eille gave it really
world-wide prominence. Moliere is not only the most celebrated
of French actor-managers; he is the greatest of all
character-comedy writers, the teacher of all future
generations, and the satiric scourge of his own. When in 1659
his comedy _Les precieuses Ridicules_ took Paris by storm, it
did more than make a reformation of the manners of its own. It
taught the world what true comedy should be, and it sent
ringing through the universe forever a mighty trumpet-note
against hypocrisy and folly.

The drama attained its highest excellence and repute in the age of Louis
XIV, and we should not be making a very hazardous assertion if we were
to say that the literature of that epoch in France attained its height
of glory in the drama. No French dramatist has excelled Moliere,
Corneille, and Racine; no group of authors in the seventeenth century
were more brilliant, more powerful, more originative. When we turn our
eyes upon the stage for which these three wrote, we find ourselves in
the full splendor of the Augustan age, in all its refinement and
culture, its luxury and elegance, its strength of wit and justness of
expression, its social polish and gorgeous display.

Great as was the advance made by the audience of Jodelle upon the
audience of the "moralities" and "sotties," the advance of the court and
society under the Valois was equally great. The Grand Monarque,
listening to a masterpiece of Corneille, Moliere, or Racine, surrounded
by his brilliant circle of lords and ladies, represented an almost
incalculable development of ceremonious culture, in idea, in apparel,
and in general surroundings, since the day when, about a hundred years
before, while the blossom of the Renaissance was barely expanded, the
popinjay King Henry II looked on at the first crude sketch of a French
classical play. Stage, scenery, appointments, audience, critic, music,
actors, and authors, all now bore witness to and adorned, as they were
in fact the most elaborate product of, an Augustan age.

Paris up to this time had had little opportunity of knowing what true
comedy was. It had had farces in abundance, not only of home growth, but
imported, and from Italy in particular. When Moliere came before the
public with his homogeneous and well-trained company, and his repertory
of excellent character-sketches and comic situations, the prevailing
sentiment was expressed by a member o