He was disappointments incidental to the situation of a manager. sensitively alive to the mispronunciation of his own verses; and the anecdote which M. Taschereau gives us as to his extreme agony on this subject, induces us to give credit to what is told of his impatience at any occasional want of punctuality, or accidental derangement of the business of the scene. But Molière's greatest source of unhappiness arose from his marriage; and upon this subject, the license of his younger years became the means of subjecting him to the most cruel calumnies in his more advanced life. During the time that Molière was travelling about in the provinces, he formed a connection with an actress of his company, named Madelaine Bejart. This lady had been previously a favourite of the Count de Modene, by whom, in 1638, she had borne a daughter, named Françoise, who is supposed to have died soon afterwards. After the amour of Madelaine Bejart and Molière had terminated, our author, in 1661, married another Bejart, whose Christian name was Armande, and who, according to M. Taschereau, was the sister of his mistress Madelaine. In this connection there is something disgusting, and which the laws of some countries even regard as criminal. But a much more foul accusation was framed upon it. One Montfleuri, the favourite performer of a troop of comedians, called of "l'Hotel du Bourgogne," who were the rivals of that of Molière, extracted out of the above circumstance a most horrible and unnatural accusation, which he had the audacity to put into the form of a petition to his Majesty. According to this atrocious libel, Armande Bejart was not the sister of Moliere's former mistress Madelaine, but her daughter, and the fruits of her communication with Molière himself; thus confusing her with Françoise, daughter of the Count de Modene, the fact of whose birth seemed to give some credit to the horrible assertion. Such is the account, given by M. Taschereau, of the real family of Molière's wife. According to another hypothesis, detailed in three letters published as a supplement to the last edition of Molière's works, Armande Bejart was not the sister, but actually the daughter of Madelaine Bejart and of the Count de Modene. Under this supposition, Molière married the child of his former mistress. The subject is disgusting, and the evidence on either side very imperfect. Undoubtedly it underwent some examination at the time; for the King refused all credit to the odious imputation of Montfleuri, and, as we elsewhere hinted, showed his total incredulity on the subject, by condescending, along with the Duchess of Orleans, to stand godfather to Molière's first child—the best refutation, certainly, which could be given to the calumny. But this marriage was in every respect imprudent and inauspicious, and laid the foundation of his principal misfortunes. His wife was gay, beautiful, and coquettish in the extreme, yet he was not able to forbear loving her with an attachment which was neither deserved nor returned. She disgraced him repeatedly by her intrigues during his lifetime, and her scandalous adventures after his death were dishonourable to his memory. The honest men whom his satire had ridiculed on account of domestic distresses of the same nature, had no doubt some feeling of internal satisfaction, when they found that the author of the "Cocu Imaginaire" shared the same apprehensions with his hero, without having the slighest reason to doubt, in his own instance, of their being founded in reality. Leaving the consideration of his private life, chequered as it was by favourable and painful circumstances, we willingly take some general view of the character of Molière as an author, in which we feel it our duty to vindicate for him the very highest place of any who has ever distinguished himself in his department of literature. His natural disposition, his personal habits, his vivacity as a Frenchman, the depth of his knowledge of human nature, his command of a language eminent above all others for the power of expressing ludicrous images and ideas, raise him to the highest point of eminence amongst the authors of his own country and class, and assure him an easy superiority over those of every other country. Our countrymen will perhaps ask, if we have forgotten the inimitable comic powers of our own Shakespeare. The sense of humour displayed by that extraordinary man is perhaps as remarkable as his powers of searching the human bosom for other and deeper purposes. But if Johnson has rightly defined comedy to be "a dramatic representation of the lighter faults of mankind, with a view to make folly and vice ridiculous," it would be difficult to show that Shakespeare has dedicated to such purposes more than occasional and scattered scenes, dispersed through his numerous dramas. The "Merry Wives of Windsor " is perhaps the piece most resembling a regular comedy, yet the poetry with which it abounds is of a tone, which soars, in many respects, beyond its sphere. In most of his other compositions, his comic humour is rather an ingredient of the drama, than the point to which it is emphatically and specially directed. The scenes of Falstaff are but introduced to relieve and garnish the historical chronicle which he desired to bring on the stage. In the characters of Falconbridge and Hotspur, their peculiar humour gilds the stern features of high and lofty chivalry: in the "Tempest," the comic touches shine upon and soften the extravagance of beautiful poetry, and romantic fiction. These plays may be something higher and better, but they are not comedies dedicated to expose the vices and follies of mankind, though containing in them much that tends to that purpose. It must also be remembered, that the manners in Shakespeare (so far as his comedy depends on them) are so antiquated, that but for the deep and universal admiration with which England regards her immortal bard, and the pious care with which his works have been explained and commented upon, the follies arising out of the fashions of his time would be entirely obsolete. We enjoy such characters as Don Armado, and even Malvolio, as we would do the pictures of Vandyke in a gallery; not that they resemble in their exterior anything we have ever seen or could have imagined, until the excellence of the painter presented them before us, and made us own that they must have been drawn from originals, now forgotten. The scenes of Molière, however, are painted from subjects with which our own times are acquainted; they represent follies of a former date indeed, but which have their resemblances in the present day. Some old-fashioned habits being allowed for, the personages of his drama resemble the present generation as much as our grandmothers' portraits, but for hoop petticoats and commodes, resemble their descendants of the present generation. Our physicians no longer wear robes of office, or ride upon mules, but we cannot flatter ourselves that the march of intellect, as the cant phrase goes, has exploded either the "Malade Imaginaire," or the race of grave deceivers who fattened on his folly. If, again, we look at Molière's object in all the numerous pieces which his fertile genius produced, we perceive a constant, sustained, and determined warfare against vice and folly,—sustained by means of wit and satire, without any assistance derived either from sublimity or pathos. It signified little to Molière what was the mere form which his drama assumed: whether regular comedy or comédie-ballet, whether his art worked in its regular sphere, or was pressed by fashion into the service of mummery and pantomime, its excellence was the same,-if but one phrase was uttered, that phrase was comic. Instead of sinking down to the farcical subjects which he adopted, whether by command of the king, or to sacrifice to the popular taste, Molière elevated these subjects by his treatment of them. His pen, like the hand of Midas, turned all it touched to gold; or rather, his mode of treating the most ordinary subject gave it a value such as the sculptor or engraver can confer upon clay, rock, old copper, or even cherry-stones. It is not a little praise to this great author, that he derived none of his powers of amusement from the coarse and mean sources to which the British dramatic poets had such liberal recourse. This might, and probably did, flow in part from the good taste of the poet himself, but it was also much owing to that of Louis XIV. Whatever the private conduct of that prince, of which enough may be learned from the scandalous chronicle of the times, he knew too well son métier de Roi, and what was due to his dignity in public, to make common jest with his subjects at anything offensive to good morals or decorum. Charles II., on the other hand, "A merry monarch, scandalous and poor," had been too long emancipated by his exile from all regal ceremonial, to lay his sense of humour under any restraints of delicacy. He enjoyed a broad jest, as he would have done an extra bottle of wine, without being careful about the persons who participated with him in either; and hence a personal laxity of conduct which scandalized the feelings of Evelyn, and a neglect of decency in public entertainments encouraged by the presence of a sovereign, which called down the indignation of Collier. Some comparatively trifling slips, with which the critics of the period charge Molière, form no exception to the general decorum of his writings. Looking at their general purpose and tendency, we must be convinced that there is no comic author, of ancient or modern times, who directed his satire against such a variety of vices and follies, which, if he could not altogether extirpate, he failed not at all events to drive out of the shape and form which they had assumed. The absurdities of L'Etourdi, the ridiculous jargon of the Précieuses, the silly quarrels of the lovers in the Dépit Amoureux, the absurd jealousy of husbands in L'Ecole des Maris, the varied fopperies and affectations of men of fashion in Les Fâcheux, the picture of hypocrisy in the Tartuffe, the exhibition at once of bizarre and untractable virtue and of the depravity of dissimulation in the Misanthrope, the effects of the dangers of misassorted alliances in George Dandin, of the tricks of domestics in Les Fourberies de Scapin, of the pedantic affectation of learning in Les Femmes Savantes, of the dupes who take physic and the knaves who administer it in the Malade Imaginaire,—all these, with similar aberrations, exposed and exploded by the pen of a single author, showed that Molière possessed, in a degree superior to all other men, the falcon's piercing eye to detect vice under every veil, or folly in every shape, and the talons with which to pounce upon either, as the natural prey of the satirist. No other writer of comedy ever soared through flights so many and so various. We have said that the comedy of Molière never exhibits any touch of the sublime; and from its not being attempted in those more serious pieces, as Don Garcie and Mélicerte, where a high strain of poetry might have been struck to advantage, we conceive that Molière did not possess that road to the human bosom. One passage alone strikes us as approaching to a very lofty tone. Don Juan, distinguished solely by the desperation of his courage, enters the tomb of the Commander, and ridicules the fears of his servant when he tells him that the statue has nodded in answer to the invitation delivered to him by his master's command. Don Juan delivers the same invitation in person, and the statue again bends his head. Feeling a touch of the supernatural terror to which his lofty courage refuses to give way, his sole observation is "Allons, sortons d'ici." A retreat, neither alarmed nor precipitated, is all which he will allow to the terrors of such a prodigy. In like manner, although we are informed that Molière possessed feelings of sensibility too irritable for his own happiness in private life, his writings indicate no command of the pathetic. His lovers are always gallant and witty, but never tender or ardent. This is the case, not only where the love intrigue is only a means of carrying on the business of the scene, but in Le Dépit Amoureux, where the ardour of affection might have gracefully mingled with the tracasseries of the lovers' quarrels ; and in Psyché, in which it is to be supposed the author would have introduced the passionate and pathetic, if he had possessed the power of painting it. Nor do any of his personages, in all the distresses in which the scene places them, ever make a strong impression on the feeling of the audience, who are only amused by the ludicrous situations to which the distresses give rise. The detected villainy of Tartuffe affects the feelings indeed strongly, but it is more from the gratification of honest resentment against a detected miscreant, than from any interest we take in the fortunes of the duped Orgon. Neither did Molière ornament his dramatic pieces with poetical imagery, whether descriptive or moral. His mode of writing excluded the "morning sun, and all about gilding the eastern horizon." He wrote to the understanding, and not to the fancy, and was probably aware moreover that such poetical ornaments, however elegant when under the direction of good taste, are apt to glide into the opposite extreme, and to lead to that which Molière regarded as the greatest fault in composition, an affectation of finery approaching to the language of the Précieuses Ridicules. Alceste, in Le Misanthrope, expresses the opinion of the author on this subject : Ce style figuré, dont on se fait vanité Ce n'est que jeu de mots, qu'affectation pure, Et ce n'est point ainsi que parle la nature. Le méchant gout de siècle en cela me fait peur, In what, therefore, it may be asked, consisted the excellence of this entertaining writer, whose works, as often as we have opened a volume during the composition of this slight article, we have found it impossible to lay out of our hand until we had completed a scene, however little to our immediate purpose of consulting it? If Molière did not possess, or at least has not exercised, the powers of the sublime, the pathetic, or the imaginative in poetry, from whence do his works derive their undisputed and almost universal power of charming? We reply, from their truth and from their simplicity; from the powerful and S |