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, Ce qu'en appelle un medicin."* 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 essential step to improvement, since nothing cloaks ignorance and empyricism more effectually with the vulgar, than an affected use of 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 contions of the modern drama. A circumstance, cur in admiring as one of the noblest producwhich 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 pas sion 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 Alceste condemn the whole as puerile, and their mortification, then, when they heard A gait and air somewhat pedantic, And scarce to spit but Greek or Latin, A long peruke and habit antic, Sometimes of for, sonietimes of satin, Form the receipt by which 't is showed How to make doctors a la mode. fairly expose the false principles, on which it had been constructed. Such a rebuke must have carried more weight with it, than a volume of set dissertation on the principles of taste. The relations in which Molière stood with his wife, at the time of the appearance of this comedy, gave to the exhibition a painful interest. The levity and extravagance of this lady had, for some time, transcended even those liberal limits, which were conceded at that day, by the complaisance of a French husband; and they deeply affected the happiness of the poet. As he one day communicated the subject to his friend Chapelle, the latter strongly urged him to confine her person, a remedy much in vogue then for refractory wives, and one certainly, if not more efficacious, at least more gallant, than the "moderate flagellation," authorised by the English law. He remonstrated on the folly of being longer the dupe of her artifices. "Alas!" said the unfortunate poet to him, 66 you have never loved!" A separation, however, was at length agreed upon, and it was arranged that, while both parties occupied the same house, they should never meet, excepting at the theatre. The respective parts which they performed in this piece corresponded precisely with their respective situations; that of Célimène, a fascinating, capricious coquette, insensible to every remonstrance of her lover, and selfishly bent cn the gratification of her own appetites; and that of Alceste, perfectly sensible of the duplicity of his mistress, whom he vainly hopes to reform, and no less so of the unworthiness of his own passion, from which he as vainly hopes to extricate himself. The coincidences, as M. Taschereau has correctly remarked, are too exact to be considered wholly accidental. If Molière, in his preceding pieces, had hit the follies and fashionable absurdities of his age, in the Tartuffe, he flew at still higher game-the most odious of all vices, religious hypocrisy. The result showed that his shafts were not shot in the dark. The three first acts of the Tartuffe, the only ones then written, made their appearance at the memorable fetes, known under the name of "The Pleasures of the Enchanted Isle," given by Louis the Fourteenth, at Versailles, in 1664, and of which the inquisitive reader may find a circumstantial narrative in the twenty-fifth chapter of Voltaire's history of that monarch. The only circumstance, which can give them a permanent value with posterity, is their having been the occasion of the earliest exhibition of this inimitable comedy. Louis the Fourteenth, who, notwithstanding the defects of his education, seems to have had a discriminating perception of literary beauty, was fully sensible of the merits of this production. The Tartuffes, however, who were present at the exhibition, deeply stung by the sarcasms of the poet, like the foul birds of VOL. I. 2 X night, whose recesses have been suddenly invaded by a glare of light, raised a fearful cry against him; until Louis, even, whose solicitude for the interests of the church was nowise impaired by his own personal derelictions, complied with their importunities for imposing a prohibition on the public performance of the play. Soon after his sentence of prohibition, the king attended the performance of a piece, entitled Scaramouche Hermite, a piece abounding in passages the most indelicate and profane. "What is the reason," said he, on retiring, to the prince of Condé," that the persons so sensibly scandalized at Moliére's comedy, take no umbrage at this ?" "Because," said the prince, "the latter only attacks religion, while the former attacks themselves." An answer which may remind one of a remark of Bayle, in reference. to the Decameron; which, having been placed on the Index on account of its immorality,' was, however, allowed to be published in an edition, which converted the names of the ecclesiastics into those of laymen ;-" a concession," says the philosopher, “which shows the priests to have been much more soli-. citous for the interests of their own order, than for those of Heaven." Louis, at length, convinced of the in-> terested motives of the enemies of the Tartuffe, yielded to the importunities of the: public, and removed his prohibition of its performance. On the second evening of the performance, however, an interdict arrived from the president of the parliament, against the repetition of the performance; and as the king had left Paris in order to join his! army in Flanders, no immediate redress was to be obtained. It was not until 1669 that the Tartuffe, in its present shape, was finally allowed to proceed unmolested in its representations. It is scarcely necessary to add, that these were attended with the most brilliant success which its author could have anticipated; and to which the intrinsic merits of the piece, and the unmerited persecutions he had undergone, so well entitled him. Forty-four successive representations were scarcely sufficient to satisfy the eager curiosity of the public; and his grateful company forced upon Molière a double share of the profits during every repetition of its performance for the remainder of his life. Posterity has confirmed the decision of his contemporaries; and it still remains the most admired comedy of the French theatre, and will always remain so, says a native critic, "as long as taste and hypocrites shall endure in France." In 1668, Molière brought forward his Avare, and in the following year, his amusing comedy of the Bourgeois Gentilhomme, in which the folly of unequal alliances is successfully ridiculed and exposed. This play was first represented in the presence of No. XI. JANUARY 10, 1829. the court at Chambord. The king maintained, during its performance, an inscrutable physiognomy, which made it doubtful what might be his sentiments respecting it. The same deportment was maintained by him, during the evening, towards the author, who was in attendance in his capacity of valet de chambre. The quick-eyed courtiers, the counts and marquises, who had so often smarted under the lash of the poet, construing this into an expression of royal disapprobation, were loud in their condemnation of him ; and a certain duke boldly affirmed, "that he was fast sinking into his second childhood, and that, unless some better writer soon appeared, French comedy would degenerate into mere Italian farce." The unfortunate poet, unable to catch a single ray of consolation, was greatly depressed during the interval of five days, which preceded the second representation of his piece; on returning from which, the monarch assured him, that "none of his productions had afforded him greater entertainment, and that if he had delayed expressing his opinion on the preceding night, it was from the apprehension that his judgment might have been influenced by the excellence of the acting." Whatever we may think of this exhibition of royal caprice, we must admire the suppleness of the courtiers, one and all of whom straightway expressed their full conviction of the merits of the comedy; and the duke above-mentioned added, in particular, that "there was a vis comica in all that Molière ever wrote, to which the ancients could furnish no parallel!" What exquisite studies for his pencil must Molière not have found in this precious assembly! We have already remarked, that the profession of a comedian was but lightly esteemed in France at this period. Molière experienced the inconveniencies resulting from this circumstance, even after his splendid literary career had given him undoubted claims to consideration. Most of our readers, no doubt, are acquainted with the anecdote of Belloc, an agreeable poet of the court, who, on hearing one of the servants in the royal household refuse to aid the author of the Tartuffe in making the king's bed, courteously requested "the poet to accept his services for that purpose." Madame Campan's anecdote of a similar courtesy, on the part of Louis the Fourteenth, is also well known; who, when several of these functionaries refused to sit at table with the comedian, kindly invited him to sit down with him, and, calling in some of his principal courtiers, remarked that he had requested the pleasure of Molière's company at his own table, as it was not thought quite good enough for his officers." It was the same unworthy prejudice, that had so long excluded Molière from that great object and recompense of a French scholar's ambition, a seat in the Academy; a body affecting to maintain a jealous watch over the national language and literature, which the author of the Misanthrope and the Tartuffe, perhaps more than any other individual of his age, had contributed to purify and advance. Sensible of this merit, they, at length, offered him a place in their assembly, provided he would renounce his profession as a player, and confine himself, in future, to his literary labours. But the poet replied to his friend Boileau, the bearer of this communication, that "too many individuals of his company depended on his theatrical labours for sup port, to allow him, for a moment, to think of it;" a reply of infinitely more service to his memory, than all the academic honours that could have been heaped upon him. This illustrious body, however, a century after his decease, paid him the barren compliment (the only one then in their power) of decreeing to him an éloge, and of admitting his bust within their walls, with this inscription upon it Nothing is wanting to his glory;-he was wanting to ours." The catalogue of Academicians contemporary with Molière, most of whom now rest in sweet oblivian, or, with Cotin and Chapelain, live only in the satires of Boileau, shows that it is as little in the power of academies to confer immortality on a writer, as to deprive him of it. Molière had long been afflicted by a pulmonary complaint. At the commencement of the year 1673, his malady sensibly increased. At this very season, he composed his Malade Imaginaire; the most whimsical, and perhaps the most amusing of the compositions, in which he has indulged his raillery against the Faculty. On the seventeenth of February, being the day appointed for its fourth representation, his friends would have dissuaded him from appearing, in consequence of his increasing indisposition, but he persisted in his design, alleging, "that more than fifty poor individuals depended for their daily bread on its performance." His life fell a sacrifice to his benevolence. The exertions which he was compelled to make in playing the principal part of Argan aggravated his distemper, and as he was repeating the word juro, in the concluding ceremony, he fell into a convulsion, which he vainly endeavoured to disguise from the spectators, under a forced smile. He was immediately carried to his house, in the Rue de Richelieu, now No. 34. A violent fit of coughing, on his arrival, occasioned the rupture of a bloodvessel; and, seeing his end approaching, he sent for two ecclesiastics of the parish of St. Eustace, to which he belonged, to administer to him the last offices of religion. But these worthy persons having refused their assistance, before a third, who had been sent for, could arrive, Molière, suffocated with the effusion of blood, had expired in the arms of his family. Harlay de Champvalon, at that time archbishop of Paris, refused the rites of sepulture to the deceased poet, because he was a comedian, and had had the misfortune to die without receiving the sacraments. This prelate is conspicuous, even in the chronicles of that period, for his bold and infamous debaucheries. It is of him that Madame de Sévigné observes, in one of her letters "There are two little inconveniencies, which make it difficult for any one to undertake his funeral oration; his life and his death." Father Gaillard, who at length consented to undertake it, did so, on the condition that he should not be required to say any thing of the character of the deceased. The remonstrance of Louis the Fourteenth having induced this person to remove his interdict, he privately instructed the curate of St. Eustace not to allow the usual service for the dead to be recited at the interment. On the day appointed for this ceremony, a number of the rabble assembled at the deceased poet's door, determined to oppose it. "They knew only," says Voltaire, "that Molière was a comedian; but did not know that he was a philosopher, and a great man." They had, more pro, bably, been collected together by the Tartuffes, his unforgiving enemies. The widow of the poet appeased these wretches, by throw ing money to them from the windows. In the evening, the body, escorted by a procession of about a hundred individuals, the friends and intimate acquaintances of the deceased poet, each of them bearing a flambeau in his hand, was quietly deposited in the cemetery of St. Joseph, without the ordinary chant, or service of any kind. It was not thus that Paris followed to the tomb the remains of her late distinguished comedian, Talma. Yet Talma was only a comedian; while Molière, in addition to this, had the merit of being the most eminent comic writer whom France had ever produced. The different degree of popular civilization, which this difference of conduct indicates, may afford a subject of contemplation by no means unpleasing to the philan thropist. In the year 1792, during that memorable period in France, when an affectation of reverence for their illustrious dead was strangely mingled with the persecution of the living, the Parisians resolved to exhume the remains of La Fontaine and Molière, in order to transport them to a more honourable place of interment. Of the relics thus obtained, it is certain that no portion belonged to La Fontaine; and it is extremely probable that none did to Molière. Whosoever they may have been, they did not receive the honours, for which their repose had been disturbed. With the usual fickleness of the period, they were shamefully transferred from one place to another, or abandoned to neglect for seven years; when the patriotic conservator of the Monumens Français succeeded in obtain ing them for his collection at the PetitsAugustins. On the suppression of this institution, in 1817, the supposed ashes of the two poets were, for the last time, transported to the specious cemetery of Père de la Chaise, where the tomb of the author of the Tartuffe is designated by an inscription in Latin, which, as if to complete the scandal of the proceedings, is grossly mistaken in the only fact which it pretends to record, namely, the age of the poet at the time of his decease. Molière died soon after entering upon his fifty-second year. He is represented to have been somewhat above the middle stature, and well proportioned; his features large, his complexion dark, and his black, bushy eyebrows so flexible, as to admit of his giving an infinitely comic expression to his physiogno, my. He was the best actor of his own generation, and, by his counsels, formed the celebrated Baron, the best of the succeeding. He played all the range of his own characters, from Alceste to Sganarelle; though he seems to have been peculiarly fitted for broad comedy. He composed with rapidity; for which Boileau has happily complimented him; "Rare et sublime esprit, dont la fertile vein Iguore en écrivant le travail et la peine." Unlike in this to Boileau himself, and to Racine; the former of whom taught the latter, if we may credit his son, "the art of rhym ing with difficulty." Of course the verses of Molière have neither the correctness nor the high finish of those of his two illustrious rivals. He produced all his pieces, amounting to thirty, in the short space of fifteen years. He was in the habit of reading these to an old female domestic, by the name of La Forêt, on whose unsophisticated judgment he greatly relied. On one occasion, when he attempted to impose upon her the production of a brother author, she plainly told him that he had never written it. Sir Walter Scott may have had this habit of Molière in his mind, when he introduced a similar expedient into his "Chronicles of the Canongate." For the same reason, our poet used to request the comedians to bring their children with them, when he recited to them a new play. The peculiar advantage of this humble criticism, in dramatic compositions, is obvious. Al fieri himself, as he informs us, did not disdain to resort to it. Molière's income was very ample; proba bly not less than twenty-five or thirty thousand francs; an immense sum for that day. Yet he left but little property. The expensive habits of his wife and his own liberality may account for it. One example of this is worth recording, as having been singularly opportune and well directed. When Racine came up to Paris, as a young adventurer, he presented to Molière a copy of his first crude tragedy, long since buried in oblivion. The Hatter discerned in it, amidst all its imperfections, the latent spark of dramatic genius, and he encouraged its author by the present of a hundred louis. This was doing better for him than Corneille did, who advised the future author of Phédre to abandon the tragic walk, and to devote himself altogether to comedy. Racine recompensed this benefaction of his friend, at a later period of his life, by quarrelling with him. Molière was naturally of a reserved and taciturn temper; insomuch, that his friend Boileau used to call him the Contemplateur. Strangers who had expected to recognise in his conversation the sallies of wit which distinguished his dramas, went away disappointed. The same thing is related of La Fontaine. The truth is, that Molière went into society as a spectator, not as an actor; he found there the studies for the characters, which he was to transport upon the stage; and he occupied himself with observing them. The dreamer, La Fontaine, lived too in a world of his own creation. His friend, Madame de la Sablière, paid to him this untranslateable compliment; "En vérité, mon cher La Fontaine, vous seriez bien bête, si vous n'aviez pas tant d'espirit." These unseasonable reveries brought him, it may be imagined, into many whimsical adThe great Corneille, too, was distinguished by the same apathy. A gentleman dined at the same table with him for six months, without suspecting the author of the "Cid." ventures. The literary reputation of Molière, and his amiable personal endowments, naturally led him into an intimacy with the most eminent wits of the golden age, in which he lived; but especially with Boileau, La Fontaine, and Racine; and the confidential intercourse of these great minds, and their frequent réunions, for the purposes of social pleasure, bring to mind the similar associations at the Mermaid's, Will's coffee-house, and Button's, which form so pleasing a picture in the annals of English literature. It was common on these occasions to have a volume of the unfortunate Chapelain's epic, then in popular repute, lie open upon the table, and if one of the party fell into a grammatical blunder, to impose upon him the reading of some fifteen or twenty verses of it; "a whole page," says Louis Racine, "was sentence of death." La Fontaine, in his Psyché, has painted his reminiscences of these happy meetings, in the colouring of fond regret; where, "freely discussing such topics of general literature, or personal gossip, as might arise, they touched lightly upon all, like bees passing on from flower to flower; criticising the works of others, without envy, and of one another, when any one chanced to fall into the malady of the age, with frankness.” ́ Alas! that so rare an union of minds, destined to live together through all ages, should have been dissolved by the petty jealousies incident to common men. In these assemblies, frequent mention is made of Chapelle, the most intimate friend of Molière, whose agreeable verses are read with pleasure in our day, and whose cordial manners and sprightly conversation made him the delight of his own. His mercurial spirits, however, led him into too free an indulgence of convivial pleasures; and brought upon him the repeated, though unavailing, remonstrances of his friends. On one of these occasions, as Boileau was urging upon him the impropriety of this indulgence, and its inevitable consequences, Chapelle, who received the admonition with great contrition, invited his Mentor to withdraw from the public street, in which they were then walking, into a neighbouring house, where they could talk over the matter with less interruption. wine was called for, and, in the warmth of discussion, a second bottle being soon followed by a third, both parties at length found themselves in a condition, which made it advisable to adjourn the lecture to a more fitting occasion. Here Molière enjoyed also the closest intimacy with the great Condé, the most distinguished ornament of the court of Louis the Fourteenth; to such an extent, indeed, that the latter directed, that the poet should never be refused admission to him, at whatever hour he might choose to pay his visit. His regard for his friend was testified by his remark, rather more candid than courteous, to an Abbé of his acquaintance, who had brought him an epitaph, of his own writing, upon the deceased poet. "Would to Heaven," said the prince," that he were in a condition to bring me yours." We have already wandered beyond the limits which we had assigned to ourselves, for an abstract of Molière's literary labours, and of the most interesting anecdotes in his biography. Without entering, therefore, into a criticism on his writings, of which the public stand in no need, we shall dismiss the subject with a few brief reflections on their probable influence, and on the design of the author in producing them. The most distinguished French critics, with the overweening partiality in favour of their own nation, so natural and so universal, placing Molière, by common consent, at the head of their own comic writers, have also claimed for him a pre-eminence over those of every other age and country. A. W. Schlegel, a very competent judge in these matters, has degraded him, on the other hand, from the walks of high comedy, to the writer of "buffoon farces, for which his genius and inclination seem to have essentially fitted him ;" adding, moreover, that "his characters are |