MOLIERE, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, the most celebrated comic writer of France, was born at Paris on the 15th of January 1622. He was the son of Jean Poquelin, a merchant-upholsterer, and of Marie Cressé, whose father followed the same calling. Being designed by his parents to succeed them in their business, he was early employed in assisting them; and, at the age of fourteen, all he had acquired was a little reading, writing, and arithmetic. Fortunately he had a grandfather, who, being a lover of plays, used sometimes to take the boy alongst with him to the Hôtel de Bourgoyne. This was sufficient to inspire him with a distaste for his situation, and a desire to acquire that instruction of which he felt that he had been deprived. With much difficulty he prevailed on his parents to permit him to study, and he was sent as a day-scholar to the College of Clermont. Circumstances the most favourable to his fortune and his genius attended him in that seminary. He had as his class-fellow Armand de Bourbon, Prince of Conti, whose affectionate protection became afterwards useful to him upon more than one occasion. Another who followed the same course of study was Chapelle, the natural son of Lhuillier, a ric' magistrate, who had appointed as his preceptor the celebrated Gassendi, and associated with him as the companion of his studies, Bernier, then a poor child, but afterwards famous for his travels in India. Gassendi, struck with the happy disposition of young Poquelin, admitted him to the private lessons which he gave to his two pupils; a favour which was equally enjoyed by Cyrano de Bergerac, who did not profit quite so much by the opportunity thus afforded him.

From the conversations of Gassendi, who had combated, and often with success, Aristotle and Descartes, the two great rival powers of ancient and modern philosophy, Poquelin contracted the habit of not submitting his reason to any other authority than that of demonstrated truth. The ethical system of Epicurus, almost equally calumniated by his adversaries and his followers, was that which Poquelin then adopted, and which he ever afterwards professed. But his studies were destined soon to experience an interruption. Poquelin the father held the office of domestic upholsterer to the king; but being prevented by bad health from discharging its duties, the son, who had obtained the reversion of the situation, was obliged to attend Louis XIII. in his journey to Narbonne in the year 1641. Having returned with the court to Paris, his passion for the stage, which had first induced him to study, revived more strongly than ever. It has been said by some that he studied law for a time, and that he was even called to the bar. But this seems at least doubtful; or, if true, he must soon have abandoned his legal studies for those more attractive and fascinating pursuits in which he afterwards attained unrivalled eminence, and became the restorer of genuine comedy in France. The passion of Cardinal Richelieu for dramatic amusements had communicated itself to the nation; and everywhere in the capital private theatres were opened, where Rotrou and Desmarets, Corneille and Scu-déry, were indiscriminately applauded. Poquelin assembled several young persons who had, or thought they had, a talent for declamation; and this society, which soon eclipsed all the others, was called the Illustre Theatre. It was then that Poquelin resolved to follow his vocation, assumed the name of Molière, in order, as it should seem, that his parents might not have to reproach him with prostituting their name on the boards of a playhouse.

But the troubles of the Fronde interrupted the amusements of the theatre, and during this ridiculous tempest Molière disappeared; nor did he show himself again until the royal authority had reconquered its sway by transactions more powerful than arms. In this interval, extending from 1648 to 1652, he was probably occupied with the composition of some of those pieces which were afterwards exhibited to the public. His first regular production was the Etourdi, or Blunderer, which was represented at Lyons in 1653. Upon his arrival in that city, he had found another company of comedians, whom the public, however, promptly abandoned for his, and the principal performers of which then attached themselves to his fortunes, never more to separate. With this reinforcement he repaired to Beziers, where his old class-fellow, the Prince of Conti, was holding the states of Languedoc. Being specially instructed to amuse the city, the assembly, and the prince, he brought out in succession all the pieces in his little repository, which had just been enriched with the Depit Amoureux. The prince, delighted with his wit and his zeal, offered to employ him as his secretary; but this he declined, observing, “I am a tolerable author, but I should make a very bad secretary.” Having continued for some time his strolling performances in the south of France, he at length approached the capital, to which he was attracted by the secret hope of better fortune and greater fame; and when he actually returned thither in the year 1658, he again obtained the protection of his august college-companion, and through it acquired still more elevated patronage, name [7:15:322]ly, that of Monsieur, brother of the king, and also the favour of the king himself. It was under their auspices, and in their presence, that, on the 3d of November 1658, he opened that theatre which, in less than fifteen years, he enriched with more than thirty works, the half of which are masterpieces. Paris, which was now appealed to, confirmed the judgment of the provinces, and in the capital the Etourdi and the Dépit Amoureux were as successful as they had been in the south of France. On entering upon this new career, he had no other guide than his genius; but it proved all-sufficient.

The Précieuses Ridicules appeared in 1659, and at once struck with consternation those haughty coteries where affectation perverted at once the understanding and the feelings, and whose jargon infested literature as well as society. This was succeeded by the Cocu Imaginaire, in which he combated Scarron with his own weapons, and succeeded, by manners more true, a gaiety more natural, and a buffoonery in better taste. Don Garcie de Navarre, a heroic comedy, imitated from the Spanish, was but coldly received; but the Ecole des Maris, a comedy at once of manners, character, and intrigue, and of which the Adelphi of Terence had furnished the fundamental idea, was completely successful. The Fâcheux was produced the same year, 1661, and was played at Vaux in presence of Louis XIV. a few days before that monarch caused to be arrested, and imprisoned for the rest of his life, the minister who then entertained him. The Ecole des Femmes appeared in 1662, and, as might have been expected, excited a violent sensation, during the prevalence of which the author was assailed on all sides, and with every species of abuse; but in his Critique de l’ Ecole des Femmes, which came out in 1663, he took ample vengeance on the envious fools and prudes who had leagued together to vilify that masterpiece. The same year he produced the Impromptu de Versailles, by way of reprisal on Boursault, who had attacked him in an impudently satirical piece, entitled Le Portrait du Peintre. The Marriage Force, 1664, is drawn from Rabelais, whom Molière, like La Fontaine, freely put in requisition; and, the same year, he composed the Princesse (IElide, the subject of which belongs to the Spanish theatre. In 1665, Molière produced his Festin de Pierre, and also EAmour Médecin, which last, he says, was proposed, written, learned, and represented in five days. The following year he brought out first the Misanthrope, and next Le Médécin malgré lui, the subject of which is taken from one of the old Fabliaux.

In 1677, besides the Fagotier, and Le Sicilien, ou l’Amour Peintre, he conceived and executed the Tartuffe, one of the boldest and best of his compositions. The idea of bringing upon the stage religious hypocrisy, in an age when devotion was the mode, certainly evinced no ordinary hardihood on the part of the incomparable writer; but, notwithstanding, he triumphed over all opposition. <( Les faux dévots,” says one of his French biographers, “furent frappes de terreur; des hommes vraiment pieux en conçurent des vives alarmes; ils ne voyaient pas sans horreur le profane théâtre s’arroger, pour ainsi dire, un droit de jurisdiction en matière sacrée. Et dans ce zèle ardent d’un comédien contre un vice dont l’eglise gémissait en secret, ils n’appercevaient qu’une envie mal déguisée d’insulter à la vertu même dont ce vice empruntait les dehors. Quand on songe au nombre, à la puissance, des personnes que les calculs d’un odieux intérêt ou les erreurs d’un zèle respectable avaient liguées contre le Tartuffe, on ne peut être surpris des difficultés qu’éprouva la représentation; on doit l’être sculement que Molière soit parvenu à les surmonter.” In 1668, he produced the Amphitryon and EAvare, both imitated, and in part borrowed, from Plautus, and also George Dandin, a comedy; in 1669, Pourceaugnac, a farce, containing some scenes highly comic, and the Amans Magnifiques, in which he ridicules the chimeras of astrology, with which many persons were then infatuated; and, in 1670, the Bourgeois Gentilhomme, of which the king said, “Vous n’avez encore rien fait qui m’ait tant diverti, et votre pièce est excellente.” The Fourberies de Scapin, Psyché, and La Comtesse dEs-carbagnas, came out in 1671; and the following year he produced the Femmes Savantes, which was condemned before being heard, as much from apprehension as any other cause. His last comedy was Le Malade Imaginaire, 1673, which terminated the dramatic career of Molière.

Upon the day when this piece was acted for the fourth time, the author suffered severely from a pain in the chest, and his friends endeavoured to persuade him not to play. He persisted, however, and, in the entertainment of the piece, at the moment when he pronounced the word Juro, he was seized with convulsions, which he endeavoured in vain to conceal under a forced smile. He was removed to his house, where some hours afterwards he died from a vomiting of blood, which appears to have suffocated him. His death took place in the evening of the 17th of February 1673, in the fifty-second year of his age. As he had died in a state of excommunication, the curate of Saint-Eustache, his parish, refused him ecclesiastical sepulture. “What !” exclaimed his widow, “do they here refuse him sepulture? In Greece they would have raised altars in his honour.” This objection was overcome, however, and his remains were interred in the cemetery of Saint-Joseph.

All that we learn respecting the personal character of Molière is greatly to his honour. Happy in the society of his friends, he was respected and beloved by his equals; and, though courted by the great, he retained to the last the original simplicity of his character. Marshal Vivonne, the great Condé, and even Louis X1V., treated him with that familiarity which considers the distinction of merit as placing its possessor upon a level with the highest accidents of birth or fortune; but this flattering notice neither corrupted his heart nor misled his understanding. He was kind, generous, and liberal alike of his means and his influence; he had an honest consciousness of superiority, which exalted him above envy, whilst his disposition prompted him to do all the good in his power. He assisted Racine in his difficulties, and, by the encouragement he gave to that poet, proved instrumental in bringing forward a genius destined to become the glory of the French stage. The occupation of Molière in lashing the vices and follies of his time naturally drew upon him the indignation of those who had smarted under the poignant keenness of his wit; throughout his whole career, indeed, he had been pursued by satirical libels; and even after his death, his enemies, carrying their resentment beyond the grave, assailed his memory, in sarcastic epitaphs. The author of one of these pieces had the ill fortune, or the stupidity, to offer it to the great Condé: “Plût à Dieu,” said the hero sternly, “que celui dont tu me présentes l’épitaphe, fût en état de me presenter la tienne !” The only one of these productions possessing any point is the following :—

Roscius hic situs est tristi Molierus in urna, Cui genus humanum ludere, ludus erat.

Dum ludit mortem, mors indignata jocantem Corripit, et mimum fingere soeva negat»

The French nation has with one voice assigned to Molière the first and highest place amongst its comic authors. Nor does there appear to be any reason whatever for impeaching the validity and the soundness of this judgment. Of all the dramatic writers who illustrated the age of Louis XIV., no one attained a higher reputation, or more nearly reached the acmé of perfection in his art. Indeed, Voltaire boldly pronounces him the most eminent comic poet that any age or country has produced; nor is this opinion peculiar to the author of the Henriade. When [7:15:323]Louis XIV. insisted upon Boileau telling him whom he considered as the most original writer of his time, Boileau answered, Molière. The French comic poet is always the satirist of vice and folly, and of these alone; virtue, with him, is ever sacred. The characters he selected for ridicule were mostly peculiar to the times in which he lived; but he has nevertheless managed to render each as it were the type of a class, and thus to impart to his delineations an universality which must prevent them from ever becoming obsolete. The external manifestations of vice and folly may change with time, and vary according to the fluctuations of fashion, caprice, or accident; yet the essential elements of human character and passion will remain always the same; and Molière penetrated too deeply below the surface not to distinguish the permanent from the accidental, and to catch those generic indications which are at all times equally significant. He possessed comic powers of the very highest order, and wit of the purest kind; his mirth is unalloyed with bitterness, and’his pleasantry is always innocent. His comedies in verse, such as the Misanthrope and the Tartuffe, constitute a specific variety of their class, in which vice is exposed in the style of elegant and polished satire, although with a formal gravity ill suited to our notions of the comic. His verses have all the freedom and fluency of conversation, yet he is said to have passed whole days in fixing upon a proper epithet or a suitable rhyme. In his prose comedies, though there is a profession of ridicule equally pointed and effective, yet there is nothing to offend the most fastidious purity, or to throw contempt on sobriety and virtue. But, with all these high qualities, Molière has also some acknowledged defects. He is not happy in the unravelling of his plots. More attentive to the strong exhibition of character than to the conduct of the intrigue, he seems to be carried away by this natural predilection; and hence the denouement is frequently brought about with too little preparation, and without sufficient attention to probability. The scene is wound up on a sudden, and in a manner which leaves an impression of disappointment, mixed with a conviction that, in unfolding the character, the author has neglected the incidents. In his rhymed comedies he is sometimes not sufficiently interesting, and many of the speeches are by far too long; whilst, in his shorter pieces, intended to serve as interludes or entertainments, the comic often degenerates into the farcical. Upon the whole, however, few writers ever possessed the genuine spirit and attained the true end of comedy so perfectly as Molière. His Tartuffe in the grave style, and his Avare in the gay, are accounted by his countrymen his two greatest masterpieces. The French Academy, which had declined admitting him as a member on account of his profession, sought to render to his memory the homage which it had considered itself obliged to refuse to his person, and in the year 1778 ordered his bust to be placed in the hall containing the portraits of academicians, with this inscription, proposed by Saurin:

Rien ne manque à sa gloire; il manquait à la nôtre.

And, not content with this, it proposed, as the subject of competition for a prize, an eulogium on Molière. The successful candidate was Chamfort, who evinced m,uch spirit and discrimination in judging and praising the productions of the great dramatist.

Of the works of Molière there have been many editions, but the principal are the following, viz. 1. The edition published by Lagrange and Vinot, Paris, 1682, in eight vols. 12mo; 2. Those of Amsterdam, by Jacques Lejeune, 1675 and 1679, in five vols. 12mo, and that of the same, 1684, in six vols. 12mo; 3. That of Amsterdam, by Wetstein, 1691, in six vols. 12mo; 4. That of Joly, with Mémoires sur la Vie et les Ouvrages de Molière by De la Serre, Paris, 1734, in six vols. 4to; 5. A reprint of the pre ceding, Paris, 1639, in eight vols. 12mo; 6. That of Amsterdam, 1749, in four vols. 12mo, with figures; 7. That of Bret, with grammatical remarks and observations, and figures, Paris, 1773, in six vols. 8vo; 8. That of Didot the elder, 1792, in six vols. 4to, vellum paper; 9. That of the same, forming part of the Collection of the best Works in the French Language; 10. That of Petitot, accompanied with a life of Molière, a preliminary discourse, and reflections on each piece, Paris, 1813, in six vols. 8vo; 11. That of Auger, in nine vols. 8vo, with engravings from designs by Horace Vemet, a life of Molière, a preliminary discourse, and a commentary. (a.)