ladies fresh from the provinces, and great admirers of the new style. The absurdity of these affectations is still more strongly relieved, by the contemptuous incredulity of the father and servant, who do not comprehend a word of them. By this process Molière succeeded both in exposing and degrading these absurd pretensions; as he showed how opposite they were to common sense, and how easily they were to be acquired by the most vulgar minds. The success was such, as might have been anticipated on an appeal to popular feeling, where nature must always triumph over the arts of affectation. The piece was welcomed with enthusiastic applause, and the disciples of the Hôtel Rambouillet, most of whom were present at the first exhibition, beheld the fine fabric, which they had been so painfully constructing, brought to the

* How comes Labarpe to fall into the error of supposing that Fléchier referred to Madame Montau sieur, by this epithet of Arthenice? The bishop's style in this passage is as unequivocal as usual,-See Cours de Litterature, &c. tome vi. p. 167.

Nor

ground by a single blow. "And these fol lies," said Ménage to Chapelain, “which you and I see so finely criticised here, are what we have been so long admiring. We must go home and burn our idols." · Courage, Molière," cried an old man from the pit, "this is genuine comedy." The price of the seats was doubled from the time of the second representation. were the effects of the satire merely transitory. It converted an epithet of praise into one of reproach; and a femme précieuse, a style précieux, a ton précieux, once so much admired, have ever since been used only to signify the most ridiculous affectation. This production assured Molière of his own strength, and disclosed to him the mode in which he should best hit the popular taste. "I have no occasion to study Plautus or Terence any longer," said he, "I must, henceforth, study the world." The world accordingly was his study; and the exquisite models of character which it furnished him, will last as long as it shall endure.

In 1660 he brought out the excellent comedy of the Ecole des Maris; and, in the course of the same month, that of the Fåcheur, in three acts; composed, learned, and performed within the brief space of a fortnight; an expedition evincing the dexterity of the manager, no less than that of the author. This piece was written at the request of Fouquet, superintendent of finances to Louis the Fourteenth, for the magnificent fête at Vaux, given by him to that monarch, and lavishly 'celebrated in the memoirs of the period, and with yet more elegance in a poetical epistle of La Fontaine to his friend De Maucroix. This minister had been entrusted with the principal care of the finances under Cardinal Mazarine, and had been continued in the same office by Louis the Fourteenth, on his own assumption of the government. The monarch, however, alarmed at the growing dilapidations of the revenue, requested from the superintendent an exposé of its actual condition, which, on receiving, he privately communicated to Colbert, the rival and successor of Fouquet. The latter, whose ordinary expenditure far exceeded that of any other subject in the kingdom, and who, in addition to immense sums occasionally lost at play, and daily squandered on his debaucheries, is said to have distributed in pensions more than four millions of livres annually, thought it would be an easy matter to impose on a young and inexperienced prince, who had hitherto shown himself more devoted to pleasure than business; and, accordingly gave in false returns, exaggerating the expenses, and diminishing the actual receipts of the treasury. The detection of this peculation determined Louis to take the first occasion of dismissing his powerful minister; but his ruin was precipitated and completed by the discovery of an indiscreet passion for

Madame de la Vallière, whose fascinating graces were then beginning to acquire for her that ascendancy over the youthful monarch, which has since condemned her name to such unfortunate celebrity. The portrait of this lady, seen in the apartments of the favourite, on the occasion to which we have adverted, so incensed Louis, that he would have had him arrested on the spot, but for the seasonable intervention of the queen mother, who reminded him that Fouquet was his host. It was for this fete at Vaux, whose palace and ample domains, covering the extent of three villages, had cost their proprietor the sum, almost incredible for that period, of eighteen million livres, that Fouquet put in requisition all the various talents of the capital, the dexterity of its artists, and the invention of its finest poets. He was particularly lavish in his preparations for the dramatic portion of the entertainment. Le Brun passed for a while, from his victories of Alexander, to paint the theatrical decorations; Torelli was employed to contrive the machinery; Pelisson furnished the prologue, much admired in its day; and Molière his comedy of the Fâcheux. This piece, the hint for which may have been suggested by Horace's ninth satire, Ibam forte via Sacrâ, is an amusing caricature of the various bores, that infest society, rendered the most vexatious by their intervention at the very moment when a young lover is has tening to the place of assignation with his mistress. Louis the Fourteenth, after the performance, seeing his master of the hunts near him, M. Soyecour, a personage remarkably absent, and inordinately devoted to the pleasures of the chase, pointed him out to Molière as an original, whom he had omitted to bring upon his canvass. The poet took the hint, and, the following day, produced an excellent scene, where this Nimrod is made to go through the technics of his art; in which he had himself, with great complaisance, instructed the mischievous satirist, who had drawn him into a conversation for that very purpose, on the preceding evening.

This play was the origin of the comédieballet, afterwards so popular in France.

In February, 1662, Molière formed a matrimonial connexion with Mademoiselle Béjart, a young comedian of his company, who had been educated under his own eye, and whose wit and captivating graces had effectually ensnared the poet's heart; but for which he was destined to perform doleful penance the remainder of his life. The disparity of their ages, for the lady was hardly seventeen, might have afforded in itself a sufficient objection; and he had no reason to flatter himself that she would remain uninfected by the pernicious example of the society, in which she had been educated, and of which he himself was not altogether an immaculate member. In his excellent comedy of

the Ecole des Femmes, brought forward the same year, the story turns upon the absurdity of an old man's educating a young female, for the purpose, at some future time, of marrying her; which wise plan is defeated by the unseasonable apparition of a young lover, who, in five minutes, undoes what it had cost the veteran so many years to contrive. The pertinency of this moral to the poet's own situation shows how much easier it is to talk wisely, than to act so.

This comedy, popular as it was on its representation, brought upon the head of its author, a pitiless pelting of parody, satire, and even slander, from those of his own craft, who were jealous of his unprecedented suc cess, and from those literary petits-mastres who still smarted with the stripes inflicted on them, in some of his previous performances. One of this latter class, incensed at the applauses bestowed upon the piece on the night of its first representation, indignantly exclaimed, Ris done, parterre; ris donc ! "Laugh then, pit, if you will;" and immediately quitted the theatre.

Molière was not slow in avenging himself of these interested criticisms, by means of a little piece, entitled La Critique de l'Ecole des Femmes; in which he brings forward the various objections made to his comedy, and ridicules them with an unsparing severity. These objections appear to have been chiefly of a verbal nature. A few such familiar phrases, as Tarte à la crême, Enfans par l'oreille, &c. gave particular offence to the purists of that day, and, in the prudish spirit of French criticism, have since been condemned by Voltaire and La Harpe as unworthy of comedy. One of the personages, introduced into the Critique, is a marquis, who, when repeatedly interrogated as to the nature of his objections to the comedy, has no other answer to make, than by his eternal Tarte à la crême. The Duc de Feuillade, a coxcomb of little brains, but great pretensions, was the person generally supposed to be here intended. The peer, unequal to an encounter of wits with his antagonist, resorted to a coarser remedy. Meeting Molière one day in the gallery at Versailles, he advanced as if to embrace him; a civility which the great lords of the day occasionally condescended to bestow upon their inferiors. As the unsuspecting poet inclined himself to receive the salute, the duke, seizing his head between his hands, rubbed it briskly against the buttons of his coat, repeating, at the same time, Tarte à la créme, Monsieur; tarte à la crême. The king, on receiving intelligence of this affront, was highly indignant at it, and reprimanded the duke with great asperity. He, at the same time, encouraged Molière to defend himself with his own weapons; a privilege of which he speedily availed himself, in a caustic little satire in one act, entitled the Impromptu de Versailles. "The

marquis," he says in this piece," is now-adays the droll (le plaisant) of the comedy. And as our ancestors always introduced a jester to furnish mirth for the audience, so we must have recourse to some ridiculous marquis to divert them."

It is obvious that Molière could never have maintained this independent attitude, if he had not been protected by the royal favour. Indeed, Louis was constant in giving him this protection; and when, soon after this period, the character of Molière was blackened by the vilest imputations, the monarch testified his conviction of his inno

cence, by publicly standing godfather to his child; a tribute of respect equally honourable to the prince and the poet. The king, moreover, granted him a pension of a thousand livres annually; and to his company, which henceforth took the title of "Comedians of the King," a pension of seven thousand.

In the month of September, 1665, Molière produced his L'Amour Médicin, a comédieballet, in three acts, which, from the time of its conception to that of its performance, consumed only five days. This piece, although displaying no more than his usual talent for caustic raillery, is remarkable as affording the earliest demonstration of those direct hostilities upon the medical faculty, which he maintained at intervals during the rest of his life, and which he may be truly said to have died in maintaining. In this, he followed the example of Montaigne, who, in particular, devotes one of the longest chapters in his work to a tirade against the profession, which he enforces by all the ingenuity of his wit, and his usual wealth of illustration. In this also, Molière was subsequently imitated by Le Sage; as every reader of Gil Blas will readily call to mind. Both Montaigne and Le Sage, however, like most other libellers of the healing art, were glad to have recourse to it in the hour of need. Not so with Molière. His satire seems to have been without affectation. Though an habitual valetudinarian, he relied almost wholly on the temperance of his diet for the re-establishment of his health. "What use do you make of your physician?" said the king to him one day. We chat together, Sire," said the poet. "He gives me his prescriptions; I never follow them; and so I get well."

An ample apology for this infidelity may be found in the state of the profession at that day, whose members affected to disguise a profound ignorance of the true principles of science under a pompous exterior, which, however it might impose upon the vulgar, could only bring them into deserved discredit with the better portion of the community. The physicians of that time are described as parading the streets of Paris on mules, dressed in a long robe and bands, holding their con

versation in bad Latin, or, if they condescended to employ the vernacular, mixing it up with such a jargon of scholastic phrase and scientific technics, as to render it perfectly unintelligible to vulgar ears. The following lines, cited by M. Taschereau, and written in good earnest at the time, seem to hit off most of these peculiarities.

"Affecter un air pédantesque,
Cracher du grec et du latin,
Longue perruque, habit grotesque,
De la fourrure et du satin,
Tout cela réuni fait presque

Ce qu'en appelle un médicin."*

In addition to these absurdities, the physicians of that period exposed themselves to still further derision, by the contrariety of their opinions, and the animosity with which they maintained them. The famous consult ation in the case of Cardinal Mazarine, was well known in its day; one of his four medical attendants affirming the seat of his disorder to be the liver; another the lungs ; a third the spleen; and a fourth the mesentery. Molière's raillery, therefore, against empyrics, in a profession where mistakes are so easily made, so difficult to be detected, and the only one in which they are irremediable, stands abundantly excused from the censures which have been heaped upon it. Its effects were visible in the reform, which, in his own time, it effected in their manners, if in nothing further. They assumed the dress of the world, and gradually adopted the popular forms of communication; an essen tial step to improvement, since nothing cloaks with the vulgar, than an affected use of ignorance and empyricism more effectually learned phrase, and a technical vocabulary.

lière's career, when he composed his MisanWe are now arrived at that period of Mothrope; a play which some critics have esteemed his master-piece, and which all concur in admiring as one of the noblest productions of the modern drama. A circumstance, which occurred on the first night of its performance, may be worth noticing. In the second scene of the first act, a man of fashion, it is well known, is represented as soliciting the candid opinion of Alceste on a sonnet of his own inditing; though he flies into a passion with him, five minutes after, for pronouncing an unfavourable judgment. This sonnet was so artfully constructed by Molière, with those dazzling epigrammatic points, most captivating to common ears, that the gratified audience were loud in their appro bation of what they supposed intended in good faith by the author. How great was their mortification, then, when they heard Alceste condemn the whole as puerile, and

A gait and air somewhat pedantic, And scarce to spit but Greek or Latin, A long peruke and habit antic, Sometimes of far, sometimes of satin, Form the receipt by which 't is showed How to make doctors a la mode.