by adapting from
and imitating the Italian and Spanish comedy-writers, upon whom many of
his first farces were founded, and it is not at all unlikely that he
even remodelled some of the earlier sotties. It was perhaps due to
Corneille's influence as much as to anything else that his genius at
last discovered its true level. He confessed to Boileau his great
indebtedness to _Le Menteur_. "When it was first performed," he says, "I
had already a wish to write, but was in doubt as to what it should be.
My ideas were still confused, but this piece determined them. In short,
but for the appearance of _Le Menteur_, though I should no doubt have
written comedies of intrigue, like _L'Etourdi_, or _Le Depit Amoureux_,
I should perhaps never have written the _Misanthrope_." Eliminate the
generosity from this confession, and no doubt the truth remains that
Moliere did form his best style of comedy upon the master of French
tragedy.

Jean Baptiste Poquelin, who subsequently assumed the name of Moliere,
was born in the year that Francois de Sales died, one year after the
birth of La Fontaine, four years before the birth of his friend Chapelle
and of Madame de Sevigne. When _Le Cid_ was first performed he was
fourteen years old, and twenty-two at the time of the first
representation of _Le Menteur_. The son of a _valet-de-chambre
tapissier_ of Louis XIII, he succeeded in due course to the emoluments
and honors, such as they were, of his father; but he had early conceived
a passion for the stage, and in 1643 he attached himself to the Illustre
Theatre of Madeleine Bejart, a woman four years his senior. With her
were already associated her brother Joseph, her sister Genevieve, about
two years younger than Moliere, and eight others, most of whom had
dropped out of the company before its final settlement in Paris.

For a year or two the Illustre Theatre tempted fortune in the capital
without success, and in 1646 they commenced a tour through the provinces
which was destined to continue for twelve years. The debts which they
had incurred weighed upon them during the whole of this time, and
principally upon Moliere, who was once imprisoned and several times
arrested at the suit of the company's creditors. No doubt these latter
had discovered that the young actor had friends who would rescue him
from durance, which was done on several occasions, but as late as 1660
we read of Moliere's discharging probably the last of the debts for
which