Lad to appeal on several occasions. Among his rare printed the "Placets," or memorials aised to the king, appealing to his Majesty's action. Some of these were sent to Louis when engaged in his campaigns; but the prayer of the poet, which was generally for the removal of a a play, was always promptly and readily rutal They contrived, however, the aggrieved Tartufes, to embitter Molière's life; and when he , the Archbishop of Paris, the most hypotical among them, refused to his remains the of Christian burial. In his own department of the drama Molière unsurpassed, and even unapproached. Boileau, the critic, who, caustic and severe as he was, could pay honour where it was due, gave emphatic ty to our author's merits. Louis XIV. ed him one day who was the greatest writer of tury. "Sire," replied the satirist, "it is Katre I did not think so," rejoined Louis, indeed, was not the most competent of tury jadges, “but you know more about it than A. Indeed, Boileau prided himself greatly his critical acumen; and on one occasion did rupie to tell the king that his Majesty knew ang of poetry, and was in the habit of praising my bad verses. INJUDICIOUS FRIENDS. But me of the French writers, with indiscreet a. bare claimed for Molière a place beside our own peare, and have even asserted that Molière d do some things that Shakespeare could not. fre bitself would have been the first to laugh the absurdity of a comparison between himself of the greatest dramatic genius the world has e. He would never have undertaken such were achieved by the magnificent powers them of the Warwickshire yeoman. A Hamlet, Macbeth, or a Lear were not dreamt of in his *-*phy; but he truly and faithfully, and with bater and wit, and an abundance of trial satire, depicted the world such as itar und him, with its virtues and its pecially the latter, and tried to make it ****pointing out the foolishness of brainless and the emptiness of unidead wealth; * “how vain, how little are the proud, how the great." But his satire had in it none the withering scorn or burning hatred of Swift Cl. Sharp-sighted enough to see with ht eyes of his the faults of his time, he raat of the weaknesses of society, and ady to give a generous recognition to its good peta; ons, perhaps, that a humorous expe of a fault, by making it ridiculous, will often go further towards effecting a cure than a fiery denunciation. He could say with goodnatured Philinte in his own comedy, "Le Misanthrope," "Je prends tout doucement les hommes comme ils sont;" and while quietly taking men as they were, he was always ready to pursue the same Philinte's recommendation, "Faisons un peu grâce à la nature humaine ;" to look upon human nature as one who was to its virtues very kind, and to its faults a little blind. He has his lesson to teach; and he inculcates it, often impressively, and always plainly and agreeably. MOLIÈRE'S FAMILY; HIS YOUTH. The family of the Poquelins has been represented as occupying a very humble position in Paris, and by more than one writer, notably by Voltaire, Jean Poquelin, the father of the poet, is described as a "fripier," or dealer in clothes. This is a mistake. Jean Poquelin was an upholsterer and dealer in tapestry; and the latest biographer of Molière has well observed that it is only necessary to examine some of the fragments of the furniture of that period, and of the hangings which decorated the walls and the beds, to understand that an upholsterer followed no mean or ignoble trade in the seventeenth century. In his father's house in the Rue St. Honoré, Jean Baptiste, the future dramatist, was born on the 15th of January, 1622. His mother, Marie Cressé, who had been married to his father nine years, belonged to the same rank in life. Jean Baptiste was the eldest of a family of six. Some years afterwards, Jean Poquelin received a piece of Court patronage, in the shape of an appointment as upholsterer-valet to the king, Louis XIII., with the reversion of the post to his son; and accordingly, in 1637, young Poquelin, being then fifteen years of age, was nominated as the successor of his father in the king's service. This office involved the duty of accompanying the king on his progresses through the country; and there is a tradition to the effect that young Jean Baptiste, in 1641, accompanied the king, as the deputy of his father, who was ill, on that memorable journey that witnessed the vengeance of the implacable Cardinal Richelieu on the conspirators, Cinq Mars and De Thou, ending in the execution of the unhappy culprits. The later biographers of Molière, however, have not failed to point out that this supposed journey rests upon tradition alone; and that the general reason put forward for the substitution of the youth for his father as the king's "tapissier," namely, the great age and infirmity of his father, is utterly untenable; for Jean Poquelin was only forty-six years old in 1642, and continued to exercise his functions in the king's service for more than twenty years after. His death did not happen till 1669. Though Molière was not born until some years after Shakespeare's death, the records of his youthful days are almost as meagre and unauthenticated as the events recorded of the great English poet. The popular account, spread abroad by Voltaire and others, records that the father of the future dramatist was vehemently opposed to giving his son anything beyond a "reading, writing, and arithmetic" education; but that a grandfather, who better estimated the genius and promise of the ardent boy, insisted on his receiving more than mere elementary instruction; that this relative, who had a fancy to his grandson, sometimes took the boy to see the representations at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, where some very extravagant, but no doubt laughable, farces were acted by men of undoubted ability, for the delectation of laughter-loving audiences. The Gross Guillaumes, Gautier Gargouilles, and Turlupins then constituted the great attraction. That the boy was charmed by these performances is more than likely; but it can hardly be believed that in those early days, already, as some of his biographers assert, he had seriously made up his mind to effect a thorough reform in the French drama, and to found a school, equally removed from the buffoon drolleries of farce, and the stilted tragic absurdity of Scuderi. Unwillingly or not, it is certain that Jean Poquelin sent his son to the Jesuits' College, where he was taught "the humanities," and became a classical scholar. It was there, no doubt, that he read in the original those Roman comedies which he turned to such excellent account when he became an author. Long after Molière had made himself famous as a dramatist and actor, when his successes had been sufficiently decided to set the dogs of envy and calumny at his heels, a comedy of extraordinary dulness appeared, written by a certain Le Boulanger de Chalussay, long since gone down to oblivion among the ineptitudes. This wretched production was entitled "Elomire Hypochondre, ou les Médecins Vengés." The name Elomire is an anagram, the letters that form “Molière” being transposed; and "the avenged doctors" points to the rough treatment the medical faculty had received at the hands of the dramatist. The work, a coarse satire upon our author, is nevertheless of value as giving a few particulars, by a contemporary, of the earlier and obscure part of his career. It appears that Molière, on leaving the college, took to the study of the law; whether he was actually admitted as an advocate, is doubtful. Certain it is, however, that at the age of twenty three years he became an actor, from inclination. and not from necessity. A contemporary writer describes him as devoting himself to a player's life, though he might very well have done without that occupation, having property enough to live respectably in the world. This property had no doubt been bequeathed to him by his mother, who died in 1632. BEGINNING OF HIS CAREER. Thus in 1645 young Poquelin began his dra matic career by getting together, with some friends, a company who acted in the Faubourg St. Germain, their establishment taking the somewhat uncompromising title of the "Illustrious Theatre." It was at this time that he adopted the pseudonym of Molière, partly, it is said, in deference to the feelings of his family, who were scandalized that one of the Poquelins should appear on a public stage, partly in accordance with a custom among the actors of that time to adopt some euphonious or “taking” name, likely to gain the public favour. Why the name of Molière was chosen, except that, as one of the biographers observes, it sounded well and was easily remembered, does not appear. The bearer himself seems to have been at various times questioned on the subject, and always refused to explain his reasons, if he had any, for the adoption. Various villages in France are so called, and a Sieur de Molière had not many years before acquired some fame as the author of two romances, entitled respectively "Polixène" and "La Semaine Amoureuse." Several writers have expressed a considerable amount of indignation at what they term the fatuity of the young actor's family, in insisting, as they are said to have done, upon this change of name. "Who knows or cares anything about the Poquelins now," is their argument, "while the name of Molière, assumed to save the immaculate Poquelins from a discreditable association, is famous throughout the world?" All this is very true; and yet the view taken by the family was perfectly rational, and in accordance with plam common sense. The life of an actor was in those days that of a wanderer, dependent on the caprices of patrons for the means of subsistence,-now caressed, now scouted, his life often made up of alternate profusion and misery, his calling stigma tized as fraught with profligacy and irreligion: nor can it be denied that the vagabond nature of the actor's life, his continual dependence on a fickle audience, the hand-to-mouth nature of his existence, and the paramount necessity of "pleasing that he might live," rendered this the most dangerous of professions. It must be remembered, terwover, that there was as yet no national drama France, and that the actors, consequently, were farceurs. How were the respectable Poin to know that this young scion of their ly, apparently born "his father's soul to " or to "strut and hector," when he should , would one day produce works destined to e classics in French literature? The creat of these works was yet in the far future, and thing had been seen that gave any indication of their cousing. REALITIES OF AN ACTOR'S LIFE. And here, let us allow Molière himself to speak his own plain, straightforward way on the Years afterwards, when his adventures astroller were over, and he was the favourite the "Great Monarch," and praised and apIaded by a magnificent court, he gave emphatic testimony as to the difference between appearances wad reality in an actor's life. A young man came thin one day, with the usual story of an uncontate predilection for the stage, and a petition fr an opportunity to carry his aspirations into Act. Nor was this a case of a mere stage-struck ath. The young aspirant astonished Molière by the talent and grace exhibited in his recitations, and had evidently worked with earnestness and ligence to qualify himself for his intended a. Highly commending his performance, Mure asked him if he had any fortune. “My ter is a well-to-do advocate," was the reply. Then," rejoined Molière earnestly, "I advise you a adpt his profession; ours will not suit you; Is the last resource of those who can do no wtter, or of good-for-nothings who want to escape work. Besides, it's striking a dagger in your matives' hearts, going on the stage; and you w why. I have always reproached myself for gring this annoyance to my family; and I confess to you, that if it were to do again, I should never those that profession. You think perhaps," he ted, that it has its charms; you are mistaken. a true that the great seigneurs appear to seek ost; but they make us minister to their pleaand it's the most miserable of all positions, to be the slaves of their whims. The rest of the wd looks upon us as lost men, and despises us Ardingly. Therefore, sir, abandon a design trary alike to your honour and to your peace fnd If you were in want, I could be of wice to you; but as it is, I don't deny that I wold rather hinder than assist you. Picture to yrl the difficulties we have to encounter. Whether it be convenient or not, we have to be y to march at the first order, and to give pleasure to others, when we may be often full of sorrow; to bear the boorishness of the majority of the people with whom we are obliged to associate, and to win the good graces of a public who have the right to browbeat us, because they have paid us money. No, sir, believe me, once more, don't persevere in the design you have taken up." Here we have an insight into the real feelings of the successful author-actor, such as is seldom obtained through the glare of dazzling success. For at the time when Molière gave this staid, sensible counsel, which, it is pleasant to record, was successful in inducing the young aspirant to abandon his hazardous design, he himself had thoroughly made his name and position, and enjoyed the all-powerful patronage of the king; and yet he felt the unreality of stage triumphs, and the very vivid reality of the humiliations and trials that underlie the tinsel glories of the actor's life. In those days the bitterness of dependence was largely mingled in the actor's cup. Like the literary man, he depended on the patron as much as on the public, and was bound to please "Monseigneur" at all hazards; and in the year 1646, when Molière had just begun his dramatic career, the Duc de Guise was made the subject of poetic laudation for "les présents qu'il avait faits de ses habits aux comédiens de toutes les troupes." He had caused a distribution to be made of his cast-off wardrobe, among the different companies of actors in Paris, who were too happy to "strut and fret" in borrowed ducal plumes. Molière and his company for a series of years led a kind of romantic life in the provinces, giving representations with more or less success, but gaining an immense amount of experience, which he afterwards turned to good account. The wonderful skill he frequently showed in delineating for the stage the characters of society as it existed in his day must have been owing in no small degree to the stores of observation laid up during these vagabond years, when the provincial noble, the wealthy but ignorant citizen, the pedantic medico, and the sturdy peasant, the supple valet, and the macaroni marquis passed in motley review before him. COMMENCEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP. The year 1653 is remarkable in Molière's life as the epoch in which he added the more durable profession of dramatic author to the somewhat precarious occupation of manager of a troop of strolling players. In that year he brought out his first comedy, "L'Etourdi; ou, les Contretemps;" which so rendered into English would be represented by "The Scatterbrain; or, Cross Accidents." It is supposed, and with good reason, that this first dramatic work of the actor-author was performed before his old patron and schoolfellow, the Prince de Conti, who, after a somewhat troubled youth, including a participation in the "fronde" riots, and consequent imprisonment, had married a niece of the cardinal against whom he had taken up arms, and was now in Languedoc, holding a commission from the king to preside over the session of the estates to be opened at Montpelier. He was thus in the south at the time Molière's company was travelling through that region; and the two friends can hardly have failed to have met; nor would the prince, a sincere admirer of Molière's genius, have allowed the first representation of his friend's initial effort, at Lyons, to pass ungraced by his presence. "L'Etourdi," like the generality of "first pieces," is to some extent an adaptation; the plot and the situations, on which latter the play chiefly depends for success, being taken from the Italian. The story turns on the embarrassments and crosspurposes consequent on the ill-fortune of the hero, an unlucky blunderer, who always manages most ingeniously to baffle all the efforts of his clever valet, Mascarille, to aid him in obtaining the mistress he worships. It is a lively, merry work, with abundance of incidents, and many startling and even extravagant situations. The best character, that of the clever Mascarille, was played by Molière himself; and the work had a complete success, alike in Lyons, where it was first produced, and in Paris, where it was played some years later, before a more polite audience, and in the presence of critics far more difficult to please. laid the foundation of Molière's fame as an author. Of these strolling days there exists one curious relic in the shape of an antique armchair, at Pezenas, where Molière and his company established their head-quarters for some time. This antique piece of furniture, to which the name Molière's armchair has been given, and which is looked upon with unquestioning faith and reverence by its proprietors, is said to have stood, in the poet's time, in the corner of a barber's shop; and in this armchair, tradition says, did Molière ensconce himself on a Saturday, market day, to observe and make notes upon the busy throng of customers who resorted to the barber for tonsorial purposes; and many a trait of manners and character must the quiet, indefatigable observer have there picked up. It The next play of Molière's, "Le Dépit Amoureux," or the Love-tiff, produced in 1654, is a great improvement on "L'Etourdi." Here the author begins to find where his strength lies, in the development of character; and he has given then, two sets of lovers, master and man, and mistress and maid, a capital picture of the pretty follies that lovers commit. The best part of the play is that where the young ardent lover and his faithful valet valiantly make up their minds to utterly discard and cast off their mistresses, whose coquetry and fickleness they will endure no longer. Friend Grosréné, the valet, is much stronger on the point than even his master; for his indignation extends to the whole of what the laird of Monkbarns calls "feminity," and he will have nothing to do with women; and as for the general conduct of love-sick swains, he would "reform it altogether." So he puts before his master, in the strongest terms, the necessity of firmness and resolution, and the duty of opposing an unshaken front to the blandishments of the fickle fair one. in the final interview, in which these intentions are to be announced. Marinette, the waiting-woman, and sweetheart of the thorough-going Grosréné, has meanwhile been impressing the same lesson upon her mistress, whose courage she imagines she has screwed to the sticking-point, when the fateful interview takes place. But what a falling off is there! "Amantium iræ amoris redintegratio." The lovers' quar rel but leads to the renewing of love; and after mutual recriminations, gradually softening down into tender reproach, and ending with reconciliation, the lady and gentleman find they are better friends than ever, and that the summer stort has but cleared the air, and made the day more charming to them. Grosréné growls his disgust, as his master walks off with his fair betrothed. "O la lâche personne!" exclaims Marinette. when she finds how ignobly her mistress has surrendered; and Grosréné begins his interview with the saucy Marinette by giving her to understand that she must not expect to find him forgiving and compliant, like his weak master. Marinette retorts with an expression of pert contempt for Grosréné; and the pair proceed to return the love tokens each had received from the other, the only part of this proceeding that forces a sigh from Grosréné being the necessity of giving back a piece of exquisite cheese that the false fair one had be stowed upon him, as a fragrant token of affection But when it comes to the final act, and the two are about to break a straw between them, in sign that their compact has ceased and determined both hesitate, just as their betters had done; and in the end, love is lord of all, and Marinette the wayward and the determined Grosréné walk off a thoroughly pleased with each other, as if they ha never meditated such a thing as parting or separa tion. The play does not pretend to any depth feeling or grandeur of language. It has been wel aded by a critic, "an intellectual bottle of cham" and it certainly has enough of sparkle and spirit about it to justify the designation. MOLIÈRE ESTABLISHED IN PARIS. The ambition of a provincial manager naturally puts towards the capital as the ultimate goal to be red, and Molière, after eight years of strolling, seded in obtaining the patronage of the young ang Louis XIV., and permission to establish his apy in Paris in 1658. He was by this time tarty-six years of age, and had worked hard and stently for the position he had at last gained, Dépit Amoureux" and "Etourdi," played Ir the rst time before an audience composed of yty, nobility, and the first critics of the age, ad a greater success than ever; and the actorbr now permanently established in Paris, was raged and confirmed in his resolution to prothings unattempted yet" in the dramatic erature of France. Ha early comedies had been adaptations-clever apdai us, it is true, but yet adaptations-from the Latin, Spanish, and Italian drama. Henceit he was to study in the school of life, and to tad in the society of his own times the subjects the characters on which his fame should rest. In 165, on the 18th of November, he produced, ofre a laughing, wondering, admiring Parisian Batxe, "Les Précieuses Ridicules." In the capital bit of comedy-satire, Molière ieved the shafts of his wit at a fashionable Parisian by of his own day. At the Hôtel Rambouillet a exquisite company was accustomed to meet, renting the very elite of the Parisian haute mal in iiterature, fashion, science, and dilletantism. There were to be seen Vaugelas the grammarian, Rate Bussy-Rabutin, Cottin, the most aggressive forty poets, Balzac sarant en beaux mots, with Menage, and many others; for the fair Marquise de ut wished to raise in her home an altar the Muses. The fashionable airs and graces with via Lterature and art were surrounded in this stocking coterie, the grave extravagance of in which veiled natural and honest thought a far fetched and ambiguous phrases, the exaggrated refinement, degenerating into puerility and inate, rendered this society a legitimate subfor the ridicule of all sensible critics. "Not ence," said La Bruyère, we have seen a ty of persons of both sexes, united together by conversation and by interchange of ideas. They ted to leave to the vulgar the art of speaking in intelligible way. By dint of what they called daacy, sentiment, and fineness of expression, tary had succeeded at last in being no longer under stood, and in ceasing to understand one another. Neither good sense nor memory, nor the slightest capacity, was necessary for these conversations; wit alone was wanted, not of the best kind, but that which is false, and for the most part imaginary." The ladies were accustomed to address each other as "ma chère" and "ma précieuse," and talked affected jargon in the prettiest way. The country naturally took its tone from the capital, and provincial "précieuses" soon appeared, exaggerating the follies and affectations of their Parisian models. It is a pair of these village blue-stockings that Molière exhibits with a grave drollery that is inimitable. Madelon and Cathos, the country ladies in question, are fooled to the top of their bent by a rascally lackey from the metropolis, whom they take for a marquis, and whose coxcombries serve to call forth their affectation and their pretended raptures and ecstacies of admiration. Mascarille's modesty certainly does not stand in the way of his preferment. He has written, according to his own account "two hundred ballads, as many sonnets, four hundred epigrams, and more than a thousand madrigals, besides enigmas and rebuses,"-and is indeed at work upon a version of the whole of the Roman history rendered into madrigals. Whereupon Madelon declares herself to be "furiously charmed" with rebuses, which she considers "gallant and intellectual." Mascarille also volunteers to read an impromptu that he made the day before at the house of an acquaintance of his, a duchess. Cathos pronounces an impromptu the true touchstone of genius. Whereupon Master Mascarille regales the ladies with the following exquisite effusion : "Oh, oh, I was taken, my guard I forsook, I dreamt of no danger, and risked but a look,- The epigram of Sir Benjamin Backbite on the "beautiful ponies that were macaronies" as compared with other cattle, was not received with warmer applause in Mrs. Candour's drawing-rooms than these precious lines obtained from the fair Cathos and Madelon. Indeed, Molière's satire was as complete as it was delicate. He professed to ridicule not the précieuses, but their imitators; but the meaning was too well expressed to escape the culivated audience. "We shall have to burn what we have adored, and adore what we have burned,' was the witty remark of one of the frequenters of Rambouillet, in happy paraphrase of Bishop Remigius' words to the heathen Clovis. And the first performance of the piece gave a death-blow to the superfine ultra-gentilities of the Hôtel de |