Chapter XXV (3)

"All is said," exclaims the lively La Bruyère; but at the same moment, by his own admirable Reflections, confutes the dreary system he would establish. An opinion of the exhausted state of literature has been a popular prejudice of remote existence; and an unhappy idea of a wise ancient, who, even in his day, lamented that "of books there is no end," has been transcribed in many books. He who has critically examined any branch of literature has discovered how little of original invention is to be found even in the most excellent works. To add a little to his predecessors satisfies the ambition of the first geniuses. The popular notion of literary novelty is an idea more fanciful than exact. Many are yet to learn that our admired originals are not such as they mistake them to be; that the plans of the most original performances have been borrowed; and that the thoughts of the most admired compositions are not wonderful discoveries, but only truths, which the ingenuity of the author, by arranging the intermediate and accessary ideas, has unfolded from that confused sentiment, which those experience who are not accustomed to think with depth, or to discriminate with accuracy. This Novelty in Literature is, as Pope defines it,

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd.

Novelty, in its rigid acceptation, will not be found in any judicious production.

Voltaire looked on everything as imitation. He observes that the most original writers borrowed one from another, and says that the instruction we gather from books is like fire--we fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, and communicate it to others, till it becomes the property of all. He traces some of the finest compositions to the fountainhead; and the reader smiles when he perceives that they have travelled in regular succession through China, India, Arabia, and Greece, to France and to England.

To the obscurity of time are the ancients indebted for that originality in which they are imagined to excel, but we know how frequently they accuse each other; and to have borrowed copiously from preceding writers was not considered criminal by such illustrious authors as Plato and Cicero. The Æneid of Virgil displays little invention in the incidents, for it unites the plan of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_.

Our own early writers have not more originality than modern genius may aspire to reach. To imitate and to rival the Italians and the French formed their devotion. Chaucer, Gower, and Gawin Douglas, were all spirited imitators, and frequently only masterly translators. Spenser, the father of so many poets, is himself the child of the Ausonian Muse. Milton is incessantly borrowing from the poetry of his day. In the beautiful Masque of Comus he preserved all the circumstances of the work he imitated. Tasso opened for him the Tartarean Gulf; the sublime description of the bridge may be found in Sadi, who borrowed it from the Turkish theology; the paradise of fools is a wild flower, transplanted from the wilderness of Ariosto. The rich poetry of Gray is a wonderful tissue, woven on the frames, and composed with the gold threads, of others. To Cervantes we owe Butler; and the united abilities of three great wits, in their _Martinus Scriblerus_, could find no other mode of conveying their powers but by imitating at once Don Quixote and Monsieur Oufle. Pope, like Boileau, had all the ancients and moderns in his pay; the contributions he levied were not the pillages of a bandit, but the taxes of a monarch. Swift is much indebted for the plans of his two very original performances: he owes the "Travels of Gulliver" to the "Voyages of Cyrano de Bergerac to the Sun and Moon;" a writer, who, without the acuteness of Swift, has wilder flashes of fancy; Joseph Warton has observed many of Swift's strokes in Bishop Godwin's "Man in the Moon," who, in his turn, must have borrowed his work from Cyrano. "The Tale of a Tub" is an imitation of such various originals, that they are too numerous here to mention. Wotton observed, justly, that in many places the author's wit is not his own. Dr. Ferriar's "Essay on the Imitations of Sterne" might be considerably augmented. Such are the writers, however, who imitate, but remain inimitable!

Montaigne, with honest naïveté, compares his writings to a thread that binds the flowers of others; and that, by incessantly pouring the waters of a few good old authors into his sieve, some drops fall upon his paper. The good old man elsewhere acquaints us with a certain stratagem of his own invention, consisting of his inserting whole sentences from the ancients, without acknowledgment, that the critics might blunder, by giving _nazardes_ to Seneca and Plutarch, while they imagined they tweaked his nose. Petrarch, who is not the inventor of that tender poetry of which he is the model, and Boccaccio, called the father of Italian novelists, have alike profited by a studious perusal of writers, who are now only read by those who have more curiosity than taste. Boiardo has imitated Pulci, and Ariosto, Boiardo. The madness of Orlando Furioso, though it wears, by its extravagance, a very original air, is only imitated from Sir Launcelot in the old romance of "Morte Arthur," with which, Warton observes, it agrees in every leading circumstance; and what is the Cardenio of Cervantes but the Orlando of Ariosto? Tasso has imitated the _Iliad_, and enriched his poem with episodes from the _Æneid_. It is curious to observe that even Dante, wild and original as he appears, when he meets Virgil in the Inferno, warmly expresses his gratitude for the many fine passages for which he was indebted to his works, and on which he says he had "long meditated." Molière and La Fontaine are considered to possess as much originality as any of the French writers; yet the learned Ménage calls Molière "un grand et habile picoreur;" and Boileau tells us that La Fontaine borrowed his style and matter from Marot and Rabelais, and took his subjects from Boccaccio, Poggius, and Ariosto. Nor was the eccentric Rabelais the inventor of most of his burlesque narratives; and he is a very close imitator of Folengo, the inventor of the macaronic poetry, and not a little indebted to the old _Facezie_ of the Italians. Indeed Marot, Villon, as well as those we have noticed, profited by the authors anterior to the age of Francis I. La Bruyère incorporates whole passages of Publius Syrus in his work, as the translator of the latter abundantly shows. To the "Turkish Spy" was Montesquieu beholden for his "Persian Letters," and a numerous crowd are indebted to Montesquieu. Corneille made a liberal use of Spanish literature; and the pure waters of Racine flowed from the fountains of Sophocles and Euripides.

This vein of imitation runs through the productions of our greatest authors. Vigneul de Marville compares some of the first writers to bankers who are rich with the assembled fortunes of individuals, and would be often ruined were they too hardly drawn on.

* * * * *

VERS DE SOCIÉTÉ

Pliny, in an epistle to Tuscus, advises him to intermix among his severer studies the softening charms of poetry; and notices a species of poetical composition which merits critical animadversion. I shall quote Pliny in the language of his elegant translator. He says, "These pieces commonly go under the title of poetical amusements; but these amusements have sometimes gained as much reputation to their authors as works of a more serious nature. It is surprising how much the mind is entertained and enlivened by these little poetical compositions, as they turn upon subjects of gallantry, satire, tenderness, politeness, and everything, in short, that concerns life, and the affairs of the world."

This species of poetry has been carried to its utmost perfection by the French. It has been discriminated by them, from the mass of poetry, under the apt title of "_Poésies légères,"_ and sometimes it has been significantly called "_Vers de Société_." The French writers have formed a body of this fugitive poetry which no European nation can rival; and to which both the language and genius appear to be greatly favourable.

The "_Poésies légères_" are not merely compositions of a light and gay turn, but are equally employed as a vehicle for tender and pathetic sentiment. They are never long, for they are consecrated to the amusement of society. The author appears to have composed them for his pleasure, not for his glory; and he charms his readers, because he seems careless of their approbation.

Every delicacy of sentiment must find its delicacy of expression, and every tenderness of thought must be softened by the tenderest tones. Nothing trite or trivial must enfeeble and chill the imagination; nor must the ear be denied its gratification by a rough or careless verse. In these works nothing is pardoned; a word may disturb, a line may destroy the charm.

The passions of the poet may form the subjects of his verse. It is in these writings he delineates himself; he reflects his tastes, his desires, his humours, his amours, and even his defects. In other poems the poet disappears under the feigned character he assumes; here alone he speaks, here he acts. He makes a confidant of the reader, interests him in his hopes and his sorrows; we admire the poet, and conclude with esteeming the man. The poem is the complaint of a lover, or a compliment to a patron, a vow of friendship, or a hymn of gratitude.

These poems have often, with great success, displayed pictures of manners; for here the poet colours the objects with all the hues of social life. Reflection must not be amplified, for these are pieces devoted to the fancy; a scene may be painted throughout the poem; a sentiment must be conveyed in a verse. In the "Grongar Hill" of Dyer we discover some strokes which may serve to exemplify this criticism. The poet, contemplating the distant landscape, observes--

A step methinks may pass the stream,
So little distant dangers seem;
So we mistake the future's face,
Eyed through Hope's deluding glass.

It must not be supposed that, because these poems are concise, they are of easy production; a poet's genius may not be diminutive because his pieces are so; nor must we call them, as a fine sonnet has been called, a difficult trifle. A circle may be very small, yet it may be as mathematically beautiful and perfect as a larger one. To such compositions we may apply the observation of an ancient critic, that though a little thing gives perfection, yet perfection is not a little thing.

The poet must be alike polished by an intercourse with the world as with the studies of taste; one to whom labour is negligence, refinement a science, and art a nature.

Genius will not always be sufficient to impart that grace of amenity. Many of the French nobility, who cultivated poetry, have therefore oftener excelled in these poetical amusements than more professed poets. France once delighted in the amiable and ennobled names of Nivernois, Boufflers, and St. Aignan; they have not been considered as unworthy rivals of Chaulieu and Bernard, of Voltaire and Gresset.

All the minor odes of Horace, and the entire Anacreon, are compositions of this kind; effusions of the heart, and pictures of the imagination, which were produced in the convivial, the amatory, and the pensive hour. Our nation has not always been successful in these performances; they have not been kindred to its genius. With Charles II. something of a gayer and more airy taste was communicated to our poetry, but it was desultory and incorrect. Waller, both by his habits and his genius, was well adapted to excel in this lighter poetry; and he has often attained the perfection which the state of the language then permitted. Prior has a variety of sallies; but his humour is sometimes gross, and his versification is sometimes embarrassed. He knew the value of these charming pieces, and he had drunk of this Burgundy in the vineyard itself. He has some translations, and some plagiarisms; but some of his verses to Chloe are eminently airy and pleasing. A diligent selection from our fugitive poetry might perhaps present us with many of these minor poems; but the "_Vers de Société_" form a species of poetical composition which may still be employed with great success.

* * * * *

THE GENIUS OF MOLIÈRE.

The genius of comedy not only changes with the age, but appears different among different people. Manners and customs not only vary among European nations, but are alike mutable from one age to another, even in the same people. These vicissitudes are often fatal to comic writers; our old school of comedy has been swept off the stage: and our present uniformity of manners has deprived our modern writers of those rich sources of invention when persons living more isolated, society was less monotonous; and Jonson and Shadwell gave us what they called "_the humours_,"--that is, the individual or particular characteristics of men.[A]

[Footnote A: Aubrey has noted this habit of our two greatest dramatists, when speaking of Shakspeare he says--"The humour of the constable in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, he happened to take at Grendon in Bucks; which is the roade from London to Stratford; and there was living that constable in 1642, when I first came to Oxon. Ben Jonson and he did gather humours of men dayly, wherever they came." Shadwell, whose best plays were produced in the reign of Charles II., was a professed imitator of the style of Jonson; and so closely described the manners of his day that he was frequently accused of direct personalities, and obliged to alter one of his plays, _The Humorists_, to avoid an outcry raised against him. Sir Walter Scott has recorded, in the Preface to his "Fortunes of Nigel," the obligation he was under to Shadwell's comedy, _The Squire of Alsatia_, for the vivid description it enabled him to give of the lawless denizens of the old Sanctuary of Whitefriars.--ED.]

But however tastes and modes of thinking may be inconstant, and customs and manners alter, at bottom the groundwork is Nature's, in every production of comic genius. A creative genius, guided by an unerring instinct, though he draws after the contemporary models of society, will retain his pre-eminence beyond his own age and his own nation; what was temporary and local disappears, but what appertains to universal nature endures. The scholar dwells on the grotesque pleasantries of the sarcastic Aristophanes, though the Athenian manners, and his exotic personages, have long vanished.

MOLIÈRE was a creator in the _art of comedy_; and although his personages were the contemporaries of Louis the Fourteenth, and his manners, in the critical acceptation of the term, local and temporary, yet his admirable genius opened that secret path of Nature, which is so rarely found among the great names of the most literary nations. CERVANTES remains single in Spain; in England SHAKSPEARE is a consecrated name; and centuries may pass away before the French people shall witness another MOLIÈRE.

The history of this comic poet is the tale of powerful genius creating itself amidst the most adverse elements. We have the progress of that self-education which struck out an untried path of its own, from the time Molière had not yet acquired his art to the glorious days when he gave his country a Plautus in his farce, a Terence in his composition, and a Menander in his moral truths. But the difficulties overcome, and the disappointments incurred, his modesty and his confidence, and, what was not less extraordinary, his own domestic life in perpetual conflict with his character, open a more strange career, in some respects, than has happened to most others of the high order of his genius.

It was long the fate of Molière to experience that restless importunity of genius which feeds on itself, till it discovers the pabulum it seeks. Molière not only suffered that tormenting impulse, but it was accompanied by the unhappiness of a mistaken direction. And this has been the lot of some who for many years have thus been lost to themselves and to the public.

A man born among the obscure class of the people, thrown among the itinerant companies of actors--for France had not yet a theatre--occupied to his last hours by too devoted a management of his own dramatic corps; himself, too, an original actor in the characters by himself created; with no better models of composition than the Italian farces _all' improvista_, and whose fantastic gaiety he, to the last, loved too well; becomes the personal favourite of the most magnificent monarch, and the intimate of the most refined circles. Thoughtful observer of these new scenes and new personages, he sports with the affected _précieuses_ and the flattering _marquises_ as with the _naïve_ ridiculousness of the _bourgeois,_ and the wild pride and egotism of the _parvenus_; and with more profound designs and a hardier hand unmasks the impostures of false _pretenders_ in all professions. His scenes, such was their verity, seem but the reflections of his reminiscences. His fertile facility when touching on transient follies; his wide comprehension, and his moralising vein, in his more elevated comedy, display, in this painter of man, the poet and the philosopher, and, above all, the great moral satirist. Molière has shown that the most successful reformer of the manners of a people is a great comic poet.

The youth _Pocquelin_--this was his family name--was designed by the _tapissier_, his father, to be the heir of the hereditary honours of an ancient standing, which had maintained the Pocquelins through four or five generations by the articles of a furnishing upholsterer. His grandfather was a haunter of the small theatres of that day, and the boy often accompanied this venerable critic of the family to his favourite recreations. The actors were usually more excellent than their pieces; some had carried the mimetic art to the perfection of eloquent gesticulation. In these loose scenes of inartificial and burlesque pieces was the genius of Molière cradled and nursed. The changeful scenes of the _Théâtre de Bourgogne_ deeply busied the boy's imagination, to the great detriment of the _tapisserie_ of all the Pocquelins.

The father groaned, the grandfather clapped, the boy remonstrated till, at fourteen years of age, he was consigned, as "un mauvais sujet" (so his father qualified him), to a college of the Jesuits at Paris, where the author of the "Tartuffe" passed five years, studying--for the bar!

Philosophy and logic were waters which he deeply drank; and sprinklings of his college studies often pointed the satire of his more finished comedies. To ridicule false learning and false taste one must be intimate with the true.

On his return to the metropolis the old humour broke out at the representation of the inimitable Scaramouch of the Italian theatre. The irresistible passion drove him from his law studies, and cast young Pocquelin among a company of amateur actors, whose fame soon enabled them not to play gratuitously. Pocquelin was the manager and the modeller, for under his studious eye this company were induced to imitate Nature with the simplicity the poet himself wrote.

The prejudices of the day, both civil and religious, had made these private theatres--no great national theatre yet existing--the resource only of the idler, the dissipated, and even of the unfortunate in society. The youthful adventurer affectionately offered a free admission to the dear Pocquelins. They rejected their _entrées_ with horror, and sent their genealogical tree, drawn afresh, to shame the truant who had wantoned into the luxuriance of genius. To save the honour of the parental upholsterers Pocquelin concealed himself under the immortal name of Molière.

The future creator of French comedy had now passed his thirtieth year, and as yet his reputation was confined to his own dramatic corps--a pilgrim in the caravan of ambulatory comedy. He had provided several temporary novelties. Boileau regretted the loss of one, _Le Docteur Amoureux;_ and in others we detect the abortive conceptions of some of his future pieces. The severe judgment of Molière suffered his skeletons to perish; but, when he had discovered the art of comic writing, with equal discernment he resuscitated them.

Not only had Molière not yet discovered the true bent of his genius, but, still more unfortunate, he had as greatly mistaken it as when he proposed turning _avocat_, for he imagined that his most suitable character was tragic. He wrote a tragedy, and he acted in a tragedy; the tragedy he composed was condemned at Bordeaux; the mortified poet flew to Grenoble; still the unlucky tragedy haunted his fancy; he looked on it with paternal eyes, in which there were tears. Long after, when Racine, a youth, offered him a very unactable tragedy,[A] Molière presented him with his own: --"Take this, for I am convinced that the subject is highly tragic, notwithstanding my failure." The great dramatic poet of France opened his career by recomposing the condemned tragedy of the comic wit in _La Thébaïde._ In the illusion that he was a great tragic actor, deceived by his own susceptibility, though his voice denied the tones of passion, he acted in one of Corneille's tragedies, and quite allayed the alarm of a rival company on the announcement. It was not, however, so when the author-actor vivified one of his own native personages; then, inimitably comic, every new representation seemed to be a new creation.

[Footnote A: The tragedy written by Racine was called _Théagenè et Chariclée_, and founded on the tale by Heliodorus. It was the first attempt of its author, and submitted by him to Molière, while director of the Theatre of the Palais Royal; the latter had no favourable impression of its success if produced, but suggested _La Thébaïde_ as a subject for his genius, and advanced the young poet 100 louis while engaged on his work, which was successfully produced in 1664.--ED.]

It is a remarkable feature, though not perhaps a singular one, in the character of this great comic writer, that he was one of the most serious of men, and even of a melancholic temperament. One of his lampooners wrote a satirical comedy on the comic poet, where he figures as "Molière hypochondre." Boileau, who knew him intimately, happily characterised Molière as _le Contemplateur_. This deep pensiveness is revealed in his physiognomy.

The genius of Molière, long undiscovered by himself, in its first attempts in a higher walk did not move alone; it was crutched by imitation, and it often deigned to plough with another's heifer. He copied whole scenes from Italian comedies and plots from Italian novelists: his sole merit was their improvement. The great comic satirist, who hereafter was to people the stage with a dramatic crowd who were to live on to posterity, had not yet struck at that secret vein of originality--the fairy treasure which one day was to cast out such a prodigality of invention. His two first comedies, _L'Etourdi_ and _Le Dépit Amoureux_, which he had only ventured to bring out in a provincial theatre, were grafted on Italian and Spanish comedy. Nothing more original offered to his imagination than the Roman, the Italian, and the Spanish drama; the cunning adroit slave of Terence; the tricking, bustling _Gracioso_ of modern Spain; old fathers, the dupes of some scapegrace, or of their own senile follies, with lovers sighing at cross-purposes. The germ of his future powers may, indeed, be discovered in these two comedies, for insensibly to himself he had fallen into some scenes of natural simplicity. In _L'Etourdi,_ Mascarille, "le roi des serviteurs," which Molière himself admirably personated, is one of those defunct characters of the Italian comedy no longer existing in society; yet, like our Touchstone, but infinitely richer, this new ideal personage still delights by the fertility of his expedients and his perpetual and vigorous gaiety. In _Le Dépit Amoureux_ is the exquisite scene of the quarrel and reconciliation of the lovers. In this fine scene, though perhaps but an amplification of the well-known ode of Horace, _Donec gratus eram tibi_, Molière consulted his own feelings, and betrayed his future genius.

It was after an interval of three or four years that the provincial celebrity of these comedies obtained a representation at Paris; their success was decisive. This was an evidence of public favour which did not accompany Molière's more finished productions, which were so far unfortunate that they were more intelligible to the few; in fact, the first comedies of Molière were not written above the popular taste; the spirit of true comedy, in a profound knowledge of the heart of man, and in the delicate discriminations of individual character, was yet unknown. Molière was satisfied to excel his predecessors, but he had not yet learned his art.

The rising poet was now earnestly sought after; a more extended circle of society now engaged his contemplative habits. He looked around on living scenes no longer through the dim spectacles of the old comedy, and he projected a new species, which was no longer to depend on its conventional grotesque personages and its forced incidents; he aspired to please a more critical audience by making his dialogue the conversation of society, and his characters its portraits.

Introduced to the literary coterie of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, a new view opened on the favoured poet. To occupy a seat in this envied circle was a distinction in society. The professed object of this reunion of nobility and literary persons, at the hôtel of the Marchioness of Rambouillet, was to give a higher tone to all France, by the cultivation of the language, the intellectual refinement of their compositions, and last, but not least, to inculcate the extremest delicacy of manners. The recent civil dissensions had often violated the urbanity of the court, and a grossness prevailed in conversation which offended the scrupulous. This critical circle was composed of both sexes. They were to be the arbiters of taste, the legislators of criticism, and, what was less tolerable, the models of genius. No work was to be stamped into currency which bore not the mint-mark of the hôtel.

In the annals of fashion and literature no coterie has presented a more instructive and amusing exhibition of the abuses of learning, and the aberrations of ill-regulated imaginations, than the Hôtel de Rambouillet, by its ingenious absurdities. Their excellent design to refine the language, the manners, and even morality itself, branched out into every species of false refinement; their science ran into trivial pedantries, their style into a fantastic jargon, and their spiritualising delicacy into the very puritanism of prudery. Their frivolous distinction between the mind and the heart, which could not always be made to go together, often perplexed them as much as their own jargon, which was not always intelligible, even to the initiated. The French Academy is said to have originated in the first meetings of the Hôtel de Rambouillet; and it is probable that some sense and taste, in its earliest days, may have visited this society, for we do not begin such refined follies without some show of reason.

The local genius of the hôtel was feminine, though the most glorious men of the literature of France were among its votaries. The great magnet was the famed Mademoiselle Scudery, whose voluminous romances were their code; and it is supposed these tomes preserve some of their lengthened _conversaziones_. In the novel system of gallantry of this great inventor of amorous and metaphysical "twaddle," the ladies were to be approached as beings nothing short of celestial paragons; they were addressed in a language not to be found in any dictionary but their own, and their habits were more fantastic than their language: a sort of domestic chivalry formed their etiquette. Their baptismal names were to them profane, and their assumed ones were drawn from the folio romances--those Bibles of love. At length all ended in a sort of Freemasonry of gallantry, which had its graduated orders, and whoever was not admitted into the mysteries was not permitted to prolong his existence--that is, his residence among them. The apprenticeship of the craft was to be served under certain _Introducers to Ruelles_.

Their card of invitation was either a rondeau or an enigma, which served as a subject to open conversation. The lady received her visitors reposing on that throne of beauty, a bed placed in an alcove; the toilet was magnificently arranged. The space between the bed and the wall was called the _Ruelle_[A], the diminutive of _la Rue_; and in this narrow street, or "Fop's alley," walked the favoured. But the chevalier who was graced by the honorary title of _l'Alcoviste,_ was at once master of the household and master of the ceremonies. His character is pointedly defined by St. Evremond, as "a lover whom the _Précieuse_ is to love without enjoyment, and to enjoy in good earnest her husband with aversion." The scene offered no indecency to such delicate minds, and much less the impassioned style which passed between _les chères_, as they called themselves. Whatever offered an idea, of what their jargon denominated _charnelle_, was treason and exile. Years passed ere the hand of the elected maiden was kissed by its martyr. The celebrated Julia d'Angennes was beloved by the Duke de Montausier, but fourteen years elapsed ere she would yield a "yes." When the faithful Julia was no longer blooming, the Alcoviste duke gratefully took up the remains of her beauty.

[Footnote A: In a portion of the ancient Louvre, still preserved amid the changes to which it has been subjected, is the old wainscoted bedroom of the great Henry IV., with the carved recess, and the _ruelle_, as described above: it is a most interesting fragment of regal domestic life.--ED.]

Their more curious project was the reform of the style of conversation, to purify its grossness, and invent novel terms for familiar objects. Ménage drew up a "Petition of the Dictionaries," which, by their severity of taste, had nearly become superannuated. They succeeded better with the _marchandes des modes_ and the jewellers, furnishing a vocabulary excessively _précieuse_, by which people bought their old wares with new names. At length they were so successful in their neology, that with great difficulty they understood one another. It is, however, worth observation, that the orthography invented by the _précieuses_--who, for their convenience, rejected all the redundant letters in words--was adopted, and is now used; and their pride of exclusiveness in society introduced the singular term _s'encanailler,_ to describe a person who haunted low company, while their morbid purity had ever on their lips the word _obscénité_, terms which Molière ridicules, but whose expressiveness has preserved them in the language.

Ridiculous as some of these extravagances now appear to us, they had been so closely interwoven with the elegance of the higher ranks, and so intimately associated with genius and literature, that the veil of fashion consecrated almost the mystical society, since we find among its admirers the most illustrious names of France.

Into this elevated and artificial circle of society our youthful and unsophisticated poet was now thrown, with a mind not vitiated by any prepossessions of false taste, studious of nature and alive to the ridiculous. But how was the comic genius to strike at the follies of his illustrious friends--to strike, but not to wound? A provincial poet and actor to enter hostilely into the sacred precincts of these Exclusives? Tormented by his genius Molière produced _Les Précieuses Ridicules_, but admirably parried, in his preface, any application to them, by averring that it was aimed at their imitators--their spurious mimics in the country. The _Précieuses Ridicules_ was acted in the presence of the assembled Hôtel de Rambouillet with immense applause. A central voice from the pit, anticipating the host of enemies and the fame of the reformer of comedy, exclaimed, "Take courage, Molière, this is true comedy." The learned Ménage was the only member of the society who had the good sense to detect the drift; he perceived the snake in the grass. "We must now," said this sensible pedant (in a remote allusion to the fate of idolatry and the introduction of Christianity) to the poetical pedant, Chapelain, "follow the counsel which St. Rémi gave to Clovis--we must burn all that we adored, and adore what we have burned." The success of the comedy was universal; the company doubled their prices; the country gentry flocked to witness the marvellous novelty, which far exposed that false taste, that romance-impertinence, and that sickly affectation which had long disturbed the quiet of families. Cervantes had not struck more adroitly at Spanish rodomontade.

At this universal reception of the _Précieuses Ridicules_, Molière, it is said, exclaimed--"I need no longer study Plautus and Terence, nor poach in the fragments of Menander; I have only to study the world." It may be doubtful whether the great comic satirist at that moment caught the sudden revelation of his genius, as he did subsequently in his _Tartuffe_, his _Misanthrope_, his _Bourgeois Gentilhomme_, and others. The _Précieuses Ridicules_ was the germ of his more elaborate _Femmes Savantes_, which was not produced till after an interval of twelve years.

Molière returned to his old favourite _canevas_, or plots of Italian farces and novels, and Spanish comedies, which, being always at hand, furnished comedies of intrigue. _L'Ecole des Maris_ is an inimitable model of this class.

But comedies which derive their chief interest from the ingenious mechanism of their plots, however poignant the delight of the artifice of the _denouement_, are somewhat like an epigram, once known, the brilliant point is blunted by repetition. This is not the fate of those representations of men's actions, passions, and manners, in the more enlarged sphere of human nature, where an eternal interest is excited, and will charm on the tenth repetition.

No! Molière had not yet discovered his true genius; he was not yet emancipated from his old seductions. A rival company was reputed to have the better actors for tragedy, and Molière resolved to compose an heroic drama on the passion of jealousy--a favourite one on which he was incessantly ruminating. _Don Garcie de Navarre, ou Le Prince Jaloux_, the hero personated by himself, terminated by the hisses of the audience.

The fall of the _Prince Jaloux_ was nearly fatal to the tender reputation of the poet and the actor. The world became critical: the marquises, and the précieuses, and recently the bourgeois, who were sore from _Sganarelle, ou Le Cocu Imaginaire_, were up in arms; and the rival theatre maliciously raised the halloo, flattering themselves that the comic genius of their dreaded rival would be extinguished by the ludicrous convulsed hiccough to which Molière was liable in his tragic tones, but which he adroitly managed in his comic parts.

But the genius of Molière was not to be daunted by cabals, nor even injured by his own imprudence. _Le Prince Jaloux_ was condemned in February, 1661, and the same year produced _L'Ecole des Maris_ and _Les Fâcheux_. The happy genius of the poet opened on his Zoiluses a series of dramatic triumphs.

Foreign critics--Tiraboschi and Schlegel--have depreciated the Frenchman's invention, by insinuating that were all that Molière borrowed taken from him, little would remain of his own. But they were not aware of his dramatic creation, even when he appropriated the slight inventions of others; they have not distinguished the eras of the genius of Molière, and the distinct classes of his comedies. Molière had the art of amalgamating many distinct inventions of others into a single inimitable whole. Whatever might be the herbs and the reptiles thrown into the mystical caldron, the incantation of genius proved to be truly magical.

Facility and fecundity may produce inequality, but, when a man of genius works, they are imbued with a raciness which the anxious diligence of inferior minds can never yield. Shakspeare, probably, poured forth many scenes in this spirit. The multiplicity of the pieces of Molière, their different merits, and their distinct classes--all written within the space of twenty years--display, if any poet ever did, this wonder-working faculty. The truth is, that few of his comedies are finished works; he never satisfied himself, even in his most applauded productions. Necessity bound him to furnish novelties for his theatre; he rarely printed any work. _Les Fâcheux_, an admirable series of scenes, in three acts, and in verse, was "planned, written, rehearsed, and represented in a single fortnight." Many of his dramatic effusions were precipitated on the stage; the humorous scenes of _Monsieur de Pourceaugnac_ were thrown out to enliven a royal fête.

This versatility and felicity of composition made everything with Molière a subject for comedy. He invented two novelties, such as the stage had never before witnessed. Instead of a grave defence from the malice of his critics, and the flying gossip of the court circle, Molière found out the art of congregating the public to _The Quarrels of Authors_. He dramatised his critics. In a comedy without a plot, and in scenes which seemed rather spoken than written, and with characters more real than personated, he displayed his genius by collecting whatever had been alleged to depreciate it; and _La Critique de L'Ecole des Femmes_ is still a delightful production. This singular drama resembles the sketch-book of an artist, the _croquis_ of portraits--the loose hints of thoughts, many of which we discover were more fully delineated in his subsequent pieces. With the same rapid conception he laid hold of his embarrassments to furnish dramatic novelties as expeditiously as the king required. Louis XIV. was himself no indifferent critic, and more than once suggested an incident or a character to his favourite poet. In _L'Impromptu de Versailles_, Molière appears in his own person, and in the midst of his whole company, with all the irritable impatience of a manager who had no piece ready. Amidst this green-room bustle Molière is advising, reprimanding, and imploring, his "ladies and gentlemen." The characters in this piece are, in fact, the actors themselves, who appear under their own names; and Molière himself reveals many fine touches of his own poetical character, as well as his managerial. The personal pleasantries on his own performers, and the hints for plots, and the sketches of character which the poet incidentally throws out, form a perfect dramatic novelty. Some of these he himself subsequently adopted, and others have been followed up by some dramatists without rivalling Molière. The _Figaro_ of Beaumarchais is a descendant of the _Mascarille_ of Molière; but the glory of rivalling Molière was reserved for our own stage. Sheridan's _Critic, or a Tragedy Rehearsed,_ is a congenial dramatic satire with these two pieces of Molière.

The genius of Molière had now stepped out of the restricted limits of the old comedy; he now looked on the moving world with other eyes, and he pursued the ridiculous in society. These fresher studies were going on at all hours, and every object was contemplated with a view to comedy. His most vital characters have been traced to living originals, and some of his most ludicrous scenes had occurred in reality before they delighted the audience. Monsieur Jourdain had expressed his astonishment, "qu'il faisait de la prose," in the Count de Soissons, one of the uneducated noblemen devoted to the chase. The memorable scene between Trissotin and Vadius, their mutual compliments terminating in their mutual contempt, had been rehearsed by their respective authors--the Abbé Cottin and Ménage. The stultified booby of Limoges, _Monsieur de Pourceaugnac_, and the mystified millionaire, _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_, were copied after life, as was _Sganarelle_, in _Le Médecin malgré lui_. The portraits in that gallery of dramatic paintings, _Le Misanthrope_, have names inscribed under them; and the immortal _Tartuffe_ was a certain bishop of Autun. No dramatist has conceived with greater variety the female character; the women of Molière have a distinctness of feature, and are touched with a freshness of feeling. Molière studied nature, and his comic humour is never checked by that unnatural wit where the poet, the more he discovers himself, the farther he removes himself from the personage of his creation. The quickening spell which hangs over the dramas of Molière is this close attention to nature, wherein he greatly resembles our Shakspeare, for all springs from its source. His unobtrusive genius never occurs to us in following up his characters, and a whole scene leaves on our mind a complete but imperceptible effect.

The style of Molière has often been censured by the fastidiousness of his native critics, as _bas_ and _du style familier_. This does not offend the foreigner, who is often struck by its simplicity and vigour. Molière preferred the most popular and naïve expressions, as well as the most natural incidents, to a degree which startled the morbid delicacy of fashion and fashionable critics. He had frequent occasions to resist their petty remonstrances; and whenever Molière introduced an incident, or made an allusion of which he knew the truth, and which with him had a settled meaning, this master of human life trusted to his instinct and his art.

This pure and simple taste, ever rare at Paris, was the happy portion of the genius of this Frenchman. Hence he delighted to try his farcical pieces, for we cannot imagine that they were his more elevated comedies, on his old maid-servant. This maid, probably, had a keen relish for comic humour, for once when Molière read to her the comedy of another writer as his own, she soon detected the trick, declaring that it could not be her master's. Hence, too, our poet invited even children to be present on such rehearsals, and at certain points would watch their emotions. Hence, too, in his character of manager, he taught his actors to study nature. An actress, apt to speak freely, told him, "You torment us all; but you never speak to my husband." This man, originally a candle-snuffer, was a perfect child of nature, and acted the Thomas Diaforius, in _Le Malade Imaginaire_. Molière replied, "I should be sorry to say a word to him; I should spoil his acting. Nature has provided him with better lessons to perform his parts than any which I could give him." We may imagine Shakspeare thus addressing his company, had the poet been also the manager.

A remarkable incident in the history of the genius of Molière is the frequent recurrence of the poet to the passion of jealousy. The "jaundice in the lover's eye," he has painted with every tint of his imagination. "The green-eyed monster" takes all shapes, and is placed in every position. Solemn, or gay, or satirical, he sometimes appears in agony, but often scorns to make its "trifles light as air," only ridiculous as a source of consolation. Was _Le Contemplateur_ comic in his melancholy, or melancholy in his comic humour?

The truth is, that the poet himself had to pass through those painful stages which he has dramatised. The domestic life of Molière was itself very dramatic; it afforded Goldoni a comedy of five acts, to reveal the secrets of the family circle of Molière; and l'Abbate Chiari, an Italian novelist and playwright, has taken for a comic subject, _Molière, the Jealous Husband_.

The French, in their "petite morale" on conjugal fidelity, appear so tolerant as to leave little sympathy for the real sufferer. Why should they else have treated domestic jealousy as a foible for ridicule, rather than a subject for deep passion? Their tragic drama exhibits no Othello, nor their comedy a Kitely, or a _Suspicious Husband_. Molière, while his own heart was the victim, conformed to the national taste, by often placing the object on its comic side. Domestic jealousy is a passion which admits of a great diversity of subjects, from the tragic or the pathetic, to the absurd and the ludicrous. We have them all in Molière. Molière often was himself "Le Cocu Imaginaire;" he had been in the position of the guardian in _L'Ecole des Maris_. Like Arnolphe in _L'Ecole des Femmes_, he had taken on himself to rear a young wife who played the same part, though with less innocence; and like the _Misanthrope_, where the scene between Alceste and Celimène is "une des plus fortes qui existant au théâtre," he was deeply entangled in the wily cruelties of scornful coquetry, and we know that at times he suffered in "the hell of lovers" the torments of his own _Jealous Prince_.

When this poet cast his fate with a troop of comedians, as the manager, and whom he never would abandon, when at the height of his fortune, could he avoid accustoming himself to the relaxed habits of that gay and sorrowful race, who, "of imagination all compact," too often partake of the passions they inspire in the scene? The first actress, Madame Béjard, boasted that, with the exception of the poet, she had never dispensed her personal favours but to the aristocracy. The constancy of Molière was interrupted by another actress, Du Parc; beautiful but insensible, she only tormented the poet, and furnished him with some severe lessons for the coquetry of his Celimène, in _Le Misanthrope_. The facility of the transition of the tender passion had more closely united the susceptible poet to Mademoiselle de Brie. But Madame Béjard, not content to be the chief actress, and to hold her partnership in "the properties," to retain her ancient authority over the poet, introduced, suddenly, a blushing daughter, some say a younger sister, who had hitherto resided at Avignon, and who she declared was the offspring of the count of Modena, by a secret marriage. Armande Béjard soon attracted the paternal attentions of the poet. She became the secret idol of his retired moments, while he fondly thought that he could mould a young mind, in its innocence, to his own sympathies. The mother and the daughter never agreed. Armande sought his protection; and one day rushing into his study, declared that she would marry her friend. The elder Béjard freely consented to avenge herself on De Brie. De Brie was indulgent, though "the little creature," she observed, was to be yoked to one old enough to be her father. Under the same roof were now heard the voices of the three females, and Molière meditating scenes of feminine jealousies.

Molière was fascinated by his youthful wife; her lighter follies charmed: two years riveted the connubial chains. Molière was a husband who was always a lover. The actor on the stage was the very man he personated. Mademoiselle Molière, as she was called by the public, was the Lucile in _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_. With what fervour the poet feels her neglect! with what eagerness he defends her from the animadversions of the friend who would have dissolved the spell!

The poet was doomed to endure more poignant sorrows than slights. Mademoiselle had the art of persuading Molière that he was only his own "cocu imaginaire;" but these domestic embarrassments multiplied. Mademoiselle, reckless of the distinguished name she bore, while she gratified her personal vanity by a lavish expenditure, practised that artful coquetry which attracted a crowd of loungers. Molière found no repose in his own house, and retreated to a country-house, where, however, his restless jealousy often drove him back to scenes which he trembled to witness. At length came the last argument of outraged matrimony--he threatened confinement. To prevent a public rupture, Molière consented to live under the same roof, and only to meet at the theatre. Weak only in love, however divided from his wife, Molière remained her perpetual lover. He said, in confidence, "I am born with every disposition to tenderness. When I married, she was too young to betray any evil inclinations. My studies were devoted to her, but I soon discovered her indifference. I ascribed it to her temper; her foolish passion for Count Guiche made too much noise to leave me even this apparent tranquillity. I resolved to live with her as an honourable man, whose reputation does not depend on the bad conduct of his wife. My kindness has not changed her, but my compassion has increased. Those who have not experienced these delicate emotions have never truly loved. In her absence her image is before me; in her presence, I am deprived of all reflection; I have no longer eyes for her defects; I only view her amiable. Is not this the last extreme of folly? And are you not surprised that I, reasoning as I do, am only sensible of the weakness which I cannot throw off?"

Few men of genius have left in their writings deeper impressions of their personal feelings than Molière. With strong passions in a feeble frame, he had duped his imagination that, like another Pygmalion, he would create a woman by his own art. In silence and agony he tasted the bitter fruits of the disordered habits of the life of a comedian, a manager, and a poet. His income was splendid; but he himself was a stranger to dissipation. He was a domestic man, of a pensive and even melancholy temperament. Silent and reserved, unless in conversation with that more intimate circle whose literature aided his genius, or whose friendship consoled for his domestic disturbances, his habits were minutely methodical; the strictest order was observed throughout his establishment; the hours of dinner, of writing, of amusement, were allotted, and the slightest derangement in his own apartment excited a morbid irritability which would interrupt his studies for whole days.

Who, without this tale of Molière, could conjecture, that one skilled in the workings of our nature would have ventured on the perilous experiment of equalizing sixteen years against forty--weighing roses against grey locks--to convert a wayward coquette, through her capricious womanhood, into an attached wife? Yet, although Mademoiselle could cherish no personal love for the intellectual being, and hastened to change the immortal name she bore for a more terrestrial man, she seems to have been impressed by a perfect conviction of his creative genius. When the Archbishop of Paris, in the pride of prelacy, refused the rites of sepulture to the corpse of Molière THE ACTOR, it was her voice which reminded the world of Molière THE POET, exclaiming--"Have they denied a grave to the man to whom Greece would have raised an altar!"

* * * * *

THE SENSIBILITY OF RACINE.

The "Memoirs of the poet Racine," composed by his son, who was himself no contemptible poet, may be classed among those precious pieces of biography so delightful to the philosopher who studies human nature, and the literary man whose curiosity is interested in the history of his republic. Such, works are rare, and rank in merit next to autobiographies. Such biographical sketches, like Boswell's of Johnson, contain what we often regret is wanting in the more regular life of a professed biographer. These desultory memoirs interest by their warmth, their more personal acquaintance with the hero, and abound with those minuter strokes which give so much life to the individual character.

The prominent feature in the character of Racine was an excessive tenderness of feeling; his profound sensibility even to its infirmity, the tears which would cover his face, and the agony in his heart, were perhaps national. But if this sensibility produced at times the softest emotions, if it made him the poet of lovers, and even the poet of imagination, it also rendered him too feelingly alive to criticism, it embittered his days with too keen a perception of the domestic miseries which all men must alike undergo.

During a dramatic performance at St. Cyr, the youthful representative of Esther suddenly forgot her part; the agitated poet exclaimed, "Oh, mademoiselle, you are ruining my piece!" Terrified at this reprimand, the young actress wept; the poet flew to her, wiped away her tears, and with contagious sympathy shed tears himself. "I do not hesitate," says Louis Racine, "to relate such minute circumstances, because this facility of shedding tears shows the goodness of the heart, according to the observation of the ancients--

[Greek:] "agathohi d aridakryes andres."