ARTICLE VII.

MOLIÈRE.

[From the Foreign Quarterly Review for 1828, on AUGER'S Edition of Molière, 9 vols. 8vo, Paris, 181927; and the "Historie de la Vie et des Ouvrages ae Molière. Par. J. TASCHEREAU, Paris, 1825."]

It will be universally admitted that in tragic performances nothing can be more distinctly different than the laws which regulate the French and English stage. The dissimilarity is so great, that a native of either country, however candid or liberal, must have studied with some attention the literature of the other, to enable him, not merely to relish, but even to endure the tragedies of the neighbouring kingdom. A Parisian critic would be shocked at the representation of Hamlet au naturel, and the most patient spectator in a Drury Lane audience would incur some risk of dislocating his jaws with yawning, during the representation of a chefd'œuvre of Racine or Corneille. This difference betwixt the taste of two highly civilized nations is not surprising, when we consider that the English tragedy existed a hundred years at least before the

French, and is therefore censured by our neighbours as partaking, to a certain extent, of the barbarity and grossness of the age of Queen Elizabeth. The two great tragedians of France, on the contrary, had the task of entertaining a polished and highly ceremonious court, whose judgment was at least as fastidious as it was correct, and in whose eyes a breach of etiquette was a more formidable crime than any deficiency in spirit or genius.

Thus the English stage exhibited in word and in action every "change of many coloured life,"

mingled the tragic with the comic, the ludicrous with the horrible, seized by storm on the applause of the half-startled, half-affrighted audience, and presented to the judgment, like Salvator's landscapes to the eye, a chaos of the wonderful, mixed with the grotesque, agitating the passions too strongly to leave time to enquire whether the rules of critical taste were not frequently violated. The French stage, on the other hand, is carefully and exactly limited by a sense of decorum, which, exercised in its rigour, may be called the tyranny of taste. It is not lawful to please, says this dramatic code, unless by observance of certain arbitrary rules, or to create a deeper and more intense interest, than a strict obedience to the precepts of Aristotle and his modern commentators will permit. The English authors have therefore preferred exhibiting striking incidents and extraordinary characters placed in violent contrast, at the risk of shocking probability; and their keenest partisans must own, that they have been often absurd, when they aimed at being sublime. The

French, on the other hand, limiting themselves in general to long dramatic dialogues, in which passion is rather analyzed than displayed, have sometimes become tedious by a display of ingenuity, where the spectator expected touches of feeling. It follows as a matter of course, that each country, partial to the merits of its own style of amusement, and struck with the faults which belong to a cast of composition so extremely different, is as severe in censuring the foreign stage, as it is indulgent in judging of its own. Two important questions arise out of this: first, whether, considering the many differences betwixt the taste both of nations and individuals, either country is entitled to condemn with acrimony the favourite authors of the other, merely because they did not hit a mark against which they never directed their arrows? and, secondly, whether there may not remain to be trodden, by some splendid genius yet to be born, some middle path, which may attain the just mean betwixt that English freedom approaching to license, and the severe system of French criticism, that sometimes cramps and subjects the spirit which it is only designed to guide or direct?

Happily for us, our present subject does not require us to prosecute an enquiry so delicate as that which we have been led to touch upon. The difference in the national tastes of France and England, so very remarkable when we compare the tragedies of the two countries, is much less conspicuous in their comic dramas; where setting aside their emancipation from the tenets of the Stagyrite, the English comic writers do, or ought to, propose

to themselves the same object with the French of the same class. As a proof of this, we may remark, that very few French tragedies have ever been translated, and of these few (the Zaire of Voltaire excepted) still fewer have become permanently popular, or have been reckoned stock-plays, -whereas the English authors, from the age of the great man of whom we are about to speak, down to the present day, have been in the habit of transferring to the British stage almost all the comedies which have been well received in France. How it happens, that two nations which differ so much in their estimation of the terrible or the pathetic should agree so exactly in their sense of the gay, the witty, and the humorous, is a different question, which we are not called upon to discuss very deeply. Lord Chesterfield, however, has long since remarked (with the invidious intention of silencing an honest laugh) that laughter is a vulgar convulsion, common to all men, and that a ridiculous incident, such as the member of a company attempting to sit down when he has no chair behind him, will create a louder peal of mirth, than could be excited by the most brilliant sally of wit. We go no further with his lordship than to agree, that the sense of the comic is far more general among mankind, and far less altered and modified by the artificial rules of society, than that of the pathetic; and that a hundred men of different ranks, or different countries will laugh at the same jest, when not five of them perhaps would blend their tears over the same point of sentiment. Take, for example, the Dead Ass of

Sterne, and reflect how few would join in feeling the pathos of that incident, in comparison with the numbers who would laugh in chorus till their eyes ran over at the too lively steed of the redoubtable John Gilpin. The moralist may regard this fact, either as a sign of our corrupted nature, to which the ludicrous feeling of the comic distress of a fellow-creature is more congenial than a sympathy with his actual miseries, or as a proof of the kindness of Providence, which, placing us in a valley of sorrows, has enabled us, from our conformation, to be readily moved by such mirth-exciting circumstances as it affords, and by this propensity to counteract the depression of spirits occasioned by all that is gloomy and melancholy around us. To us it is enough to be assured, that the universal sense of the humorous renders such a complete master of comedy as Molière the property, not of that country alone which was honoured with his birth, but of the civilized world, and of England in particular, whose drama has been enriched by versions of so many of his best pieces.

As, however, we suspect that the history of this great author, the prince certainly of comic writers, is but little known to our English readers, we shall give a sketch of Molière's life, from the interesting and well-told narrative of his recent biographer, Mons. Taschereau.

Le Menteur of the Great Corneille (known to the British reader under the title of The Liar), which appeared in 1642, was perhaps the first approach to the more just and elevated species of comedy. It was, however, a translation from the