Wycherley, in his Plain Dealer, has given the French Misanthrope an English dress. Manly is a character of humour, speaking and acting from a peculiar bias of temper and inclination; but the coarseness of the plain dealing is not to be tolerated, and what Manly does goes near to counteract the moral effect of what he says.

By way of contrasting the various talents of the author, than whom none better understood human nature in its various ramifications, or copied more skilfully every shade and gradation of manners, we may just mention the Bourgeois Gentilhomme, exhibiting the folly and affectation of a cit turned man of fashion. If the moral of the Misanthrope be pure, the wit of the Bourgeois is terse and diverting.

In several of his comedies he has treated medicine and its professors not only with freedom but severity; it was, however, perverted medicine only, and its quack professors that were the subjects of his ridicule. The respectable members of the faculty could be no more affected by the satire, nor displeased by what they could not fear, than a true prophet by the punishment of imposture. Those who are acquainted with the history of the science will recollect the state of it at Paris in Moliere's time, and the character of the physicians. Their whole employment was confined to searching after visionary specifics, and experimental trickery in chemistry. The cause of a disease was never inquired after, nor the symptoms regarded; but hypothetical jargon and random prescription were thrown like dust into the eyes of the patient, to the exclusion of a practice founded on science and observation. Thus medicine became a pest instead of a remedy; and this state of things justified the chastisement inflicted.

Les Précieuses Ridicules is a comedy intended to reprove a vain, fantastical, and preposterous humour

prevailing very much about that time in France. It had the desired effect, and conduced materially towards rooting out a taste in manners so unreasonable and ridiculous.

Tartuffe, or The Impostor, has occasionally, and even recently, sometimes to the disturbance of the public peace in France, given great offence not only

to those who felt the justice, and winced under the severity of the satire; but to others, who suspected that a blow was aimed at religion, under the mask of an attack upon hypocrisy. But its intrinsic merit, the truth of the drawing, and the justness of the colouring, have secured patrons for it among persons of unquestionable sense, virtue, learning, and taste; and it has always triumphed over the violence of opposition. Cibber, a vamper of other men's plays, has borrowed from it his favourite Nonjuror, and applied it to the purposes of a political party. On this adaptation has been grafted a more modern attack on the Methodists, under the title of The Hypocrite. But however great may be the merit of this celebrated drama, it cannot boast of entire originality. Machiavelli left behind him three comedies, the fruits of a statesman's leisure hours. In all three, the author has exhibited the hand of a master; he has painted mankind in the spirit of truth, and unmasked falsehood and hypocrisy in a tone of profound contempt. Two monks, a brother Timothy, and a brother Alberico, are represented with too much wit and keenness of sarcasm to have been overlooked by Moliere in his working up of the third specimen. first three acts of the Tartuffe were played for the first time at court before the piece was finished. Masques of pomp, magnificence, and panegyric, such as usually furnish out the amusement of royal saloons, are forgotten as soon as they have served the purpose of the moment; but masterpieces, like that now in question, perpetuate their own renown, and leave a lasting memorial of what is supposed to be a phenomenon, a princely taste for genuine wit.

The

Les Fâcheux was the first piece in which dancing was so connected with the dramatic action, as to fill up the intervals without breaking the thread of the story.

Le Mariage Forcé was borrowed from Rabelais, to whom both Moliere and La Fontaine were deeply indebted. The Aristotelian and Pyrrhonian philosophy, as travestied by modern doctors, furnishes occasion for lively satire and clever buffoonery. The horror with which Pancrace calls down the vengeance of Heaven on him who should dare to say the form of a hat, instead of the figure of a hat, is a pleasant parody on the unintelligible absurdities of the schools. According to Marphurius, philosophy commands us to suspend our judgment, and to speak of every thing with uncertainty; not to say I am come, but I think that I am come.

La Princesse d'Elide, though not one of Moliere's happiest efforts, deserves notice on account of its contributing to the festivities of the court, by an adapta tion of ingenious allegories to the manners and events of the time. This satire was aimed at the illusion of Judicial Astrology, after which many princes of the period were running mad; and in particular Victor Amadeus, Duke of Savoy, father of the Duchess of Burgundy, who kept an astrologer about his person, even after his abdication. The dramatic antiquary may find some amusement in comparing the fêtes of the French court with the masques of Ben Jonson, Davenant, and others, exhibited before our James I. and Charles I.; but here the interest ends. It is sufficient to remark, that the masques of the English court owed their power of pleasing to the ingenuity of the machinist and the flattery of the poet. The little dramas performed before the royal family of France tickled the ears of the audience by the pungency of their wit and ridicule.

The Miser has been pretty closely translated, for the version is little more, by Henry Fielding; but not so happily as he himself seems to have imagined.

The subject of that excellent comedy, Les Femmes

Savantes, in which the ridicule is kept within reasonable bounds, and female faults and virtues are painted with a proper gradation of colouring, where what the painters call a medium tint harmonises the extremes of light and shade, was taken up by Goldoni with that coarse and abrupt pencilling of black and white, which has always been the vice of the Italian stage. It has indeed been advanced as a reproach to Moliere, that he too often charged his comic pictures with the extravagance of caricature: but if we compare even the most farcical of his scenes with the speaking pantomimes and half-improvisations of Italy, we must pronounce him a model of delicacy and classical propriety.

His last comedy was Le Malade Imaginaire. It was acted for the fourth time on the 17th February, 1673. The principal character represented is that of a sick man, who, to carry on a purpose of the plot, pretends to be dead. This part was played by Moliere himself. The popular story was, that when he was to discover that it was only a feint, he could neither speak nor get up, being actually dead. The wits and epigrammatists made the most of the occurrence; those who could not write good French, treated it with bad Latin. But unluckily for the stability of their conceits, they were not built on the foundation of truth. Though very ill, and obviously in much pain, he was able to finish the play. He went home, and was put to bed: his cough increased violently; a vessel burst in his lungs, and he was suffocated with blood in about half an hour after. He was only in his fifty-second year when this event took place. The King was extremely affected at this sudden loss, by which, as Johnson said of Garrick, the gaiety of nations was eclipsed; and as a strong mark of his regard, he prevailed with the archbishop of Paris to allow of his being interred in consecrated ground.