countrymen such laudable horror against the appellative of the principal sufferer. Since the days of the Italian novellieri, Boccacio, Bandello, and the rest, their tales of intrigue had been imitated in the Cent Nouvelles, the Tales of the Queen of Navarre, and other works of a similar kind. In all of these collections, the seductive intrigues, which carry dishonour and desolation into the bosom of families, had been exposed by the novelist, and listened to by their hearers, the courtiers of a licentious age, as fitting subjects for jest and raillery rather than crimes imperatively demanding censure. If Molière, on the present and future occasions, lent his admirable talents to the same depraved purpose of entertaining profligates by placing their guilt in a ludicrous point of view, Fortune reserved for him a severe retaliation, of which we shall speak hereafter.

After an unsuccessful effort at a serious piece (Don Garcie de Navarre, cu Le Prince Jaloux), Molière resumed his natural bent; and in L'Ecole des Maris, presented one of his best compositions, and at once obliterated all recollection of his failure.

It was acted at Paris with unanimous applause, and again represented at the magnificent entertainment given by the superintendent of finances, Fouquet, to Louis XIV. and his splendid court. Fouquet, at once the most opulent and the most splendid man of his time, had exhausted every species of incense which could be offered to a royal idol. The beautiful Bejart, whom Molière afterwards married, appeared as a Naiad, in a shell shaped like the chariot of a sea-goddess, and delivered an elegant compliment composed by Pelisson. Le Brun painted the decorations of the scene,Le Nôtre laid out the surrounding architectural ornaments, -La Fontaine wrote verses,-Molière composed and performed parts which none but himself could have invented. All visible to the eye was mirth unbounded, wealth immeasurable, a mighty king received the homage of a devoted subject. But never was there so complete a resemblance of the banquet of Damocles. The sharp glaive, suspended by a single hair, was hanging above the head of the devoted entertainer. Accustomed, like the successful lover of Danaë, to make love in a shower of gold, the financier had found an unexpected resistance in Mademoiselle La Vallière, a beautiful young person, attached to the train of Madame, the

King's sister-in-law. Provoked at his want of success, the superintendent watched so closely every motion of the lady, that he discovered he had the King for his rival. Fouquet, at this moment, was not without hopes of attaining the unbounded power possessed by the lately deceased prime minister, the Cardinal Mazarin. Yet though he nourished this distinguished ambition, his views as a courtier and statesman could not make him suppress his resentment, and, with extreme imprudence, he let La Vallière know that he was acquainted with the secret of her attachment. Indignant at the freedom of the communication, La Vallière lost no time in informing her royal lover of the discovery. It was at the period of the magnificent fête at Vaux, that the King's resentment and jealousy were roused to the highest pitch, by his seeing a portrait of Mademoiselle La Vallière int he cabinet of the ambitious financier. He would have had him arrested and sent to prison on the spot, had not the queenmother deterred him by the simple yet expressive words-"What! in the middle of an entertainment which he gives to you?" The punishment was only delayed till it could be less scandalous. The disgrace of the superintendent followed close on his magnificent entertainment.

Besides L'Ecole des Maris, Molière contributed to the celebrated entertainment at Vaux a dramatic representation, called Les Fâcheux, consisting of a series of detached scenes which were only designed to be acted during the intervals of a ballet, to fill the stage while the dancers were changing their dresses and characters for a new exhibition. In these scenes, a lover, who has an assignation with his mistress, is represented as successively interrupted by various importunate persons (in modern tongue bores), who come to intrude on him their company and their follies. But out of such slender materials, what a lecture upon follies of character and manners has Molière contrived to read us!

Even the jealous fury which animated Louis did not prevent his entering into the humour of "Les Fâcheux," and pointing out to Molière another folly, which might augment the list of the tormenting intruders. This existed in the person of Monsieur de Soyecourt, Grand Veneur, or Great Huntsman to the King, wildly and exclusively attached to the pleasures of the chase. The royal hint was not neglected, but it became necessary, in order to acquire the terms

of the chase to be placed in the mouth of the new character, that Molière should apply to Monsieur de Soyecourt himself, who with unsuspicious good-nature, furnished the comedian with an ample vocabulary of the phrases destined to render himself ridiculous. The scene which Molière composed on this occasion exhibits a strong contrast betwixt French and English manners. Dorante is a courtier devoted to the chase, who insists upon telling Eraste a long story about a late hunting-match in which he was engaged; and which was broken off by a country gentleman, who, against all the rules of venerie, shot the stag dead with a pistol. In England, such a country gentleman as Squire Western would have understood hunting better than all the nobles of the court of St. James.

M. Taschereau observes that in one scene of this little unconnected string of scenes, which nevertheless has more wit and nature in it than most regular comedies, the poet has shown his philosophy as well as his power of comedy. It is where he recognises the efforts of the King to put a stop to the Gothic and barbarous custom of duelling. "It is an example which ought to teach poets how to employ the influence they possess over the human heart.” We subscribe to the

opinion, yet must add that it was also a high and exquisite touch of flattery, although very properly introduced in the only drama which Molière inscribed to Louis XIV.

L'Ecole des Femmes was Molière's next work of importance. It is a comedy of the highest order. An old gentleman, who had been an intriguer in his youth, and knew (as he flattered himself) all the wiles of womankind, endeavours to avoid what he considers as the usual fate of husbands, by marrying his ward, a beautiful girl, simple almost to silliness, but to whom nature has given as much of old mother Eve's talent for persuasion and imposition as enables her to baffle all the schemes of her aged admirer, and unite herself to a young gallant more suited to her age. "The Country Wife" of Wycherley is an imitation of this piece, with the demerit on the part of the English author of having rendered licentious a plot which in Molière's hands is only gay.

Although this piece was well received and highly applauded, it was at the same time severely criticised by those who had swallowed without digesting the ridicule which the author had heaped on the Hôtel de Rambouillet in the Pré

cieuses Ridicules, and on the various conceits and follies of the court in Les Fâcheux. Such critics having shown themselves too wise to express the pain which they felt on their own account, now set up as guardians of the purity of the national morals, and of the national language. A naïve expression used by Agnes was represented as depraving the one; a low and somewhat vulgar phrase was insisted upon as calculated to ruin the other. This affected severity in morals and grammar did not impose on the public, who were quite aware of the motive of critics who endeavoured to ground such formidable charges on foundations so limited. The celebrated Boileau drew his pen in defence of his friend, in whose most burlesque expression there truly lurk. ed a learned and useful moral. "Let the envious exclaim against thee," he said, " because thy scenes are agreeable to all the vulgar; if thou wert less acquainted with the art of pleasing, thou wouldst be enabled to please even thy censors." Molière himself wrote a defence of L'Ecole des Femmes," in which," says M. Taschereau, "he had the good fortune to escape the most dangerous fault of an author writing upon his own compositions, and to exhibit wit, where some people would only have shown vanity and self-conceit."

The wrath of these paltry and prejudiced critics proceeded beyond all the bounds of literary censure. The Duc de la Feuillade, supposed to be the original of a ridiculous man of quality introduced by Molière in his Critique de l'Ecole des Femmes, was guilty of an action equally unbecoming and brutal, considering that the aristocratic laws of the French society of the day left him at liberty to put a personal affront on the manager of a theatre, whatever his genius or respectability, without being exposed to render him a personal account. He met Molière in one of the galleries of the Tuileries, and assuming the appearance of one who wished to embrace and salute him-then no uncommon compliment—he seized rudely upon the poet's head with both his hands, and rubbing his face violently against the buttons of his own dress, repeated again and again the words tarte à la crême-tarte à la crême-being one of the phrases in L'Ecole des Femmes, on which the critics had fastened as unpolite and barbarous. Greatly to the honour of Louis XIV, he censured with severity the courtier who,

under the pretence of zeal for the elegance and purity of the French language, had taken the unmanly opportunity to insult a man of genius within the precincts of his master's palace.

L'In-promptu de Versailles was another fugitive piece, in which Molière, under the eyes of the sovereign, repelled the invidious criticism with which he had been assailed. Boursault, a man of talent and genius, had joined the cry against Molière, under the belief that he had himself been aimed at in the character of Lysidas, the poet, in the interlude. But Boursault prudently retired from the combat.

La Princesse d'Elide, executed upon a signal of the royal sceptre, was composed in haste to garnish a splendid fête of Louis, at Versailles, on the 9th of October, 1664, under the title of "The Pleasures of the Enchanted Island." As the scene belongs to the gorgeous and romantic drama, it afforded little scope to Molière's comic powers, though he has thrown in what the old English stage would have called the humours of Moron, a court jester. There may have been, however, allusions which are now lost, but which had poignancy at the time, since the entertainment was received with great applause. This production is like the interlude of Les Fâcheux, rather a series of detached scenes, connected by one single interest, which they neither advance nor retard, than a comedy bearing a regular plot.

His next production, of the same year, was a one act comedy, entitied Le Mariage Forcé. Sganarelle, a humourist of fifty-three or four, having a mind to marry a fashionable young woman, but feeling some instinctive doubts and scruples, consults several of his friends upon this momentous question; and the inimitable wit of Molière sustains so bald and simple a plot, without permitting the reader to feel a sensation that the piece is wire-drawn, or devoid of interest. The ridicule falls in a great measure on the sophists of the Sorbonne, whose attachment to the categories of Aristotle rendered them so obstinately opposed to every species of philosophical inquiry which transcended the limited sphere of the Stagyrite. The Aristotelian philosophers of the Sorbonne are treated with as little mercy as those of the ancient schools by the satirist Lucian, to whose works Molière seems to have been no stranger. Receiving no satisfactory counsel, and not much pleased with the proceed