Inivareiht aft \/-ainia | ihrans IVERSITY OF VIRGINIA il 89 fe diaiees aeYTD Or ELIE pea, SRG LLB feat in OLDE ri ti pote Bot)FD me Ties hes MOR BATT +See eens a Shins par: ta titZs eat 3 ree ; i 2 a Ds DSIRE NE Seer Peres St PEE stex a r a LDS.MOLIERE ~ BY MRS. OLIPHANT F. TARVER, MA. ) Ja Nex) FEL a Ps ho) »3 2. > > > 8 > d > > O96 a Bg ooo aoe > ) ) 09/972 aS. » ’ > r = > ) ae > > > > >>> 5 > 3 ) ) > eS > >a > 7 wees > 25 219 >. 2 » , 2 > , 9-9 : > > 29 >: 2 >») . 2 > > a Ds < 5.9) 9: 2) 2-33. 0 > > seo >» A382 > Te ed 2 9:85 > > > >. .9 > > > > 2 2 9 > PHILADELPHIA J. B. LIPPINCOTT «& CO;FY 4 Py $ ‘ : K Seu Erneta:Foreign Classics for Cnglish Readers EDITED BY MRS OLIPHANT MOLIERRSBees eee ELLY Tera Pa eae es aera - teeny Tee TN mee Rea aes 4 a i = ra r= a & iS a Z S a 4 r 3 A FA POON By ss VOLTAIRE, PASCAL, PETRARCH, . GOETHE, MOLIERE, . MONTAIGNE, RABELAIS, CALDERON, SAINT SIMON, CERVANTES, CORNEILLE ayp RACINE, MADAME DE SEVIGNE, LA FONTAINE, AND OTHE Ss By R FRENCH FABULISTS, SCHILLER, TASSO, : : ROUSSEAU, The Volumes published of this Series contain— By the Eprroi By Major-General Sir E. B. Hamuey, K.C.M By Principal To! By Henry REEVE, \ By A. HAYWARD, q. By Mrs OLIPHANT and F. TARVER, M. / By Rev. W. Lucas Coxiuins, M. By WALTER BESA! By E. J. Hass By Ciirron W. CoLiins, M vevV. By the Epi By Henry M. TROLLO By Miss THACKERAY BK Pp W. Lucas CoLuins, M.. By JAMES SIME, M.. By E. J. HASEI By HENRY GREY GRAHACONTENTS. CHAP, PAGE INTRODUCTION, . : : : : E Vil I. HIS EARLY LIFE, : 3 é ‘ : 1 (1. EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS, : ; j 26 II. HIS FiRST SUCCESSES, ; : , ; 33 [V. HIS MERIDIAN, . é ;: : : é 83 Y. THE THREE GREAT COMEDIES, Vi. THE END OF HIS LIFH#, ° a « fot HIS LATEST WORKS, .> , SEDI AU SD a ot Ser eee Ldadibbel bien a) actaINTRODUCTION, Amone the many great names which make French lit- erature illustrious, there is scarcely one which is so uni- versally acknowledged and of such national importance as that of Moliere. The graver poets, of whose works Frenchmen are proud, and whose names stand first on the register of fame, do not wake the same warmth of interest and sympathy which make Moliere always liv- ing, always popular, the familiar friend as well as the im- mortal writer—dear to his countrymen, with no solemnity of classical fame alone, but with the warmth almost of personal contact. We are naturally jealous of placing any but the greatest on the same elevation with Shakespeare, and even the most warm enthusiast in France would scarcely venture to claim for her great comedian a place by the side of the sovran poet, to whom all regions of imagination and all passions of mankind were open. But yet, with all the limitations that must be allowed on our side, Molitre makes the nearest approach to the position of Shakespeare which any Frenchman has made. Thougheee vill INTRODUCTION. he has never touched those tragic chords which move our deepest emotions, or at least only with a momentary finger, with a breath, as in the sadness of the ‘ Misan- thrope ;’ though he has usually confined himself to those subjects which elicit laughter—laughter pure and simple, without any admixture of pain or pity,—yet there is something of universality in his humour—a breadth and manly vigour, a genuine mirth and enjoyment without bitterness, which are of kin to the largeness of Shake- speare. No personal rancour, no individual enmity, nar- rows or intensifies his satire. He himself, the reader feels, would never have been less courteous to any fine lady of the Hotel-Rambouillet because of the ‘Femmes Savantes,’ or treated any doctor with less personal re- spect because of the hundred follies of old-fashioned medicine of which he made honest fun, holding both his sides, and half greteful to the victim who gave him so much amusement. ‘This quality of breadth and large- ness, which we cannot characterise otherwise than as a moral quality, not only takes the sting out of contem po- rary satire, but raises it above the danger of anachronism. Spite fixes upon personal details, and more or less neutral- ises its own venom by so doing; but the genius of mirth is never out of date, and its unvenomed laughter lasts as long as human nature continues to be laughable, and goes on disporting itself with all the cranks and oddities of nature. There are no such pedants nowadays as M. Jourdain’s master in philosophy, neither would the most accomplished dancing -master maintain the argument which puzzled that simple citizen between the excel- lence of his own craft and that of his brother professor,INTRODUCTION, 1X ‘‘ Philosophy is something, but dancing, sir, dancing !’ Perhaps even in the days of Louis XIV, this parallel would scarcely have been risked in words. Yet we stil See every day before us folly enough in the guise of wis dom to make the elocutionist a possibility, and masters of the frivolous arts sufficiently selfimportant to sug gest the same triumphant contrast, ing on the broad lines of human n of date. It is this which secures for Moliére and inexhaustible fame, Thus genius, keep ature, 18 never out an unexhausted He is never paltry, never spite ful, never small: his laughter, if it has not the roll] and rush of Shakespearian mirth, is frank and honest ang uresistible. He is no avenger of personal feuds, no executioner of individual malice. At his heaviest blow he means no harm, and has no desire to crush or to wound. He sees what is ludicrous -with a glance which is penetrating and quick as lightning, and cuts through and through the veils of false meaning—but yet beholds his fellow - creature behind, and does all in fun, and nought in anger. At the same time his humour is not that which we have recently accustomed ourselves to dignify with that name,—the humour of Sterne or Thackeray—the tender ridicule which is never far from tears, and which may be the very utterance of love itself, Several of the plays of Moliére have been worked more or less into English, according to the system of adaptation with which we are all so familiar ; but these are mostly antiquated and fallen out of knowledge, And there has been at least one full translation intoINTRODUCTION. English, recently published, which is quite faithful to the text, without giving the least idea of the unfailing sparkle and brilliant wit of the original. In order to avoid a downfall of the same kind, the actual quotations we have made are but few in number. Character and meaning may be translatable, but the rapid grace of Molitre’s dialogue it is scarcely possible to reproduce. S} iy B ie 3 iN ay PN Ny x rp \ ey mS Se ee te RD of eee EET, are ream TDD NTT eet A Ce ee enMOLLER PE: CHAPTER I. HIS EARLY LIFE, JEAN Baptiste PoQuELin, afterwards called Molitre, was the son of a respectable bourgeois family in Paris, of the class which he has so often illustrated, and was born in the beginning of the year 1622 in the house in the Rue St Honoré where his father carried on his business—the Maison des Cygnes,' or sign of the Swans, as we should call it, according to the old fashion prevalent both in Eng- land and France. He was the first child of a young couple, wealthy for their class, and in a good position, upholsterers, and holding the appointment which respect- able tradesmen still covet, of upholsterers to the king, which proves that the father stood well in his trade. Marie Cressé, the mother, belonged to a family follow- ing the same occupation, though some light of superior birth seems to have wavered over her through the much- prized particle de with which her father signed. What 1 Sometimes also called Matson des Singes. He Cs VE. AaTeTTs PA iter oh PRD TAIT che laa eRe. Teel ee ere reas rete tee ise PE Tene rar 2 MOLIERE. was more to the purpose, however, was that she must have been in her own person tolerably well endowed, as her son is spoken of in his father’s lifetime as able to live honourably upon his own means without pursu- ing any occupation—a fortune which must evidently have come from his mother, who died when he was but ten years old. In the many guesses at his youthful life which have been put forth as biography, an imaginary picture is set before us of a stupid and ignorant shop- keeper troubled with the early genius of a boy whom he did not know how to manage, whose young imagination had been set on fire by the sight of a play to which his grandfather had taken him as a child, and who, by tears and prayers, forced his father to accord him such an education as no young upholsterer ever had before. Later and more cautious historians, however, guided by careful investigations into fact, have entirely disproved this romance, and made it evident that the young Poque- lin’s education was in no way beyond the natural and legitimate hopes of a wealthy citizen’s son, to whom, at least, the learned professions were open, if not the honours of the camp and court. He went through his humanities m the Collége de Clermont, one of the most celebrated schools of the day, which was then directed by the Jesuits, and contained among its pupils “children of the greatest houses.” Here, it is believed, he was the schoolfellow of the Prince Armand de Conti, the brother of the great Condé (who, however, was a num- ber of years younger than Moliére), and of other men who attained some celebrity, though of none whose fame approached his own. Here he also studied philoso- vhy under the celebrated Gassendi, proceeding, in the( V i 1 aS Na a HIS EARLY LIFE, 3 latural course of events, to fatre son droit—that is, to the study of law, in preparation for the bar. How it was hat, while pursuing this career, he should have been nade successor to his father in the office of valet de thambre tapissier to the king, it is somewhat difficult 70 make out. Seme of his bioeranhers see in this an tempt on the part of the futhe: to subaue his ambition, md bind the boy to a sordid trade, with an instinct sufficiently appropriate to a prudent shopkeeper and citi- en. Others, on the other hand, and especially M. Bazin, ‘hose careful examination into all that has ever been ud upon the subject and all the documents on record entitles him to a respectful hearing, declares the position f the king’s valet de chambre to have involved nothing bat was humiliating for a young man of education, ince a colonel in the army, or the captain of a royal hip, might fulfil the duties of the office without dero- zation. This however, as M. Taschereau, another able critic of the story, points out, is an argument which scarcely holds in the case of a specially designated \ipholsterer-valet, who must have been capable, accord- ng to law, “to keep in order the king’s furniture, and ven to renew it.” It is probable that the truth lies omewhere between these two opinions, and that the udent Poquelin may have been desirous of securing r his boy of genius the resource of an honest trade to ll back upon, should higher efforts fail,—trusting to the quaintance with chairs and tables, rich draperies and nges of gold, which he must have made in the pater- I shop in early days, to carry him through the techni- | portion of his duties, without interfering in the vantime with his reading as a law student, or hisTh eee Be ener Bie aims eee ee eet ee contra 4 MOLIERE. hopes of the advocate’s robe. Perhaps the possible advantage of being thrown in the king’s way, and brought under his personal notice, might also tell for something in making this appointment desirable. So far as is known, however, it was never during his youth carried the length of actual service. It is supposed by some, indeed, that the young Poquelin took his father’s place in 1641, and accompanied the king on one of his expeditions in the exercise of this nondescript office—but of this there is no proof; and it would be as easy to conjecture that in this way the young knight of the carpets—the valet-tapissier, who was at the same time a scholar, a philosopher, and a man of genius—might have been brought in contact with the little Louis, after- wards Le Grand Monarque, and magnificent patron of the dramatist and his art: which would have added a pictu- resque incident to the story. This pretty possibility, however, is never suggested; and though fancy has been very dogmatic and positive about the early portion of the young man’s career, there are no facts to support the imagination. All that is known is that Jean Baptiste Poquelin received an excellent education, and pursued his law studies to their legitimate end, having been, as some assert, actually called to the bar. According to a satiri- cal ballad, written against him in later years when he had become famous, he even appeared once in the Palace of Justice in the capacity of an advocate ; but as this is the only mention of such a fact, little faith can be put in the assertion. When young Poquelin attained his majority, however, he reappears authertically in unquestionable records. The earliest document in his history is a formalHIS EARLY LIFES, 5 letter, in which he resigns back again into the hands of his father the successorship to the office of valet de chambre tapissier, which had been settled upon him at the age of fifteen ; and at the same time makes formal acknowledgment of the receipt of a portion of the inheritance which came to him from his mother, and which was considerable enough to make him indepen- dent. This would seem to have indicated a kind of separation from the sober bourgeois life of the family, and from all connection with the trade, honours, and profits of the Poquelins. The good citizen’s son, like him of the parable, claimed that which was due to him, and went his way upon his own career of pleasure and occu- pation. Molicre was no prodigal ; but it is likely enough that his studies and training had developed much that was inconsistent with the severe and sober life of a re- spectable citizen. In his many pictures of that life, where the young gallant in his ruffles and ribbons, with flowing peruke and laced coat, with his frequent love passages, intrigues, and expenses, shows against the somewhat grim background of the home, and is discussed by his old father in a cotton night-cap, and the brisk and meddling se7~ vante, with her broom, who is an important member of the family—there is no doubt many suggestions from his own experience. The young Cléantes and Valeres, to do them justice, if always ready to deceive, are never disrespectful to constituted authority, and take the ratings bestowed upon them with great submission; but the contrast be- tween the gilded youth and his family surroundings is very marked. Of what character the brothers were who remained behind him at the sign of the Swans, in the Rue St Honoré, and whether they had shared hisLy DS ee ary | Tee ee eee ETE, Sn 3 ee eee Wire, ees tees en aE Pe ee 6 MOLIERE. advantages of education or were content to settle down to their father’s trade, there is no information. In any case, the eldest son of the family, taking with him the coods that fell to his share, here or hereabouts ceased to be Poquelin at all; and leaving at once upholstery and law behind him, stepped out dimly into the knowledge of the world, upon the rude platform of the primitive theatre of the time, under the name of Molicre. It is curious that in the case of both the great writers who occupy in France a position above all rivalry or comparison, this same unexplained change of name should have taken place, and that Moliere and Voltaire should have alike separated themselves from all questions of family by a device so simple and arbi- trary—not even sanctioned, as French custom permits, by any territorial connection. M. de Moliere and M. de Voltaire thus conquered the particule, which is the sion of rank, without any difficulty or drawback. In the case of the former, however, the change was Justi- fied by the common practice of the theatrical profession which from this time he adopted, making all his past training useless, as has been the case with so many young men, and with thousands whose after-career does not justify the sacrifice, as did that of Moliere. We may well conceive what feelings were in the mind of the good bowrgeo’s, who probably had been virtuously conscious of making no small sacrifice when he deprived himself of the aid of his eldest son in the shop and business, in order to make a gentleman and learned func- tionary of the boy—when he saw him thus throw away all his advantages, and all hopes of advancement and distinction in a legitimate and dignified way, for theHIS EARLY LIFE, 7 noisy applauses of the theatre,—a fame which at the best would be little more than shame in the atmosphere of private respectability. The theatre at this period was no great national institution holding a high place in the life of the age, supported by royal subsidies and caressed by society, as it became in later times. The world had as yet done very little to make up for the sweeping con- demnation in which the Church included, as she still does, the entire profession. The patronage of Cardinal Richelieu, and after him of Mazarin, had indeed done some- thing to elevate in public estimation the strolling troupes of players, half tragedy-kings half buffoons, in whose per- formances these great men condescended to find amuse- ment. ‘There had even been a law made in their favour by Louis XIIL., a sufficiently whimsical manifestation of paternal despotism, by which it had been enacted that the profession of comedian should henceforward be consid- ered worthy of respect, and should not be the object of prejudice or regarded as a reproach to those who exercised it, shows at once the popular contempt for the player and the a law which, whatever else may be thought of it, reaction against it. No proof could be more distinct on both these points. The profession of comedian, as we now understand it, seems indeed scarcely to have existe:| in the country where, above all others, it has been hon- oured and promoted in later days. Up to the time when Richeliew’s patronage revived or created some taste for theatrical performances in France, the national drama had been represented only by heavy tragedies on classical sub- jects, or fhe buffooneries which are more or less indigenous in all countries, which seem to have everywhere succeeded the rude mysteries of miracle-plays—but which had de-i ee "9 a Shee et ees Liat Seine Felt PEG it ise aL Syepr SS SLATE SE ees FN ee ene are 8 MOLIERE. veloped under the special patronage of Italian humour into a characteristic and distinct branch of primitive art. M. Louis Moland, in his careful survey of Moliére’s life, and also in the special volume which discusses Moliére’s obli- gations to Italian comedy, has given us a very lucid de- scription of that primitive and piquant form of dramatic a form not still entirely out of use in its representation native country, and which is the parent of pantomime everywhere. In this early stage of its history the theatre was in possession of a group of traditionary characters, some of whom hold good their place in undying popu- larity—the Pantaloon, the Harlequin, and Clown of our Christmas representations, though sadly fallen now from the days when their pantomime had all the subtlety of Italian genius in a sphere peculiarly its own. ‘This eroup of personages, for whose use a multitude of skele- ton plays had been constiucted, all of the same character —compositions of lively intrigue, practical joking, and ludicrous complication, to which the privileged wits of the stage added dialogue as suited them—were in entire possession of the popular fancy in the days when Moliére was still young Poquelin, and unconsciously shaping himself towards his future course. They had developed into French, with modifications which suited the different characteristics of the two nations, changing these into Turlupin and Jodelet, Gros-René, Gros-Guil- laume, and half-a-dozen more buffoons and jokers whose special talent it was to embroider at their will the sufficiently threadbare plot of ludicrous intrigue and absurd incident, with every kind of drollery, spiritual and physical, from the posturings of a mountebank to the pungent witticisms which convulsed a whole assem-HIS EARLY = LIFE, 9 bly, and covered the victims of popular satire with con- fusion. The public which knew them, and knew what it had to expect from them, was easily contented with any absurd combination of incident which gave occasion for the rough horse-play and broad fun in which it delighted. Nothing could be more artless or less intel- lectual than the framework of story which was all they required. ‘‘ Imbecile old men, young libertines, women of every kind except the good, two or three disguises, three or four surprises, combats and tumults,” was all that was necessary. The stage made no pretensions to represent the world, or simulate the habits and customs of contemporary society ; and comedy as now understood was an unknown art. ; On the other hand, the tragedy of the time was solemn enough to satisfy all requirements. In the region of the classical and heroic, ordinary human senti- ments were almost as much out of place as they were in the pantomimic sphere of riot and folly. Between Electra, Hecuba, Darius, Alexander: and Turlupin, Jode- let, Gaultier Garguille, and Gros-René, the gap was immense. No pretence of holding a mirror up to nature could be possible on either hand. Nevertheless, those attractions which always have surrounded the life of the theatre seem to have existed in full force. From the days of Richelieu two theatres appear to have been established in Paris: one in the Hotel de Bourgogne, where tragedy held sway ; the other in the Marais, after- wards removed to a hall in what was called the Hotel de Petit-Bourbon, in which, in Moliere’s early days, a troupe of Italians gave representations three times a- week. At the time when he had reached his twenty-Do ni ener itenet Ee) bee Sea eat bi eh eh Sieg) ahi eet P yy, POE ST TET SCENES DT EO erara ay Lint Titec eke te seme ee Pl ee we famille—“clerks foredoomed their fathers’ souls to cross,” MOLIERE. first year, and was about, to the horror of all his friends, to throw aside his own better prospects and embark in this wild career, the rising tide of popular interest had come, we are told by M. Petitot, one of the many bio- graphers of the great dramatist, to such a height that many lesser representations were given in various parts of Paris, half amateur, half professional—“a kind of mania, often dangerous, in a moral point of view, to which the youth of the time gave itself up with enthu- siasm.” This statement would seem to be justified by (if indeed it is not founded upon) the manner in which Moliere adopted his new profession. No doubt he too was touched more or less by the sentiments which moved his father to remonstrance and all his friends to lamentations over his folly. He was determined to be an actor; but he was a man of education laureated and distinguished, a graduate, an advocate: and when he threw himself into the life of the theatre he too felt that it ought not to be like a mere common actor, a vagrant Jodelet.. What so likely to reform and elevate the profession as the entry into it of men of culture and breeding? “He attempted,” says the first and most authentic sketch of his life,—that which was published with the first edition of his works by members of his own troupe—the most trustworthy of witnesses,—“ to establish himself at Paris with several other persons of family (enfants de Famille) who should, by his example, engage like himself in the art of comedy, under the title of the Illustre Thédtre.” The illustrious theatre !—not a mere band of vulgar per- formers, with their Turlupinade and commonplace buf- foonery, but a company of gentlemen, so to speak, —/jils deHIS EARLY LIFE. —young men of condition and prospects, heroically sacri- ficing themselves for their own cherished fancy and their country’s good. ‘The enterprise, taken in this point of view, was macenanimous and heroic, as much as it was imprudent and presumptuous. With their stage set up upon trestles in a racket-court, their rude benches, their primitive properties, it was a scheme of national reform as well as personal honour and glory which the young amateurs, headstrong and foolish, had taken m hand. There are, however, several writers upon this subject who have represented Moliére as moved by an altogether different motive in his adoption of the trade of comedian. M. Bazin, for example, in his close examination of all the fables and all the traditions by which Molere’s memory has been traduced rather than celebrated, inclines to the opinion that the sentiment which drew him towards the stace was his admiration for Madeleine 3éjart, whom a contemporary chronicler remarks upon as one of the first of existing actresses, adding that “a youth: called Molicre had left the benches of the Sorbonne in order to follow her” in her wandering career. There seems, however, no certainty that this was the case, the evidence, such as it is, pointing rather to the conjecture that Madeleine Béjart and her brothers, already known to the Parisian public, came to the help of the illustrious theatre when it became apparent that the quality of the players was not enough to carry them into the favour of the crowd. In this, as in so many other cases, enthusiasm and refine- ment proved unequal to the task of holding their own against professional skill and training, primitive though these still were. The young men made a fine start, chiefly, it would scem, at Molitere’s expense, who was atDt eee eigen EME Si ha ea eee te Senna rere) ee. Te eae ED AN eee aa aa CES en eT Wie Fe ee Re 12 MOLIERE. the head of the enterprise, and probably the one among them who had money to risk in such a way. “ As long as they played gratis, and no doubt at the expense of Poquelin, they were tolerated ; but when they asked for some return, the whole aspect changed. ‘They were applauded when they acted for nothing, but hissed when it cost money,” says one of Molicre’s many biographers. “ Poquelin,” adds this critic, “no longer doubted that it was not easy to establish a theatre with people of distinc- tion, and that it was necessary, in order to have a troupe @élite, to have recourse to the profession.” When it was no longer possible to doubt that the company of fils de famille was a failure, the Bejarts, it is supposed, came to the aid of the young manager, struggling against the discouragements of his empty theatre and the crowd of creditors who began to appear about him. But even with the aid of these professional players, the illustrious theatre never made good the simple brag of its title. It is strange and sadly amusing that, with an eye so clear for other men’s follies, Moliére himself should have fallen a victim to the very simplicity of self-deception, by thus imagining that his companions and himself were sure of surpassing the common comedians— whose manners and conversation very probably disgusted his better taste—in talent and success, as well as in refinement; and that the public would have delicacy enough to discriminate between them, and perceive the superiority of their good- breeding. Such an innocent delusion would of itself have afforded an excellent moti for a comedy. Not even the aid of the Béjarts, however, could set up again the illustrious theatre. It ended disastrously in several prosecutions for debt, in which Moliére, probably theHIS EARLY LIFE, only one of the company who had anything to lose, was sued by the costwméer, candle-merchant, and other credi- ¢ even a short tors of the fallen establishment, suffering imprisonment before its affairs could be finally settled. The. burdens thus thrown upon him were not fully cleared off, we are told, till fourteen years afterwards, when he had returned to Paris, and the tide of fortune had effectually turned. Whether his gentlemen asso- ciates, the fils de famille of his first ambition, deserted him after this humiliation and downfall is not very plainly apparent; but Moliere does not seem for a moment to have wavered in respect to his chosen pro- fession. The Béjarts, though they had not been able to redeem his falling fortunes, were at least faithful to him in his downfall, and with them, giving up all pretensions to any superiority, he left Paris, and set out upon his travels, no better than any other strolling player at the head of his troupe. The family with which he had thus become connected, and from which he never separated during the rest of his life, was of sufficiently good origin to have claimed a place in the unfortunate Ldlustre Thédtre by that right alone. Their father was a lawyer, and had some claims to antiquity of race. The whole family seem to have shared that passion for the actor’s art which developed into excellence in the person of one at least, the elder sister Madeleine—a woman of some beauty and many gifts—with whom Moliére is supposed to have formed a connection, which the morals of the time considered almost as a matter of course. A second sister, Genevieve, and two brothers, formed part of the strolling company, when Molitre plunged into the country, setting out uponI ini pareisk A DOR sete eee steitaaysapabs rent ke tes eRe er tT ae Pe ae ee at 14 MOLIERE. an obscure course of wanderings through which it is almost impossible to follow him. It was in 1646 that these survivors of the illustrious theatre betook them- selves to the roving life which was so far from illus- trious; and through the dim breadth of France—then, as always, occupied with wars and commotions, and get- ting hghted up now and then with the gleam of a battle —it is hopeless to attempt to trace the poor players. Apocryphal accounts of their appearance here and there, and even of a return to Paris, where they were long supposed to have played with great success before the Prince de Conti, the schoolfellow of Moliére, in his hotel, at a moment when that Prince was in reality the occupant of a prison—were long accepted as real, and reported in every history of the time; but in fact the glimpses to be obtained of the great dramatist are few and far between. In 1648 he (or some one resembling him in name, “ Morlierre ”) is Nantes, as ‘very humbly begging” from the town coun- cul, permission to play in their town; but after that, does not seem to reappear out of the mist save in 1653, visible in the municipal -records of seven years after his departure from Paris, when, no doubt after strolings innumerable, he is visible at Lyons, where he is reported to have performed his first comedy, the ‘Ktourdi.’? second of his three great chefs-d’ceuvre — stole eal into being. Without sound of trumpet or any special note of interest, in the beginning of the year 1665—the year after the introduction of ‘ Lartuffe ’"— the ‘Festin de Pierre’ was played in the theatre of the Palais Royal. It does not appear to have had either royal patronage or excitement of public interest in its favour. Less sombre, gloomy, and terrible than its immediate predecessor, but, at the same time, less realistic than anything that went before it, this great comedy received no such homage from the world as Molicre’s previous works had obtained ; nor has it ever, we believe, caught the popular lancy. Up fo this moment the general reader knows less of it than ot almost any of Moliére’s productions. Even such a critic as Voltaire was of opinion that it was written only to satisfy Moliére’s troupe, who were determined not to be left behind by the other theatres in Paris,Se ea ee en Se EN ak ses S Use Bader Re 109 MOLIERE. cach of which had one version or another of the legend of Don Juan in hand. It seems incredible that such an idea could be entertained by any competent im- telligence. Nothing that Moliére ever produced bears stronger evidence of the maturity of genius and power. The connection, perhaps too fine to strike the vulgar, between the bold and splendid impersonation of absolute cynicism and unbelief,—the magnificent dare-devil who believes neither in God nor man, and mocks and defies >oth—and the hypocrite who veils his vices under a sanctimonious pretence of piety,—is very evident to the eye of the student, and gives a wonderful grandeur to the double conception. Molitre sounds the entire depths of moral depravity between these two wonderful imper- sonations. The bold infidel is the natural successor, as he is the apparent opposite, of the pious impostor. What little grace of courage he has is due to the in- effable meanness of the other—the wretch who tries to shield his own corruption in the shadow of holiness. He who scoffs openly at virtue, as he does at all divine authority and human law, comes naturally after the ex- aggerated devotee who breaks all laws under pretence of obeying them more perfectly than other men. Thus there is a wonderful sequence between the two, and the one is wanted to measure the full tale of the iniquity of the other. Contemporary critics did not see this aspect of Don Juan. They were not even sufficiently advanced i: their art to understand that a writer does not necessarily identify himself with his hero, or that Molitre might be able to set forth the audacious impiety of the bold profli- vate without sharing in it, as certainly as he could paint +] i the hideous falsehood of the pretender. As they areHIS MERIDIAN, 101 they stand before: the world the most finished and ter- rible pictures of the pretended worshipper and the heartless and cynical scoffer which have ever been exhibited. Such blighting and terrible art was notin the nobler and grander imagination of Shakespeare, and we know no other with whom to compare the Frenchman in these his highest efforts. They have remained since then, for all the educated world, the chief impersonations of the hypocrite who insults God and the profligate who defies Him. What can all lescription, all denunciation, do to stigmatise an im- postor, that will be half so effectual as to call him a Tartufte? and what other model of heartless and daunt- less vice is so instantly understood as Don Juan? To be sure, in the latter case the image has been taken out of the original possessor’s hands, diluted and senti- mentalised by no less a genius than that of Byron; and clothed in other robes, as splendid in” their way, but veiling the grander proportions of the primal figure, by Mozart. But neither of these great artists has equalled the first conception of this gay and magnificent and ter- rible hero which Moliére brought out of the chaos and childish morality of the legend a being without hope or fear, without heart or faith or honour. As, however, we shall enter more fully into the details of these great plays in our next chapter, it is unneces- sary to do more than record their history here. It seems incomprehensible that so wonderful a produc- ? tion as the ‘Festin de Pierre’ should have met with the most complete failure of any of Moliére’s works, except perhaps ‘Don Garcie.’ “It disappeared from the stage,” Moland says, “after the fifteenth represen-OSG usta eben RAED niestess Bp ale ee Boros S piso vss dus 102 MOLIERE. tation,”—never was printed in Molitre’s lifetime, and did not indeed see the light “in its integrity” till so late a period as 1819,—more than a century and a half after its creation! Few things are so unaccountable as these caprices of popular favour. Several other versions of ‘Don Juan’ were being played in Paris, in which the stony figure of the Commander held the principal part; and how were an audience whose minds were preoccupied by that supernatural appearance to have time to think of the hero, unnecessarily adorned with or to listen to the fine so much character and force contrast of Sganarelle’s shrewd and keen, yet confused and poltroon philosophy, with his master’s crushing wit and superb indifference to all moral considerations— while all its faculties were bent upon the coming of this supernatural personage, and the inevitable catastrophe ? Hamlet himself would fall into the background if the chief actor who fixed everybody’s attention was the Ghost. On the other hand, those who found in ‘Tar- tuffe’ an attack upon true religion, found in the ‘ Festin de Pierre’ a shameless avowal of infidel principles. The one accusation was as just as the other, and about as true. If, however, there rose a certain bitterness in M olicre’s mind when he found one of his best works suppressed by authority, and the other squashed by popular dis- approval or indifference, it would not be wonderful. It is scarcely conceivable that he could be unaware of the intrinsic excellence of these two dramas, which are a world above anything he had ever attempted before. Strangely enough, the one which we might have supposed most dear to its author—the one in which he had intro-HIS MERIDIAN. 103 e duced his own character of Sganarelle in its most subtle development, with a new strain of wisdom and force crossing and mingling with the bourgeois compliance, cowardice, and bewilderment from which he was accus- tomed to draw so much effect—is the one which he allowed to drop ; while with a perseverance which went the length of obstinacy, he kept ‘ Tartuffe’ persistently in the fore- ground, and at last found a hearing for his hypocrite, notwithstanding all opposition. In the meantime, while he was under the influence of this double disappointment, other troubles were gather- ing round him. It seems to be almost certain that the great /éfes at Versailles, in the midst of which ‘‘Tartufle’ was so strangely and suddenly presented to the world, were the occasion of Armande Molitre’s first serious breach with her husband. The usually accepted story of her first infidelities has been much discredited by the researches of the critic, who has proved that two of the lovers about whom the story is told were ab- sent from France at this period, and absolutely out of reach of the woman who is said to have been corrupted by them. But however the details may fail in correct- ness, it is easily credible that the licence of the week’s riot may have proved fatal to the flighty young woman, trained in no school of moral purity, and who now tasted the first delights of flattery and success. She had played the part of the Princess d’Elide at these prolonged revels, and had attracted great admiration. Her beauty, though that was far from perfect, her grace and wit, the “ en- gaging manners,” the “ charm which insinuates itself into all hearts” which her husband had attributed to her, had procured her a “real triumph.” That she shouldMOLIERE. have been carried away by the flattery and excitement was too probable. It is no business of ours to enter into the story; enough that the middle-aged husband, who adored her through all her follies, was made miserable by them,—and while never ceasing to love her, was com- pelled at last to vindicate his own honour by a kind of separation, which is of itself one of the highest proofs of tenderness and mercy which a man could show. He did not cast her out from his house, young as she was and surrounded by dangerous friends, and tradi- tions not tending towards purity,—he was too merciful to cast her forth into the depraved world where vice of this description was the rule, and virtue a rare and ex- ceptional phenomenon. He allowed her to retaim the shelter and protection of his roof. “‘ For several years they lived separate lives, although always occupying the same house, and saw each other only in the theatre.” How strange an aggravation of the inevitable sufferings of such a calamity this close neighbourhood must have been it is needless to say. The position is most touching as well as terrible. A very remarkable account of a conversation in which Molitre declared the state of his own feelings at this painful crisis is to be found in an abominable publication called ‘La Fameuse Comedienne,’ and_pro- fessing to be a biography of Armande, which has been condemned at once for its vileness and_ slanderous intention by all the critics. ‘‘ Nevertheless,” says Moland, ‘‘ the private sufferings of the poet are, in some passages, expressed with a justice of tone and a ring of truth which, after this long interval, no new nar- rative could pretend to.” And however suspicious mayHIS MERIDIAN. 105 be the quarter from which the following pathetic self- explanation is brought, it is almost unpossible not to accept the internal evidence of its truth. Moliére was walking sadly in the garden of his country house at Auteuil, according to this account, when he was joined by his friend Chapelle, his old schoolfellow and intimate associate of years. Chapelle, finding his friend more troubled than usual, asked what was the matter; to which Moliere replied sadly,—“ ashamed of showing so little fortitude in respect to a misfortune so fashionable,”— that it was the conduct of his wife and the state of the relations between them which distressed him. Chapelle, like a true man of the world, rallied his friend upon his weakness, and expressed his astonishment that a man like Moliere, “‘ who had painted so well the weakness of others,” should thus fail to himself,—with many other arguments likely enough to come from the lips of a man of fashion in the time of Louis Quatorze. The inex- pressible melancholy, shame, and tenderness, the pity and sad toleration of what fellows, will go to the reader’s heart :— “ Moleére, who had listened quietly enough, here inter- rupted his friend to ask him if he had ever been in love. ‘Yes,’ said Chapelle, ‘as much as a man of good sense ought to be; but I should never have made difficulties about any- thing that my honour required of me, and I blush to find you so undecided.’ ‘I see that you have never yet loved, said Moliére ; ‘you have taken the appearance of love for love itself. . . . To answer you concerning the perfect knowledge of the heart of man which you say I possess by the portraits which I exhibit every day, I allow that I have studied as much as | could its weakness ; but if my knowledge has taught me that some fly from the danger, my {LER oRcanaieamie eee eee Cero eee De Fo eee et 106 MOLIERE, experience shows that it is impossible to avoid it alto- gether. I judge by myself. I was born with so much inclination towards tenderness, that finding it impossible to overcome the disposition, . . . I endeavoured to make myself as happy in loving as may be possible to a sensi- tive heart. . . . I determined that the innocence of my choice should secure my happiness. I took my wife, so to speak, from the cradle ; I brought her up with care. - . . I persuaded myself that I could inspire her with sentiments which time should not destroy, and I neglected nothing to attain this end. As she was still very young when I married her, I saw no evil inclinations in her, and I believed myself a little less unfortunate than most of those who come under similar engagements. Neither did I give up my cares after marriage; but I found so much indifference in her that I began to perceive that all my precautions had been useless, and that the feeling she had for me was very far from that which I had desired to make me happy. - . . I then took the resolution to live with her like an honest man who has a coquette for his wife, and is con- vinced, whatever may be said, that his reputation does not depend upon the bad conduct of his wife. But I had the pain of seeing that a person without great beauty, who owes the little wit she has to the education which I gave her, was able in a moment to destroy all my philosophy. Her pres- ence made me forget all my resolutions, and the first words she said in her own defence left me so convinced that my suspicions were without foundation, that I begved her pardon for having been so credulous. However, my kindness has had no effect upon her, JI determined then to live with her as if she were not my wife ; but if you knew what I suffer you would pity me. My passion has risen to such a height that it goes the length of entering with sympathy even into lier concerns ; and when I consider how impossible it is for me to overcome my love for her, I say to myself that she may have the same difficulty in subduing her inclinations, and I feel accordingly more disposed to pity her than to blame her. You will tell me that to love in this way isHIS MERIDIAN. 107 folly ; but for my part I believe there is only one kind of love, and that those who have not experienced feelings like these have never truly loved. Everything is connected with her in my heart. My mind is so full of her that in her absence nothing pleases me. When I see her, my emotion, and those sentiments which one ean feel but cannot express, take away from me all power of thought. I have no eye for her faults, but only for that which is excellent in hero Ts not this the last degree of folly ? and do you not wonder that all the reason I have serves only to make me aware of my Weakness without giving me the power to triumph over it ?’” After listening to the heart-rending avowal of the poet’s poor attempt at philosophy, Moliére’s friend, confounded by an anguish beyond his conception, goes away saddened and silenced, incapable of further levity ; and this glimpse into a heart wrung and bleeding is as touching as anything we know in liter- ature. If it was not Molitre who spoke, it must have been nothing less than genius which put such words into his lips. This was the condition of mind which produced the ‘Misanthrope,’ the last and most interest- ing of the three great works which make this portior of his life—its crown of pain and passion—so remark- able. ‘‘Tartuffe’ was written in 1664, the ‘Festin de Pierre’ in 1665, and the ‘ Misanthrope’ in 1666. Save Shakespeare, we know no writer of modern times who has produced anything which can be placed beside these works, so closely following each other, and Moliere does not reach the height of Shakespeare. Yet it is only with the greatest dramatic poet of the modern world that we can compare him in this full flower and climax of his genius. The ‘Misanthrope’ stands by itself among Moliére’sSE DIES CU Saline ea Po asap ese pe PN EIS i Sea abby con Fs? ren res tres anny eT ee i 108 MOLIERE. productions. In all the others, the chief personage of the piece is invariably the object of satire, the chief point of attack, the criminal or ludicrous figure which it is his purpose to hold up to our derision, scorn, or hatred, exhibiting it in its different aspects by all manner of lightning-gleams or comic illumina- tions. Both the odious Tartuffe and the splendid Juan occupy this position ;—our sympathy is never in- vited for them. If the courage and magnificent reck- lessness of the latter sometimes attract us in spite of ourselves, it is in spite of the author too, who has no desire to recommend his desperate hero to us. They are so placed before us that their vices may be indisputable, that no illusion may be possible, that we may perceive from the beginning how false is the cloak of gloomy virtue, and how equally false the more dazzling mantle of pleasure, which the betrayer of woman, the scorner of man, the scoffer at God, wears so jauntily. But the Misanthrope is a sad and noble figure of heroic mould, claiming all our sympathies. He is no vulgar man-hater, no disbelever in humanity, no natural cynic, taking a pleasure in bitterness, but one who hates only out of the a man who fervour of indignant and wounded love feels all the foundations of the earth sapped around him by universal falsehood, and who for this reason has lost all pleasure in his life. Alceste has been compared with much justice to Hamlet, whom he does not equal in grandeur of conception, but whom he exceeds in fiery force of suffermg and bitterness of personal anguish. The world in which the one is driven wild by all the little hes of society and the great hes of human misrule, culmi- nating in the falseness of the woman which gives a doubleHIS MERIDIAN, 109 sting to every other deception, is smaller, pettier, and less noble than that vast sphere of heaven and earth in which the other stands and gazes at the ruin round him with a sense of failure and confusion too greatly tragic to make passion possible, or human love any more than one of the flowers crushed in the rending of the earthquake and the awful indifference of the skies. The eyes of Alceste are not enlightened by the exceptional horror of a great crime, but by the common wrongs of every day, the stings of individual treachery ; and he is consequently more angry, more keenly and person- ally wounded, and far more bitter than Hamlet, labour- ing with the great misery of the universe, is capable of being. The contemplative passion which makes it such 1 cursed spite to be born to set things right in such a world, is very different from the angry despair which can find a refuge in the desert—in separation from the mis- erable race, which to Hamlet has still a thousand claims ot pity and interest, of awed and saddened love. But yet Alceste in his keen personal pangs, in his bitter mdignation and scorn, in the relentings that make him still capable of being deceived, is perhaps the only ver- sion of Hamlet possible to the genius whose world was Paris. He holds the place in that brilliant and bustling, depraved and artificial scene—amid its picturesque and crowded streets, its eager and restless multitudes, its epigrams, its scandals, its wisdom and wit—which the other does in the world. Shakespeare was no more Hamlet than he was Othello or Lear; but Moliére, if not in all points Alceste, breathes all his soul of pro- found and personal suffering into his hero, When the veil is lifted and we see the sad and passionate eyesa ou Gre icr 110 MOLIERE. of the actor-dramatist looking out under the curls of the courtly Misanthrope upon the cruel coquetries and petulant graces of the Céimene who was Armande, the junction of the true and the fictitious is too keen even for that painful pleasure which is in tragedy. Still as we read we seem to be not reading but looking on, —‘‘assisting,” as the French say, at a scene of living anguish. The two who played these parts were hus- band and wife living in the same house, bearing the same name, yet never meeting except upon the stage, where he was the outraged and derided lover, and she the false and heartless mistress. The great and tragic “comedy ” leaves the region of art and comes into that of life when we realise the personages in it. Never before or since, so far as we are aware, has such a com- bination taken place in literature; and the reader who turns to the ‘ Misanthrope’ with that exposition of its author’s personal feelings which we have quoted in his hand, can scarcely fail to have his heart wrung with a sympathy going quite beyond the superficial emotion which attends fictitious distresses. Molitre in the gar- den at Auteuil, sadly walking amid the formal parterres, answering to the half-mocking friendliness of his visitor, who had loved too after his fashion, but “no more than reason,” as much “ as aman of common-sense ought to love,” in the following words: “TI believe there is but one kind of love, and that those have never truly loved who have not felt like this,”—is the greatest of all com- mentators upon his own most tragic work. After having thus given an account of the origin of the three great plays, we will now do what we can to place them before the reader.CHAPTER V. THE THREE GREAT COMEDIES, REFERENCE has been already made to the struggle which Moliére had to go through on account of ‘ Tartuffe.’ The first three Acts at least, if not the whole of the play, were written in May 1664, but it was not until 1669 that, with the sanction of the king and law, it was openly represented in Paris. The various chances of its fate between whiles are almost amusing to trace now, though evidently they were far from amusing to the author, whose determined obstinacy in respect to this play con- trasts strongly with his ready acceptance of the popular verdict upon its successor. After what we may call the private success which it attained when read by the dramatist in all the most distinguished houses in Paris, if was apparently laid aside perforce until 1667, when, in consequence of the war in Flanders, Paris was deserted completely by the great world; and all eyes being directed to the seat of war, and the public mind apparently too much occupied by the Grand Monarque’s victories to take any violent notice of a theatrical performance, Moliere attempted a stolen march upon his enemies, and suddenly produced his favourite play with various smallPMN T LID sie dhe RIS wae nee Fe 7 pnceneah alge ee eee Pienanpanmsmuiinnsirs cl si, 2 MOLIERE. ad changes, calling it the ‘Impostor,’ and changing the name of the chief personage from Tartuffe to Panulphe,— a simple artifice which has a certain schoolboy innocence about it. But the devotees who felt themselves attacked were not to be taken by surprise. Their watchfulness had never relaxed, and the very morning after this semi- clandestine representation, all the paraphernalia of the Jaw was set in motion, and the repetition of the play was at once forbidden. The reader will recollect that the king, though forbidding the public production of ‘Tartuffe,’ had permitted it to be played privately before him in the autumn of the year in which it was written ; and the year after, by way of softening his refusal to remove this prohibition, he had given a public proof of his undiminished regard for Moliére by changing the title of his troupe from that of the Comédiens de Mon- sieur to that of the Comédiens du Rot, thus taking them under his own special protection. Encouraged no doubt by this evidence of the king’s favour, and moved by annoy- ance and disgust at his renewed failure, Molitre, upon this second check, took the daring step of sending two members of the troupe after Louis to his camp under the walls of Lille, to procure if possible his authoritative interference. “Tt is very certain, sire,” he wrote, with a querulous half- threat, which is sufficiently strange in the circumstances, and which reminds us of the obstinacy of a spoiled child determined to have its will, “that it 1s needless to ex- pect me to make comedies if the Tartufies are to have the advantage.” Whether or not this petulant menace had any effect upon the king, it is impossible to say. He received La Thorillitre and La Grange very eraciously, but gave them an evasive “rswer, and Moliére did notTHE THREE GREAT COMEDIES. 13 venture again to reproduce ‘ Tartuffe.’ Very shortly after, he himself withdrew for several months from the stage, —either out of bad health or irritated temper, it is not known which. Moland conjectures that it was the latter, and quotes a striking passage from the new play of ‘ Am- phitryon’ (written about this time, but not calling for very special notice), which he describes as at once “a com- plaint and a confessic mn,” in which the dramatist speaks somewhat: bitterly of the pains of servitude, which are greater in the houses of the great than in those of the small, and complains that twenty years of assiduous service ‘is treated as nothing.” He had, however, full time to recover from his Ul-humour, if ill-humour it was ; and his perseverance was at last rewarded. It seems strange that the opposition to this, one of the greatest, if not the very greatest, of Molicre’s works, should have been so inveterate,—since religion itself was in no manner attacked, but only that false semblance of religion and mock sanctity which has made the name of Lartutfe ' a byword in all Europe. Hypocrisy, whether in religious or in other matters, is unfortunately so much a vice of all ages and countries, and has been so often held up to execration, that it would 1 Moliére always wrote the word with two f’s, but it should pro- perly be written with one f. The name is derived from a character of Lippi’s, “ Tartufo.” It is the contraction of Tartufolo, a truffle —though what connection there is between truffles and hypocrisy it is hard to say. The word has passed in the French language into a synonym for a hypocrite, especially in matters of religion. ‘There is another etymology suggested hy M. P. Chasles —namely, from truffer, a word derived from low Latin, signifying to “deceive -” ira-truffar, to carry such deception to excess ; then the transposition of the 7 and a would give tartrugur. The name Trufaldin in the ‘ Htourdi’ may possibly have some connection with this. F.C.—VIL HTae LET Se eae Diss eT 114 MOLIERE. not be difficult to find works that might have served as models to Molitre if he had required them for the deli- neation of this celebrated character. A tragi-comedy of Scarron, entitled ‘The Hypocrites,’ has so many features of resemblance with the ‘Tartuffe’ that it may well have been consulted by our author. Molitre is supposed, ughtly or wrongly, to have had in his eye when drawing the principal character of the play, a certain Abbé de Roquette who became afterwards Bishop of Autun; and one famous scene is said to have been suggested by an incident that actually did take place at Court. Molidre’s first public assailant on this subject seems to have been the Curé of St Barthélemy, by name Pierre Roulds or Rouillé, who in a pamphlet entitled ‘Le roi glorieux au monde,’ after indulging in the most shamelessly fulsome laudation of his very Christian Majesty Louis XIV., pro- ceeds to talk of Moliére’s work in the following terms: ‘‘A man, or rather a demon clad in human flesh, and dressed as a man, a more confirmedly impious libertine than ever existed in former ages, had been wicked and abominable enough to produce from out of his diaboli- cal intelligence a play all ready to be made publi, by being put upon the stage, to the derision of the whole Church, and in contempt of the most sacred character and most divine function, in contempt of all that is most holy in the Church.” The scene of ‘Tartuffe’ is laid in one of those house- holds which, notwithstanding their wealth and the references made in their story to the Court and fashion- able life, are essentially bowrgeozs, and in which a brisk and bustling servante—here called Dorine— acts inva- riably as factotum. Orgon, the master of the house,THE THREE GLEAT COMEDIES. PRS husband of Elmire and father by a former marriage of Damis and Mariane, has been go duped by the sancti- monious behaviour of an unknown adventurer, Le Tar- tuffe, that he has admitted him into his intimacy, and made him, as it were, the moral and general controller of his whole household, much to the disgust of his wife, son, and daughter, and his sensible brother-in-law Cléante, though he is backed up by his cld mother Madame Pernelle. He even wishes to marry his daugh- ter Mariane (though her affections are already engaged to Valére) to Tartufte, who, however, has other ideas in his head, and has conceived no less a villany than the seduction of Elmire, the wife of his friend and bene- factor. We are first introduced to the family in the absence of the father, and are left in no doubt as to their senti- ments in respect to the hypocrite. But the first remark- able, and perhaps the only purely comic, scene in the play, occurs at Orgon’s return. “Has all gone well during my two days’ absence?” he asks. “My mis- tress,” answers Dorine, “had a great deal of fever and a bad headache the first- evening, and could eat ) nothing : ”— “Org. And Tartuffe ? Dor. He supped alone in her presence, and very devoutly devoured two partridges with half a hashed leg of mutton. Org. Poor man !” Dorine tells him that his wife had at last consented to listen to their suggestions, and be bled :— “Org. And Tartuffe ? Dor. He took courage like a man, and fortifying his soulSPLINT LED St 58 EDIE SOS Sp nee tee neat ye eee tere Snr rte ed 116 MOLIERE. against all evils, to make up for the blood which my mistress had lost, he drank, for his breakfast, four good beakers of wine. . Org. Poor man!” In the next scene this foolish old dupe gives an ac- count of his friend’s excellences as follows: “ He is a man—ah,” he cries, language failing him—‘“a man, im chon “Orgon. Ah! if you had but met him as I did, You would have felt the self-same friendship for him. Each day with gentlest looks he came to church, And near me placed himself upon his knees, Attracting wondering looks from all the crowd 3y the great fervour of his prayers to Heaven. Sometimes he sighed, sometimes threw up his eyes, Then, stooping humbly, kissed the sacred earth. When I went out, he went before me quick To offer holy water at the door ; And when his servant (who in all things strove To be the lowly copy of his master) Informed me of his poverty and needs, I made him presents, but with modest zeal He pressed the half of all I gave him back. ‘Tt 1s too much, he said; ‘half is too much ; ~ Molitre seems to have owed this expression, now so celebrated, of ‘¢Le pauvre homme,” to the following incident: One evening during the campaign of 1662, Louis XIV., about to sit down to table, ad- vised Péréfixe, Bishop of Rhodez, his former tutor, to do the same. It being a fast-day, the prelate withdrew, saying that he had but a light collation to make. As the answer raised a smile on the face of the bystanders, the king asked the reason, and was told by some one pres- ent that he might make himself quite easy on that score; and the same person then gave the king a detailed account of the prelate’s dinner. As each dish, more recherché than its predecessor, was named, the king exclaimed, ‘‘ Le pauvre homme!” with a varied intonation of voice.THE THREE GREAT COMEDIES. 117 Lam not worthy of your charity.’ When I refused to take it back, the poor He shared it with, before my very eyes. At last, Heaven gave me grace to bring him here Into my house, where all things since have prospered, All he reproves, and even in my wife Takes for my honour interest extreme, Keeping me warned of each admiring look; Six times more jealous than myself he proves; Nor could you dream how high his ardour swells, The smallest bagatelle he counts a crime, And a mere nothing troubles his pure mind; So that the other day he blamed himself For catching of a flea in time of prayer, And with unseemly anger slaying it.” It is not till the third act that Tartuffe himself ap- pears. His first entrance is worthy of his character ; he turns to his servant Laurent and bids him “Put away my hair-shirt and scourge, and pray to Heaven to shed its ight upon me. If any one asks for me, say that I am gone to share with poor prisoners the alms that have been bestowed upon me.” The scene which follows with Elmire reveals the hypocrite’s abominable designs upon his benefactor’s wife. He makes use of all his casuistry to prove to her that the love of heaven does not forbid the love of one in whom Heaven’s beauties are reflected, and repre- sents to her that to give herself to him would be less dangerous than to listen to a young gallant whose indis- cretion might betray them. This is overheard by Damis, who bursts in, and immediately reports to Orgon—who follows him into the room all that has passed. Orgon stands thunder-struck ; but Tartuffe is equal to the occa-cil enanyenmanremnpnnnpibira Kimura, Weis Pena ee 118 MOLIERE, sion. ‘Yes, my brother,” he says, ‘‘I am a sinner, full of iniquity, and Heaven has chosen this way of punishing me. Drive me out of your house; I deserve no better. Yes, my dear son,” he adds, turning to Damis, “ speak ! call me a traitor, a homicide, a thief. I will not contra- dict you. I will accept this shame on my knees, as due to the sins of my life.” These tactics are successful. Orgon, completely duped, throws himself on his knees before Tartuffe to implore his pardon for having, even for one moment, doubted of his sanctity, and drives his son indignantly from his presence, cutting him off with his curse. When Damis has gone, Tartuffe begs the in- censed father to pardon him; and here occurs a line which was condemned by Moliere’s enemies as being a sacrilegious introduction of a scriptural phrase into a dramatic performance — ‘OQ Heaven, pardon him as I pardon him!” This failure of justice leads to the climax of the play, a scene which it is difficult to describe, and still more to represent on the stage, and which the spectator can scarcely witness without a feeling of uneasiness. In order to prove the unworthiness of the favourite, Elmire resorts to the desperate expedient of seeking another interview with Tartuffe, of which her husband is the concealed witness, and which puts Tartuffe’s intentions beyond doubt. The hypocrite takes everything upon himself. ‘It is true,” he says, “ Heaven forbids certain satisfactions, but arrangements can always be made; the evil of the action is rectified by the purity of the intention.” Orgon, however, is man enough to vindi- cate his honour, and the play ends with the complete exposure and discomfiture of the impostor.THE THREE GREAT COMEDIES. 119 The ‘Festin de Pierre’ was, as has been said, the immediate successor of ‘Tartuffe.” External circum- stances had brought the legend upon which this play is founded under the consideration of the dramatist. The subject. seems to have caught the fancy of the time, and was being produced in different versions in all the theatres of Paris; and we may easily suppose with what vivid satisfaction Molitre took advantage of the possibility of thus striking a counter-blow to that by which he had already roused so much opposition. The picture of the hypocrite was scarcely complete without this audacious picture of the other extreme—the bold and ostentatious atheist and profligate, to whom nothing in heaven and earth was sacred, who scoffed at authority however consti- tuted, to whom all faith was ridiculous superstition, and honour and truth mere figments of the fancy. What more subtle lesson could there be than that which shows the final arrival of both these criminals at the same wretch ed end, the gratification of their own selfish passions, in defiance of every law of God and man? The moral likeness in them is intensified by the enormous difference in all their professions and surroundings; and Tartuffe gains an additional blackness through every daring line by which Don Juan is put upon the canvas by his side. The sanctimonious hypocrite indeed becomes more odious to us when compared with the hardened and irre- claimable libertine; yet if at times, as is the case in the many versions of the same well-known story written in almost all languages, our sympathies are claimed by the undoubted bravery that tempers the utter want of morality of the hero—still his wickedness is shown in its worst light, and his well-merited punishment is so severe,i Ee wr 120 MOLIERE. that this alone, if other proofs were wanting, would suffice to show that Molitre had not intended to cast any slur upon religion in his ‘Tartuffe,’ but solely to scourge with his bitterest satire a false semblance of religion. The story had been dramatised already In Spanish, French, and Italian. The original legend would seem to have belonged to Spain, and its first ap- pearance on any stage was in a play of Molina, a Span- ish writer of the beginning of the seventeenth century. The story then passed into Italy, where it was dram- atised by Onofreo Giliberti, and represented at Naples in 1652. Thence it passed on to the French stage in 1658 in the shape of a translation by Dorimond of Giliberti’s play, and in 1665 assumed its place defi- nitely among the finest productions of genius, when Moliére took the legend in hand. The story of Don Juan’s infidelities, and of the punishment which they at last meet, is so well known in all languages as to have become hackneyed; but in no other version have we the same deep philosophy, and thorough and accurate knowledge of the world and society as then existing. The play opens with an interview between Sganarelle! the valet of Don Juan, and Gusman, the serving-man of Elvira, the Don’s latest victim, from whom, after jult- ing her as he had done so many others, he is now flying. Gusman expresses his astonishment at such conduct, and his inability to comprehend it, to which Sganarelle replies as follows :— “Tf you knew the gentleman as well as I do, you would not find it so difficult. I do not say, mind you, that he has 1 Moliere always played this part himself.THE THREE GREAT COMEDIES, 121 changed his feelines with regard to Donna Elvira; but let me ory twee r ‘ . y j tell you, between you and me, that you have in Don Juan, my Master, the most wicked man that ever trod this earth— a madman, a dog, a devil, a Turk—a heretic fe heaven, nor Saint, nor God, nor } like a mere brute-beast, a hog apalus, aring neither 10bgoblin, spending his life of Epicurus, a reoular Sardan- - You say he has contracted your mistress. A marriage wit] that’s his regular trick for cate Wholesale marrier. all a Marriage with 1 him is nothing to contract ; hing the fair sex. He is a Wife, maiden, city lady, peasant girl, Is grist that comes to hig mill; and if I were to tell you the names of all the ladies he has married in different quarters, the chapter would last til] nightfall, Heaven’s ven- Scance must surely overtake him sooner or later, and I had sooner serve the devil himself than my master,” Don Juan interrupts the dialogue, and Gusma off. Sganarelle, encouraged by his master to speak openly to him, freely expresses his disapproval of his manner of living, whereupon the libertine expresses himself as follows :— n slips “A pretty thing indeed to be tied down to one love, and in the heyday of youth to be insensible to the charms of all other beauties. Beauty charms me wherever I meet with it. Itis in vain that I have plighted my troth; my love for one charmer does not allow of my doing others in- justice. There is an indescribable pleasure to me in conquer- ing by a hundred acts of devotion the heart of a young beauty —in watching one’s progress towards victory day by day—in overcoming with sighs, tears, and transports the resistance of a young heart, which succumbs with difficulty. But when one has once obtained one’s object, one has nothing more to say, or to desire,—all the charm of passion has departed, and the easy tranquillity of such a love lulls to sleep, unless some new object comes to kindle our desires afresh, and to present to our heart the seductive attraction of a new conquest to be made. I feel within me a heart large enough to love theMEP ire UL eA ele ei ts (i EDIE OT ics or pp ego yilevp spot 122 MOLIERE. whole world; and, like Alexander, I could wish there were other worlds, in order to extend the area of my conquests.” Sganarelle continues to use the privilege accorded to him by his master, and remonstrates with him for daring to despise the warnings of Heaven; and under cover of reprehending the scandalous conduct of some supposed sinner, administers to him the following lec- ture, which we particularly recommend to our readers :— “T am not speaking to you, God forbid! You know what you are doing, and if you have no faith, at all events you have your own reasons for what you do. But there are cer- tain ne’er-do-wells in the world who are libertines without knowing why they are so; who set up for being strong-minded because they think it becomes them to be so. Now, if I had a master like one of these fellows, I would look him straight in the face and ask him plainly, How dare you trifle thus with Heaven, and are you not afraid of laughing as you do at all that is holy? Nicely it becomes you, little earth-worm, little myrmidon that you are (mind I am speaking to the supposed master I told you of)—nicely it becomes you to dare to turn into ridicule that which all men revere! Do you think that because you are a man of quality, with a curled wig, feather in your hat, gold lace on your coat, cherry-coloured ribbons (I’m not talking to you, mind, but to that other)—do you think, I say, that you are any the better man for all that, that you may do what you like, and that no one shall dare to tell you the truth? Let me, who am only your valet, tell you that Heaven punishes the impious sooner or later ; that a wretched life brings on a wretched death ; that 4 Don Juan, however, finding the lesson too personal, cuts it short, and the two worthies immediately begin to discuss a new intrigue. In the pursuit of this theTHE THREE GREAT COMEDIES. 123 profligate is nearly drowned, but being saved by a peasant, Pierrot, requites the good service by supplant- ing him in the favours of his mistress, Charlotte ; then, lest Charlotte should imagine that she has entirely monopolised his attention, he pays violent court to her friend Mathurine, and this gives rise to one of the most amusing scenes in this or any other play of Moliére’s, re- quiring, however, to be seen rather than read if it is to be thoroughly appreciated. Don Juan, with Charlotte and Mathurine hanging on either arm, gives each in turn to understand that she is the real mistress of his heart. “on J. What shall I say to you? You each affirm that I have promised to marry you. Surely each of you knows the real state of the case without it being necessary for me to give any further explanations. Why make me say the same thing over and over again? Cannot she whom I have really pro- mised to marry find that within herself which will enable her to make light of what the other says? Is there any necessity for her to trouble herself, provided I keep my pro- mise? All the speeches in the world will not mend matters, We must act, not speak ; facts are better than words, and it is by facts that I will settle your dispute ; and when I marry one of you, then it will be seen which is the real possessor of my heart. (Aside to M.) Let her think what she likes; (aside to C.) Let her flatter her own imagination ; (to WM.) I adore you ; (to C.) I am all yours ; (to M.) All faces are ugly compared with yours; (to C.) One cannot bear to look on any girl when one has once seen you. (Aloud.) I have a few orders to give, and I will be back in a quarter of an hour.” Whereupon he leaves them to be consoled by Sganar- elle, who tells them both that his master is “the hus- band of the whole human race.”MOLIERE. Seanarelle, however, though a faithful servant, has many doubts on the subject of his master’s religious scepticism, which is more appalling to his mind than profligacy. The examination to which he subjects him on this point is one of the most telling scenes in the play :— “Sgan. Can it be possible that you do not believe in heaven ? Don J. Enough of that ! Sgan. That means that youdo not. Norinhell? .. . No more in the one than in the other. Nor in an after life? [Don Juan laughs.| What on earth do you believe in, then ? Don J. I believe that two and two are four, Sganarelle, and that twice four are eight. Sgan. A pretty belief and pretty articles ot faith indeed! Your religion, from what I see, is one of arithmetic. I must confess that strange follies creep into men’s heads ; and that however much one may have studied, one is often not much the wiser. For my part, sir, I have not studied as much as you, and, thank God, no one can boast of ever having taught me anything ; but with my small amount of conimon-sense and judgment, I can see most things better than all the books in the world, and I can understand perfectly well that this world of ours is not a mushroom that has grown up in one night. I should like to ask you who made those trees there, those rocks, this earth, and that heaven up there, and if all that made itself? Look at yourself, for in- stance. There youare! Did you make yourself all alone ? Can you contemplate all the inventions with which the machinery of a man’s body is composed, without admiring the manner in which every part fits into one another. Those nerves, bones, veins, arteries, those — those — lungs, that heart, this liver, and all the other ingredients which are there, and which Oh, I say, do please interrupt me. I cannot argue without some contradiction. You are si- lent on purpose, and you let me go on speaking out of pure inalevolence.THE THREE GREAT COMEDIES. 125 Don J. I am waiting for yourr easoning to come to an end. Sgan. My reasoning is th: at, whatever you may say to the contrary, there is something acute able in man which all the wise men in the world fail to explain. Is it not marvellous to see me here, and that I should se something in my head which conceives a hundred dif erent thoughts in one moment, and makes my body do eae it pleases? I want to clap my hands, raise my arm, look upwards, stoop my head, move iy feet, go to the right, to the left, forwards, backwards, turn round— [He falls on the ground, Don J. There, now, your fine reasoning has | broken its nose ! 2 We need not dwell upon the story of the statue, the stony image of the Commander whom Don Juan had lately killed, which he bids his servant invite to supper. The fable is so familiar in many languages that it is hardly necessary to say more than that the statue nods its acceptance, and subsequently keeps its appointment by appearing at supper; that the Commander in return bids Don Juan sup with him on the morrow ; and that, when the Don, who fears neither ghost nor devil, ap- pears at the rendezvous, the statue seizes him by the hand, and amidst thunderings and flashes of lightning, the earth opens and swallows him up, en: to the dis- may of poor Sganarelle, who exclaims— “My wages, my wages! There now, every one is satisfied by his death. Offended Heaven, broken laws, dishonoured farnilies, outraged relations, women led astray, husbands driven to distraction, all the world is now satisfied. I alone am to be pitied! My wages, my wages, my wages !” After those two profound and brilliant studies of the false believer and the unbeliever, the hypocrite andae Lie et Me ee er eer) : aor is Per eR eSaa Reger ee tar 126 MOLIERE, ad sceptic, the two impersonations of evil most dangerous to humanity, we come to the climax of Moliére’s poeti- cal philosophy, the revelation of his own grieved heart and prophetic soul. ‘The Misanthrope’! Language has no better word to express the anguish of disap- pointed and angry love than that which represents the most dismal of sentiments, the hate of a human creature for humanity. This last and most terrible of passions, if it ever really exists in a human bosom, is beyond the reach of poetry; but nothing has afforded more power- ful dramatic scenes, or called forth more touching and impressive revelations of human nature, than the sweet- ness turned into gall of a noble nature, wounded on every side by falsehood and betrayal, and seeing wher- ever it turns nothing that it can build its faith upon, no solid ground among the deceptions and desertions of life. In Moliére’s hero all the lesser reliances of ordinary good faith have followed the great loss of all confidence in the being most dear to him, and Alceste is presented to us at the moment when, discovering that he loves a heartless coquette, he has also dis- covered, with a vehemence due to his sick heart and embittered fancy, the thousand petty falsehoods of or- dinary life. The principal characters in the play are Alceste, the misanthropist ; his friend Philinte, the representative of reason and common-sense ; Eliante, the emblem of wo- manly truth and virtue; Céliméne, a heartless coquette ; Oronte, a poor rhymester; Acaste, a ridiculous ‘* mar- quis” of the day; and Clitandre—the last three suitors also of Cdiméne. An additional interest is found in this greatest of all Molicre’s works in the fact alreadyTHE THREE GREAT COMEDIES, 12 2 referred to, that the parts of Alce tepeatedly played by Molitr The play opens with an interview between the mis- anthrope and his friend, in which Alceste reproaches Philinte with the indiscriminate expressions of friend- ship which he bestows upon everybody. friend! Strike me off the list!” ste and Céliméne were e himself and his wife. “T, your he cries :— “T see you heap caresses on a man, Loading with protestations, offe The passionate embrace with which you clasp him— And when I afterwards ask who he is You hardly know his name ! Your cooled affection rs, oaths, and when you part, also parts from him— In my friend’s heart I claim the foremost place— You are the friend of all the human race !” Thus tne key-note of the tragic comedy is struck at once; and when Philinte retorts by asking how it is that Alceste, with so high an ideal of truth, should pre- fer the arch-coquette Céliméne to al] other women, we are led to a deeper vein of sadness and bitter discon- tent. Alceste’s tone at once changes s, and the cause of his almost savage onslaught on polite insincerity becomes apparent. “Do not think I am blind to her faults,” he says. “TI own my weakness ; I see them all; but she has made me love her in spite of them. which rules love.” It is not reason While he is making this confes sion Oronte comes in. with just such exaggerated expressions of cffection as those which Aleects haa upbraided his friend fer making, and begs to te permitted to read them a g, an es te sonnet. “I have the jault of being a little too sincere,”128 MOLIERE. says Alceste. “That is exactly what I want,” cries the poet; but the result is, that he rushes out foaming with fury, and intent, instead of serving the misanthrope at Court, as he had offered, to do him all the harm possible. In the second act, Alceste makes the same warm re- monstrances to Céliméene which he has done to Philinte __yemonstrances still more sadly vehement as his feelings “The first who comes has access to your heart,” he says. “ How is it that Clit- andre has the happiness of pleasing you so much? Is it of ribbons, or the width of his are more deeply engaged. his long nail, or his mass German breeches? You smile on all the world; and what have I more than every one else has?” While this scene goes on, the coquette’s drawing-room orad- ually fills with a crowd of visitors, and a flutter of scandal arises. Céliméne, encouraged by the applause of the others, demolishes the character of every one whose name is mentioned, till Alceste, who has been sitting by, bursts forth upon the company. ‘The scene is brilliant, and full of bitter force. “Thrust home!” he cries; “spare no one! Yet if one of them were to cus 1 held cut and flattering salutations.” “Do not blame us -bicme the lady,” says, with the genuine instinct of a coward, one of the courtly lovers, discomfited by this appear, you would all rush to receive him with hands assault. But now Alceste’s real troubles begir. He 1s sent for by the AMaréehaua, who regulate all questions of honour —.a mysterious call Which has some connection with his insult to Oronte’s verses... He tiiei~loses his lawsuit, which costs him twenty thousand franes; and, worst of all, finds out by a letter written by Célimene to Oronte, inal bbilidedadibia abies SLT)THE THREE GREAT COMEDIES. 129 that the coquette has deceived him, and Joy es him as little as she does hi All these rivals, however, ery by the same means, Célimeéne having unwisely confided her opinion of each to the other and the lady is thus caught ina trap furious reproaches of 0) S Yivals. make the same discov 2 , and exposed to the 1¢ after another, all now as bitter as they were formerly flattering. At last the injured gallants withdraw, leaving her with Alceste, the most deeply injured of all. And now a fleeting impression ig made upon the heart of Celiméne herself. She bids her “wounded lover “Reproach me as you please : I have done wrong— I do not hide it ; and my heart confused Offers to you no vain a Of all the others J despise the rage, But your resentment is too re I know how cull 7 PXy poiogy : asonable, ty I must seem to you— How all combines to prove I have betrayed Your faith, and given you too just cause for hate,— Hate me, then—I consent. ALCESTE. Ah, can I, traitress }— Can I thus vanquish all past tenderness ? And howsoever ardently I long To hate you, will my heart do’t and obey me ? (To ExLIanvE and PHILINTE,) You see how far unworthy passion goes: You are the Witnesses, how weak I am; But yet, to say the truth, you know not all, For further depths remain, and you shall see How vain it is to call us Wise, and how Each man at heart, being man, is always fool. F.C.—VI. ICe eee rw fet nH Rea ae seer Ps MOLIERE. (To C4&LIMENE.) Yes, false one, yes, I can forget your faults, Excuse your errors in my inmost soul, Cover them with the gentle names of weakness, Vice of the age which has betrayed your youth ; If only with your heart you will consent To flee the world with me, to follow now Into the wilds where I have vowed to live 3 Thus only can you, in the eyes of men, Repair the evils you have done, and thus After those scandals which great hearts abhor I yet may be allowed to love you still. CKLIMENE. What, I! renounce the world ere I am old- Go and be buried in your wilderness ! ALCESTE. If your soul answer mine, what want we more? Is not my love enough for your content? CKLIMENE. At twenty solitude is terrible. No; I have not a soul so great, so strong, As to content myself with such a fate. But if my hand would satisfy your wish, ? And marriage ‘¢ No,” cries Alceste, convinced at last of his folly. ‘This refusal has done more than all the rest. Since you are not able to find all in me as I to find all in you, I refuse, and free myself from your unworthy chains. May you be happy,” he adds, turning to his sympathetic friends; “for me, betrayed on all sides, overwhelmed with injustice, I must escape from this gulf, and in some distant part of the earth find a shelter where a man of honour may be free to live.”CEAPDER WE THE END OF HIS LIFE, THE success of the ‘Festin de Pierre’ and the ‘Misan thrope,’ though these plays are now universally con- sidered as Moliere’s highest works, was not so consider- able as to encourage him in this loftier vein. ‘ Tartuffe,’ indeed, which is usually conjoined with them, had a brilliant and triumphant success ; but it is very probable that, as was said by his enemies at the time, something of this was due to the fact that it had been so long for- bidden, and had been the occasion of so severe and sus- tained a combat between the author and the authorities. A play which the king himself had forbidden in public, but enjoyed in private, which Bourdaloue and Bossuet had both attacked from the pulpit, and which now, at last, after innumerable struggles, had reached the ea of the public, naturally attracted interest everywhere. The crowd thronged about the doors of the theatre. “Cloaks and sides were both torn,” says the annalist of the time. On the other hand, that same crowd had shown no desire to hear the ‘Misanthrope.’. “One would think one was listening to a preacher,” they said,yD AEF s hee FP (2 MOE DIES OT el nie p o ret ites Fete Ee er eee Se. bt Lo en te ¥ 132 MOLIERE. with undisguised yawns. And though many of Molicre’s literary opponents are said to have done justice to this great work, the very apologetic character of their praises shows a oe oD ainst what kina of popular indifference they had to contend. ‘ Molitre could not have written a bad piece,” Racine said, though he had but lately quarrelled with and separated himself from the comedian; and this opinion could only have been expressed in reply to uncompromising censure. We cannot but acknowledge, high as is our estimate of this work, that the ‘ Misan- thrope’ reads better than it acts; and it is evident that those dramas in which philosophy, reason, or passion came in, taking the place of laughter, fell somewhat flat upon Paris. It does not seem apparent that either this or the ‘ Festin de Pierre’ was ever represented at Court ; and if so, it is a curious omission. Thus it would appear that the dramatist had lhttle encouragement to rise into the higher elevations of his art. His king and his countrymen liked him better when he made them laugh, and all the better if some one was galled by the laughter and made to wince. Accordingly, Moliere plunged into full swing of brilliant malice and merry- making, after this wonderful serious chapter in his life. The melancholy countenance of Alceste disappears, and all the anxious compunctions of that Sganarelle who had been the voice of homely wisdom, reason, and thought to his brillant master, Don Juan; a Sgan- arelle turned rustic, and in consequence a httle broader, more primitive, in his shrewd folly and burly wit, steps upon the stage with his bundle ef fagots and the twinkle in his eyes, and ‘lo! all graver ideas dispers- ing like the mists, it is the genial uproar and fun of theTHE END OF HIS LIFR, 133 ‘Meédecin malgré lui,’ strangest contrast to the ‘Misan- thro 2 audacious malice of the ‘ Amour Médde- cin,’ which flash back again upon the familiar stage, evi- dently to the heartfelt relief of both players and audi- ence. To make themselves up into an impudent but amusing caricature of the Court doctors s, and to wag their heads together in absurd consultation, must have been more congenial to the troupe than to declaim the fine speeches of Philinte and Alceste ; and Moliére, too, seems to have thrown himself with renewed spirit into this crusade against the physicians of the time. Whether it was simply the ridiculous aspect of their semi-science that struck him—or whether his contempt was heightened by the painful sense that, while his own health was fail- ing daily, these solemn quacks had no real help to give —it would be difficult to say; but the attack upon them has in it all the gaiety and vigour of a fresh start. He launches his airows at them with positive pleasure in the effect produced, yet with a persistent enmity which seems to imply some real root of grievance. Why was the world to reverence these deadly craftsmen who could do nothing for a man except torture and kill him? Any disguised lover—nay, any disguised clown—could play the part and defy detection. Their solemn gestures, their assumption of infallibility, their utter callousness and ignorance, in- spired him with laughter, scornful, extravagant, now and then sharp with a touch of passion, but in every case genuine, and full of the large spontaneousness of true mirth. After all, the malice of the picture is rather in the French than the English sense of the word—laughing spite and amusement, rather than calculating ill-will. The ‘Amour Médecin,’ which was the opening of theDo eee ee RE, i, 3h aa Dis ther Nt Biro) Ui Babee Beles ey x e - Ab ME oe ee or 134 MOLIERE. attack, is an audacious caricature, which for us has, of course, lost all its personality, but which at the time of its production was as recognisable as a cartoon in ‘Punch,’ and much more offensive. Then came the ‘Médecin maleré lui,’ which is less satire than broad fun and frolic ; and then the pitiful case of ‘ Monsieur de Pourceaugnac,’ in which a poor gentleman from the an honest, perplexed provincial—is driven half country mad by a wicked conspiracy, of which a crowd of doctors are the tools. The ‘Malade Imaginaire,’ which was the last of Mohere’s productions, takes up again the favourite subject. No doubt the doctors afforded a more than usually evident opening for satire, and that they had specially exposed themselves to it in Molere’s time seems apparent from graver records. ‘The four individuals whom he specially caricatures in the ‘Amour Médecin’ had been the means, according to the opinion of the popu- lace, expressed with as much wit and still more frank- ness than that of Moliere, of “delivering France from the Cardinal.” They had met in consultation around the deathbed of Mazarin, whom one declared to be dying of disease of the liver, another of the lungs, a third of the kidneys, and a fourth of mesenteric abscess. So universal was the feeling against them, that at the other extremity of the social scale Louis XIV. himself, on being appealed to against the assailant of the physicians, far from receiving the complaint as he had done the former remonstrances on the subject of the hypocrite, answered with some wit, “The doctors make us weep so often, that they may.well now and then give us occasion for a laugh.” After this amusing onslaught, another great comedy—THE END OF HIS LIFE. one ot Molicre’s greatest indeed, but in a different kind from the serious works already discussed—was placed upon the stage. This was in 1668, two years after the ‘Misanthrope.’ The ‘ Avare’ might almost be taken as a pendant to ‘ Tartuffe,’ so thoroughly does the satire pene- trate the vice it assails; but it is as brilliantly comic as the other is gloomy. The miser, though not a feature is spared—though he is set before us in full relief, pitiless, heartless, the impersonation of grasping and cruel parsi- mony, as the hypocrite was the impersonation of false religion and secret vice—has nothing gloomy about him, but in his worst moments amuses rather than disgusts the reader. His sayings have become proverbial. The cunning folly of his economies, the bewildered stupidity which is caused by the absorption of his mind in one idea, and the violent despair into which the supposed loss of his treasure throws him, are all as distinctly painted as if the picture had been of the most serious and tragic kind; but, on the contrary, it is suffused with so broad a light of humour, the laughter in it is so honest and full, that no pain can ever come from it,—nothing like the sting of suffering and deception which runs through and throuch the other. From whatsoever reason, the genius of Moliére had recovered its elasticity, and even a subject containing so many tragic elements cannot beguile it longer from the natural mirth and delightful humour which are its life and breath. Thus, while we cannot take advantage even of the pretty young people who move about in the background of the piece which ‘Tartuffe’? overshadows with his sombre presence, the corresponding groups in the ‘Avare’ are thrown up and made more charming in all their grace of costume,ib io OT ocr eeteet utc tT eee 136 MOLIERE. their pretty sentiment and still prettier quarrels, by the ludicrous form of the principal figure, so mean, so im- passioned, so shrewd, cunning, absurd, and laughable. There are none of Moliére’s plays which may be taken more completely as typical of his genius; for no one can doubt its power, while its mirth is delightful, the satire scathing, yet entirely free of bitterness, and the very passion of the vice so genuine yet so ludicrous, that the thrill of wholesome terror with which we perceive to what length of sordid misery this evil may go, 1s softened by the inextinguishable laughter with which we contemplate the miser, arresting himself and everybody round him, weeping, blaspheming, appealing to heaven and earth, inconsolable for the loss of his dear money- box, for the theft of which he would fain hang the whole human race. When, with his whole soul absorbed in this bereavement, he is told that it is the beautiful eyes of the daughter for whom he cares nothing which have inflamed the lover who has stolen her, and not the gold, his bewildered exclamation, “The beautiful eyes of my money-box!” ‘Les beaux yeux de ma cassette!” has furnished the world with one of its most universally understood proverbs; and many have heard of the miser who stole the oats from his own horses, who have little ac- quaintance enough either with Harpagon or with Molitre. In this, as in ‘ Tartuffe,’ though there are indications of an intention to identify Harpagon with one of the country nobility, it is still something much more like the life of the rich bourgeois, the life with which he was himself most conversant, that Molitre assails—a life of wealth without splendour, without dignity, o1 any of the charms of rank: though it is difficult toTHE END OF HIS LIFE. 137 ov understand what Harpagon could want with an inten- dant in such a position. The “servante ” who figures so largely in the somewhat grim domestic interior is, how- ever, here made into something like a housel