MOLIERE, (JEAN BAPTISTE Poouturs,) the most celebrated author of French comedy, was born 'at Paris in 1620. His father and granfather were valet-de chambre upholsterers to the royal household of France. Young Poquelin remained in his father's house till the age of fourteen, receiving no other education than was conformable to the employment which it was intended that he should follow ; but having acquired a taste for reading, he was, by his own earnest desire, and at the instance of his grandfather, sent as a day-scholar to the Jesuits' College of Clermont. He there formed an in timacy with Chapelle, Bernier, and some other men of promising talents, and through their friendship was permitted, in their company, to attend the lectures of the celebrated Gasscndi. The journey which Louis XIII. made to Narbonne, in 1641, gave a temporary interruption to the course of his studies; for his father having become infirm, and unable to follow the court, young Poquelin was obliged to go in his place, and to attend to the duties of his father's office; but on the death of his father, he returned to Paris, and had it. in his power once more to pursue the bent of his genius. It luckily took a turn for the theatre. The taste for theatrical entertainments was, at this time, at a great height in France. Cardinal Richlieu himself was at tached to them, and protected dramatic authors.— Among the new companies of comedians which began to be formed at Pails, our author entered into one of them, which was called L'Illustre Theatre. It was at first only a private society, established for the sake of amusement ; but by degrees it made its exhibitions public, and fixed itself in the suburbs of St. Germain's. Either front regard to the feelings of his relations, who disapproved of his following this vocation, or after the example of his comrades on the stage, our author dropt his proper family name of Poquelin, and assumed that of Moliere, by which he was destined to be known to posterity. He soon after associated him self with a provincial actress, called La Bezart, and they formed a company, which set out for Lyons. At that city, in 1653, his comedy " L'Etourdi" was for the first time represented. Being an early essay, this piece (as we might expect) is not to he ranked among the masterpieces of Moliere. It has more intrigue than interesting delineation of character ; and the events do not spring out of each other with that Felicity and force of natural succession, which he afterwards so well knew how to infuse into his comic plots; but it has great vivacity of dialogue, and contains one character, the intriguing valet Mascarille, which is highly amus ing. If we consider, too, the state of French comedy previous to Molicre, which was nothing better than a compounded imitation of the extravagance of the Spa nish, and the buffoonery of the Italian drama, the ap pearance of the " Etourdi" must be regarded as an era in the national literature. This comedy went off at Lyons with great eclat, and Moliere proceeded from thence to Languedoc, in order to offer his services to the Prince of Conti, who at this time presided over the states that were assembled at Beziers. Here Armand de Bourbon, who had known our author at Paris. and had often been amused with his acting in the " Illustre Theatre," received him with -great kind ness. The Etourdi" was reacted at Bezict s with the same success as at Lyons, and was quickly followed by a Le Depit Antoureux," and " Les Precieuses Ridicules." The former of those pieces displays Nlo liere as a poet, still relying mainly for comic effect on the intrigue and surprise of incident which prevail in the Spanish school ; though there is a more artful ar rangement of incidents than in the Etourdi," and great pleasantry and ingenuity displayed in the laby rinth of perplexed situations in which the characters are involved, and from which the denouement dis misses them. The latter piece, the 44 Precieuses Ridi cules," is of a higher order of comedy. The author shines here, for the first time, as a deep and delicate painter of manners and characters. It is an exquisite satire on the affectation of high-flown sentiments and witty language, which are said to have then prevailed in France. The piece was acted incessantly for four months, and the confluence of spectators enabled the managers to charge double price for admission to see it. Among the compliments paid to it, one is men tioned to have been uttered by an old man, who cried out from the gallery, Courage, Moliere ! voila one vraie I" His reputation was now widely es tablished; and he had a right to congratulate himself on the profession which he had chosen. But all his success and celebrity could not overcome the repug nance of his relations to seeing him on the stage, and he was repeatedly besought by them to forsake it. Believing that the master of a boarding-school, with whom he had once lived, might have some influence with him, they sent the grave man to try to persuade him to give up the life of a player ; but the result of the embassy was worthy of the history of a comic ac tor and comic author. Instead of being converted by his friend the schoolniaster, he persuaded the elderly gentleman to become himself a player, and launched him on the boards in the character of a comic doctor, which he thought suited his appearance.* He next visited Grenoble and Rouen, and from the latter place returned to Paris, under the protection of Gaston Duke of Orleans, who introduced him to Louis XIV. and the Queen. He obtained permission to open a theatre in the metropolis ; and the Guard in the old Louvre was first allotted him for that purpose. In 1664. it
was changed for that in the Palais Royal, and, in 1665, he was placed in the service of the King, with a pen sion. Ile continually fed his reputation with new works, and produced many farces and slight pieces, besides his regular comedies. In 15 years he supplied the theatre with thirty productions. Though his fame, however, was on the whole progressive, he was neither exempted from invidious not just criticism ; nor were all his pieces equally well received. From his comedy " Le Coca Imaginaire," it was supposed that his style improved after his establishment in Paris ; but his " Don Garcia de Navarre" acquired no reputation, anu he yielded to the public opinion by forbearing to print it. In his subsequent piece, L'Ecole des Ma ris," he however indemnified himself for this temporary failure. Among the principal objects of his satire, were the coxcomb men of quality of his time, called the petits-rnaitres, the pedants, and the affected belles esprits, male and female, and the medical faculty. His L'Amour Medecin was the first piece in which he embarked in a war with the last of these tribes, which continued all his life ; for the " Malade Imaginaire," in which he still holds up the faculty to ridicule, was the concluding work of his life. The influence of common sense on modern manners has, no doubt, strips every description of professional men of any peculiarities which formerly belonged to them, so that Moliere's picture of doctors in the lith century is likely to ap• pear to us more exaggerated and illiberal than it really was with regard to the originals : nor is it assuming too much to suppose, that the very ridicule of Moliere contributed to diminish those traits of charlatanism and pedantry, which it would be, at this day, the lowest resource of caricature and farce to ascribe to the medi cal character. His comedy of the a Misant•ope" is placed by his admirers in French criticism very high in the scale of his works, perhaps it is generally re garded as inferior only to Tartuffe. It is sadly defec tive, however, in interesting action, and has a great deal of prosing discussion in the dialogue, meant to pourtray characters by the repeated expression of their opinions and principles. In this respect he sometimes reminds us of our own Ben Jonson, and his imitators Cartwright and Randolph, in their less happy mo ments, when they substitute hard and abstracted ideas of human character for its natural development, and for the amusing business of comedy. The " Misan trope" was, accordingly, too spiritual in its touches for the Parisian audiences, and it was not so kindly re ceived as his pieces of broader humour. In recom pense, it has since received the suffrages of the more philosophical class of French critics, and it has unques tionably some fine traits of character-painting, amidst the superabundance of its opinionative discussion. One philosopher, J. J. Rousseau, has, with his accustomed singularity, objected to it on the grounds of its moral tendency. " It is a piece (he says) which holds vir tue up to ridicule. This paradox was worthy of the writer who would have sent back human nature to barbarism as to a golden age. The misanthrope Al ceste, Moliere's hero, he observes, is a man of recti tude, sincerity, and genuine worth; and yet he is made to appear ridiculous." All this is sophistry. Alceste, it is true, is represented as an honest man, whose " failings lean to virtue's side ;" but still, with all his worth, he has failings, and they are legitimate objects of ridicule. The misanthrope's love of truth and plain dealing is carried, as Rousseau's sometimes were, to spleen and rudeness; as, for instance, when he has the cruelty to tell a poor vain poet to his face, that his verses are execrable. His positiveness in maintaining this point is made entertainingly extravagant, when, on being told that he is to be taken before a court of the marshals of France, he offers to prove that any man deserves to be hanged for making such verses. Here the virtue of sincerity is not, as Rosseau alleges, held up to derision ; but the misdirection of the virtue. We are. not made to laugh at the misanthrope's love of truth—but at his putting himself into a passion about a trille, which neither called for his sincerity, nor jus tified his ill temper. The scene is therefore neither immoral nor irrational. But still Rousseau will insist that Moliere has degraded the picture of a good man, at the expense of consistency of character. He ought, he says, to have made him furious only against public vices, and not against the personal traits of wickedness of which he is the victim. The plain answer to this is, that it is most natural for a man to feel indignant at the vices which immediately affect his own happi ness. Moliere certainly might have made his hero a public-spirited misanthrope ; but unfortunately there are so few men-haters of this description, who are be lieved to be sincerely abstracted from all considerations of their own interest, that a misanthrope insensible to personal injuries would not have been, probably, re ceived as a very natural character. He might have made him, if he had liked, a perfect and a wise being ; but where would have been then the scope for comedy ? Where would have been the failings to instruct us ? And if he meant to paint a misanthrope, with what consistency could he exhibit a wise and perfect being ? Such a man, if he existed, would not hate his species, but regard their errors with the very soul of compassion.