and Moliere have
given the principal types to Comedy hitherto. The Micio and Demea of the
Adelphi, with their opposing views of the proper management of youth,
are still alive; the Sganarelles and Arnolphes of the Ecole des Maris
and the Ecole des Femmes, are not all buried. Tartuffe is the father of
the hypocrites; Orgon of the dupes; Thraso, of the braggadocios; Alceste
of the 'Manlys'; Davus and Syrus of the intriguing valets, the Scapins
and Figaros. Ladies that soar in the realms of Rose-Pink, whose language
wears the nodding plumes of intellectual conceit, are traceable to
Philaminte and Belise of the Femmes Savantes: and the mordant witty
women have the tongue of Celimene. The reason is, that these two poets
idealized upon life: the foundation of their types is real and in the
quick, but they painted with spiritual strength, which is the solid in
Art.

The idealistic conceptions of Comedy gives breadth and opportunities of
daring to Comic genius, and helps to solve the difficulties it creates.
How, for example, shall an audience be assured that an evident and
monstrous dupe is actually deceived without being an absolute fool? In
Le Tartuffe the note of high Comedy strikes when Orgon on his return
home hears of his idol's excellent appetite. 'Le pauvre homme!' he
exclaims. He is told that the wife of his bosom has been unwell. 'Et
Tartuffe?' he asks, impatient to hear him spoken of, his mind suffused
with the thought of Tartuffe, crazy with tenderness, and again he
croons, 'Le pauvre homme!' It is the mother's cry of pitying delight at
a nurse's recital of the feats in young animal gluttony of her cherished
infant. After this masterstroke of the Comic, you not only put faith in
Orgon's roseate prepossession, you share it with him by comic sympathy,
and can listen with no more than a tremble of the laughing muscles to
the instance he gives of the sublime humanity of Tartuffe:

'Un rien presque suffit pour le scandaliser, Jusque-le, qu'il se vint
l'autre jour accuser D'avoir pris une puce en faisant sa priere, Et de
l'avoir tuee avec trop de colere.'

And to have killed it too wrathfully! Translating Moliere is like
humming an air one has heard performed by an accomplished violinist of
the pure tones without flourish.

Orgon, awakening to find another dupe in Madame Pernelle, incredulous
of the revelations which have at last opened his own besotted eyes, is a
scene of the double Comic, vivified by the spell pre