His " Tartuffe" is esteemed by his countrymen as the masterpiece of his works, and of their national drama. We must own that, to our taste, some others of his comedies, such as " Le Bourgeois Gentilhonzme," " L'Ecole des Femme," Scc.and " Le Malade Imaginaire," which bring "laughter shaking both her sides," seem to possess a more vetitable tone of humour than the ex hibition of so dark a villain as Tartuffe. We are not deterred from avowing this preference by the common remark, that the first and last of these pieces, in parti cular, incline to broad farce, and give us rather cari catures of transient follies in the manners of society, than draughts of permanent resemblance to human nature. But though the ludicrous images in these co medies may be bold and broad, we are not aware that they are unnatural ; on the contrary, though they are heightened sketches of follies, which never meet us so glaringly in real society, we believe they seize the ve ritable, essential, and permanent traits of the ridiculous in human character. The absurdities and frailties of the species may be thus shewn, like playful or perni cious insects through a magnifying glass, but their stings and gambols and propensities arc, by that means, only shewn to us more distinctly. With respect to the Tartuffe, the fault of its conclusion, by a resource sup posed illegitimate in the drama, has been a thousand times noticed, namely, the order from supreme autho rity, which arrests the villain when he is at the height of his triumph, and conducts him to a terrible punish ment. The gravity of the scene, we confess, seems to us a greater departure from comic effect than the means einp'oyed for the denouement ; and in what we have said or the Tartuffe, we only mean that it is less exhi larating than the other comedies which have been men tioned. As an chant of skill and ingenuity, it is won derful, for the art with which he throws a risible in terest over the exhibition of such dark traits of atrocity as those of Tamale, and with which he amuses us by the success of a knave, all the time we are impatient for his detection. The subject was difficult, but Mo liere had to encounter other difficulties than those of his subject. His exposure of the vice of hypocrisy in Tartufre alarmed not only hypocrites, but some of the weak and well meaning devout. Whether we are to reckon Louis XIV., and his hnmediate advisers on this point, among the real or pretended devotees, it is cer tain that his Majesty, for some time, laid his veto on the representation of the comedy. The three first acts of Tartufi'e had been represented, after the fetes of Versailles, in 1664, in presence of the King and the Queen-mother and consort. Louis declared, that, for his own part, he had nothing to say against the co medy ; but he forbade its being represented in public, till it should be examined by persons capable of esti mating its moral tendency. The bigots availed them selves of this circumstance to raise a clamour against the piece ; though, for the most part, they were little acquainted with its contents. A pious curate, in a book which he presented to the king, decided that the au thor deserved to be burnt alive, and upon his own pri vate authority awarded that punishment to Moliere. Some of the higher clergy, however, having had the moderation to hear the comedy read, were pleased to judge of it more charitably. A verbal permission for its representation was obtained from the king. The poet softened some expressions, which had appeared offen sive ; he gave it the title of " L'Imposteur," and dis guised the person of his hypocrite under the appear ance of a man of fashion, giving him a small hat, bushy locks, a sword, and a laced suit of clothes. In this state Tartuffe was risked on the stage in 1667, and was received with applauses ; but next daran order was sent to suspend its representation ; and though, at Moliere's instance, two gentlemen, " La Thorilliere," and " La Grange," repaired to the camp before Lille, where the King then was, and presented a memorial in fa vour of the piece, it was not till two years later that his Majesty gave an authentic permission for its being again brought on the stage. When it became fully known, the hypocrites were confounded, and the poet was justified, with regard to the dangers to the cause of morality which were supposed to be apprehended from the play of Tartuffe. We omit to give the particular dates or names of his numerous pieces. " La Malade Imaginaire" was the last of his compositions. The day on which it was to be represented for the third time, he felt himself more indisposed than usual with a complaint in his chest, to which he had been subject for a long time, and which had brought on an almost incessant cough. He makes an allusion to this infirmity, which roust have often interfered with his acting, when Fro sine says in " the ,ware" to Harpagon, a part which Moliere played, " Cela West rien, votre fluxion ne vous sled point mal, et volts avez grace a toupir." (L'Avare, act 2, scene 6 ) His wife and friends intreated him to defer the representation of " Le Malade Imaginaire" till his health should he somewhat reinstated; but he an swered, " What then must become of so many poor people, who depend upon its representation for their bread ? I should reproach myself for having neglected a single day to have supplied them with necessaries." He accordingly exerted himself on the stage with unusual spirit, in performing this comedy ; but in the third act he was seized with a convulsion fit, which he vainly at tempted to disguise to the spectators by a forced laugh. He was carried home to his house in the Rue de Riche lieu, where his cough augmented exceedingly, and brought on a vomiting of blood, that ended in suffocation. He expired on the 17th February, 1673, aged 53—sup ported by two women of the religious sisterhood, who used to come to Paris in time of Lent, for the purposes of charity. Harlai, the Archbishop of Paris, a man of dissolute morals, but desirous of pleasing the rigorists of the Roman church, refused him Christian burial ; but the King interposed, and the prelate, after pretending to investigate the character of Mohere, and to be satisfied with the accounts which he received of his religion and probity, allowed that he should be interred privately in a chapel of the parish of St. Eustache. Another story is told, of the King having sent for the curate of the same parish, who, like his superior, had scruples about the right of a player to be buried in consecrated earth. "To what depth is your ground consecrated ?" the King is said to have inquired. " To the depth of four feet," answered the clergyman. Well then," replied Louis, " let Moliere be buried six feet deep ;" and he added, as he turned his back upon the cure, " let me hear no more about this business." The bigotry of the populace im peded even the obscure funeral honours which were allowed to be paid to him, for they collected in great crowds before the door of his house on the day on which his corpse was brought out. Such was the return which his country made to the man whom Racine himself pro nounced to be the greatest of his age. His wife, on hearing the refusal of the clergy to allow him Christian burial, is said to have exclaimed with tears in her eyes, " France grudges a tomb to him to whom Greece would have 0-ected altars .' The say ing was just and pathetic.
It is only to be regretted, that the wife who spoke it was not, if we may trust the general report, of Mo liere. He is said to have been himself tfe victim of the most gi ievous of matrimonial distresses, which he paints so facetiously in comedy. The populace, whom his widow bribed to respect his remains, followed him de cently to his grave ; where he was quietly deposited by the light of an hundred flambeaus, which his friends cart ied to the ceremony. His widow afterwards mar ried a comedian of the name of Guerin. She was the daughter of Madame Bezart, with whom he made his first theatrical excursion to Lyons, and with whom, it seems to be confessed by his biographers, that he had had a connexion before he was married to the daughter. The exasperated envy of some of his literary opponents accused him of espousing his own daughter in this Mademoiselle Bezart ; but the calumny is sufficiently refuted by distinct evidence, that she was born before Moliere became acquainted with her mother. Moliere was in his person above the middle size, of a noble carriage, handsome limbs, and au exceedingly expres sive countenance. His walk was slow—his air serious. —He had a high nose, a large mouth, a dark com plexion, and black, thick, and flexible eye-brows, which made his physiognomy very striking in comedy. He was not, probably, a first rate performer, owing to the weakness of his voice ; but from the prominent parts which he took in his own comedies, he must have been a considerable one, and by no means incapable of doing justice to the characters which his imagination so strong ly conceived. We are told by the French actress, who gives this minute description of his appearance, that he was fond of talking aimoit fort a haranguer) and that, when he read his pieces to his fellow-actors, he always wished them to bring their children, in order that he might draw hints from their natural movements. The same person adds, that he was mild, courteous, and kind in his general intercourse. Ile was not envious: to be sure he had little occasion to be so. When the " Plai deurs," a comedy by Racine, with whom lie was at that time on bad terms, had lost possession of the stage, he was the first to assert its merit, and to hring it back to popularity. In company that pleased him, his conver sation was very pleasant ; but, as the contrary oftener happened, lie was apt to be absent and melancholic in society, and consoled himself with secretly remarking the traits and manners of those about him, in order to store them up as hints for comedy. Many anecdotes of his benevolence are recorded. His friend Baron one day mentioned to him the case of a man whom extreme poverty prevented from waiting on him. His name was Mondorge.—" I know him," said Moliere. " He was a comrade of mine in Languedoc, and an honest man. How much do you think I should give him ?" " Four pistoles," said Baron, after some hesitation. " Here, then," re plied Aloliere, " are four pistoles for me, and here are twenty more, which you shall give him from yourself." Mondorge was introduced to him : Moliere received him with open arms, and gave him also a magnificent dress, which enabled him to perform a tragedy. A beggar once asked our poet for charity, and he gave him a piece of gold. The mendicant brought it back, saying lie sup posed it was a mistake. " In what a hole has virtue hid herself!" exclaimed Moliere, and gave another gold piece to the poor man, telling him there was no mistake. His death, as we have seen, was occasioned by an im pulse of benevolence. A high niche in the temple of modern genius is confessedly to be assigned to this write[, but whether lie is to be ranked among the few first rate comic poets who bear the palm in universal literature, ancient and modern, is a question still agitated between the schools of French and German criticism. Voltaire has named him the father of true comedy ; and as far as the French stage is concerned, nobody will dis pute the assertion. According to La Harpe, he is the first of philosophical moralists ; comedy and Moliere are synonymous terms, and his pieces are schools of in struction for the world. Chamfort calls him the most amiable teacher of human nature since Socrates, and affirms that Julius Caesar, who called Terence a half Menander, would have denominated Menander a half Moliere. Unhappily Julius Cxsar's opinion about Mo liere is not to be collected with precision, and we know too little of Menander to institute a fair comparison. But it is easier to compare Moliere with the poets of anti quity whose subjects he has adopted ; and, whatever may be the result of the comparison, it is a respectable trait in his literary character, that he had sufficient knowledge and taste to apply to classical sources for enriching his drama. He brought, indeed, to the vocation of a dramatic writer, the most eminently useful and creditable advan tages. Though born in middling life, he had opportu nities of studying the manners of the court. Ile had studied Spanish and Italian comedy, and he was able to draw from Plautus and Terence the attic salt and true tone of comic character. He possessed an inexhaustible fund of gaiety, congenial with the best models front which he drew his resources ; and even those who as cribed to him scarcely more than the merit of farce and caricature in comedy, acknowledge that he designs amusing caricatures with the firmest and happiest traits. They acknowledge, for instance, that even in farcical creation, the vain-glorious soldier of Plautus is less ably pourtrayed than the Bourgeois Gentilhomme of Moliere. The German writers, and even llacier among the French, accuse him, however, of having, for the most part, spoilt the simple comic conceptions of the ancients, by accom modating them to modern manners, and by making the plots more artificial. We must recollect, that if this was a fault in Moliere, it was not easily avoided. By simply translating the plays of Plautus and Terence, he could not have pleased a modern audience had he given his classical drama in its naked simplicity. He has bor rowed the idea of his " Avare" from the Aulularia of Plautus. Instead of a simple miser, he has given us a miser in love. On this charge it has been remarked, that the morale of the piece is not improved, but spoilt, because, if an old amorous dotard should go to the theatre and see the piece represented, he might say to himself, I care little for this satire, for 1 am not a miser ; and if a miser, who happened not to be in love, should go to see it, he might, with equal justice say, " Very true, I am fond of money ; but I thank my stars, I am not in love." We perceive nothing conclusive in this argu ment against the propriety of Moliere doubling comic effect by the conception of an amorous miser ; and if it was not an improvement on classical simplicity, it was at least an agreeable variety, acquired by departing from it. In like manner we can read his Amphytrion without diminished admiration of Plautus; but still acknowledging that Moliere has made some departures from the origi