comedy Monere borrowed much from the Spaniards and Italians, who thus reached English literature at second-hand; and his debts to Latin comedy have probably been under rated rather than over-rated."

Molière confessed to Boileau his great indebtedness to Corneille, whose comedy, "Le Menteur" (the Liar), was produced when Molière was only twenty-two years old. "My ideas were still confused," declared Molière, who had been adapting the old sotties, "but this piece determined me. But for 'Le Menteur,' I should no doubt have written comedies of intrigue, like my first plays." He would perhaps never have written "The Misanthrope," which is in many respects his chef-d'œuvre. In Alceste, Molière has painted himself in perhaps the same way that Shakespeare seems to have revealed his inner self in "Hamlet." Unhappy love and jealousy furnished Molière dramatic themes time and again, as though there were such torments at the bottom of his own heart-and we know as a fact that they were. "Mlle." Molière certainly resembled the coquette Célimène. As Alceste exclaims in the comedy, "Reason does not give the law to love."

Molière's influence on English literature has been tremendous. At the Restoration, in 1660, courtiers who came from Paris knew Molière as actor and dramatist, chief of a troupe which had been in Paris two years. Molière was then thirtyeight; Dryden twenty-nine. Dryden wanted Molière's refinement. In pleasing the roistering court of Charles II. he lacked the necessary light touch of the fashionable libertine. He strove to borrow the comedy of Molière, which so pleased the court of the Grand Monarque. But his version of "L'Étourdi,” as "Sir Martin Marr-all," produced in London while Molière was bringing out "Tartuffe" in Paris, was really Molière in a coarse disguise, and is a horrible mixture of blank verse and prose. William Wycherley made a version of "Le Misanthrope" as "The Plain Dealer," with Alceste as Manly. Dryden glanced at this hero in his praise of "the satire, wit, and strength of Manly Wycherley." Wycherley also hurt Molière's comedy, but succeeded better than Dryden had done, and became, in fact, the father of the British "Prose Comedy

of Manners." In "The Plain Dealer" he introduced a litigious Widow Blackacre, evidently suggested by Racine's "Les Plaideurs." Sir John Vanbrugh adapted "Le Dépit Amoureux" as "The Mistake." Henry Fielding, author of "Tom Jones," adapted both "Le Médecin Malgré Lui,” as "The Mock Doctor," and "L'Avare" as "The Miser." "One pleasure I enjoy," he declared, "from the success of my attempt, is a prospect of transplanting some others of Molière's pieces of great value." Colley Cibber, born twc years after Molière's death, made a highly-triumphant version of "Tartuffe," as "The Non-Juror." As Professor Morley remarks: "This version applied, with Whig bitterness of party feeling, a general satire on hypocrisy in sacred things to the religion of political opponents. It was directed against Roman Catholics and Non-Jurors, who had sympathized with the Jacobite insurrection of 1715. Pope was of Roman Catholic family, and Cibber's play contained an insult to Roman Catholics. Its factious loyalty obtained for Colley Cibber the office of poet-laureate, and its intolerance secured for him the highest gibbet in the 'Dunciad.'" Colley's brother-laureate, Shadwell, borrowed from "Les Précieuses Ridicules" for his "Bury Fair." Sir William D'Avenant used

Sganarelle" in his "Playhouse to be Let." Sir Charles Sedley founded his "Mulberry Garden" on "L'École des Femmes." "Tartuffe" also suggested Croune's "English Friar." Indeed, the list might be much farther extended.

Professor Brander Matthews goes so far as to assert that "the influence of Shakespeare on modern English comedy, on the comic plays acted during the past two centuries, is indisputable, of course, but it is less in quantity and less in quality than the influence of Molière. It would be easy to pick out the plays, like Tobin's 'Honeymoon,' and Knowles's 'Hunchback,' written consciously in the imitation-however remote-of Shakespeare. It would not be easy to name half the English comedies whose form and substance had been unconsciously molded by the example of Molière. Modern English comedy is not made on the model of Elizabethan comic drama, and it is madeimmorality apart-on the model of the Restoration comic

drama. The comic dramatists of the Restoration . . were the children of Molière. . . . Unfortunately for themselves, when they borrowed the point of view of the great Frenchman, they forgot to borrow his sobriety and his selfrespect. . . The reason why the influence of Molière is more potent on the form of English comedy than the influence of Shakespeare . . is, that Molière represents a later stage of the development of play-making. . . . Molière began to write half a century after Shakespeare ceased to write; and in that half century many and marked changes had taken place in the arrangement and constitution of the theatre. In fact, the difference between the theatre as organized in the time of Shakespeare and as organized in the time of Molière is enormous and radical; whereas the difference between the theatre of Molière and of to-day is unessential and insignificant."

FIRST LESSON IN PHILOSOPHY.

(From "The Bourgeois Gentleman.")

Philosophy-Master. What have you a mind to learn?

M. Jourdain. Everything I can, for I have all the desire in the world to be a scholar, and it vexes me that my father and mother had not made me study all the sciences when I was young.

Master. That's a very reasonable feeling. Nam sine doctrina vita est quasi mortis imago. You understand that, and are acquainted with the Latin, of course?

M. Jour. Yes; but act as if I were not acquainted with it. Tell me what it means.

Master. It means that "without learning life is as it were an image of death."

M. Jour. That same Latin's in the right.

Master. Don't you know some principles, some rudiments of science?

M. Jour. Oh, yes! I can read and write. . . . But now I must confide a secret to you. I'm in love with a person of quality, and I should be glad if you would help me to write something to her in a short billet-doux, which I'll drop at her feet.

Master. Very well.

M. Jour. That will be gallant, won't it?

Master. Undoubtedly. Is it verse you wish to write to her?

M. Jour. No, no; none of your verse.
Master. You would only have prose?

M. Jour. No, I would neither have verse nor prose.
Master. It must be one or the other.

M. Jour. Why so?

Master. Because, sir, there's nothing to express oneself by but prose or verse.

M. Jour. Is there nothing, then, but verse or prose?

Master. No, sir; whatever is not prose is verse, and whatever is not verse is prose.

M. Jour. And when one talks what may that be, then?

Master. Prose.

M. Jour. How? When I say, "Nicole, bring me my slippers and give me my nightcap," is that prose?

Master. Yes, sir.

M. Jour. On my conscience, I have spoken prose above these forty years without knowing it; and I am hugely obliged to you for informing me of this.

M. Jour. (to his wife). I am ashamed of your ignorance. For example, do you know what it is you now speak?

Mme. Jour. Yes, I know that what I speak is right, and that you ought to think of living in another manner.

M. Jour. I don't talk of that. I ask you what the words are that you now speak?

Mme. Jour. They are words that have a good deal of sense in them, and your conduct is by no means such.

M. Jour. I don't talk of that, I tell you. I ask you what it is that I now speak to you, which I say this very moment?

Mme. Jour. Mere stuff.

M. Jour. Pshaw, no, it is not that. That which we both of us say, the language we speak this instant?

Mme. Jour. Well?

M. Jour. How is it called?

Mme. Jour. It's called just what you please to call it.

M. Jour. It's prose, you ignorant creature.

Mme. Jour. Prose?

M. Jour. Yes, prose. Whatever is prose is not verse, and whatever is not verse, is prose. Now, see what it is to study.

ALCESTE'S LOVE FOR CÉLIMÈNE.

(From "The Misanthrope," Act IV., Scene 3.)

Alceste. O Heaven! how can I control here my passion? Celimène (aside). Ah! (To Alceste). What's this trouble which

you clearly show?

And what's the meaning of those long-drawn sighs, And those black looks which you direct on me? Alceste. That all the horrid deeds one can conceive

Will not compare to your perfidious conduct;
That neither fate, nor hell, nor heaven in wrath
Has e'er produced a thing so false as you are.

Cilimène. These pretty things I surely much admire.
Alceste. Ah! do not jest, this is no time for laughing.

Indeed, blush rather; for you've cause to do so!
And of your treachery I've the clearest proofs.
That's what the emotions of my heart forebode;
'Twas not in vain my love was seized with fear;
You thought it odious when I oft suspected
And sought that evil which my eyes have seen;
Spite all your care and your deceitful skill,
My star foretold me what I had to fear;
But don't imagine that, without revenge,
I'll bear the slight of being thus insulted.
I know we cannot rule our inclinations;
That love spontaneously springs everywhere;
That there's no entering a heart by force,
And that each soul may freely name its victor.
Thus I'd no reason to complain at all,
If you had spoken to me openly,

And had disdained my love when it sprang up;
My heart would then have only blamed its luck.
But to fan my affection by deceit,

Is such a treachery, such perfidy,
That nothing I can do is too severe;

And my resentment may do anything:

Yes, yes, dread everything for such an outrage.

I am beside myself; I'm mad with rage.

Pierced by the deadly blow which you have dealt me

My senses are no longer swayed by reason;