articles of a furnishing upholsterer. His
grandfather was a haunter of the small theatres of that day, and
the boy often accompanied this venerable critic of the family to his
favourite recreations. The actors were usually more excellent than their
pieces; some had carried the mimetic art to the perfection of eloquent
gesticulation. In these loose scenes of inartificial and burlesque pieces
was the genius of Moliere cradled and nursed. The changeful scenes of the
_Theatre de Bourgogne_ deeply busied the boy's imagination, to the great
detriment of the _tapisserie_ of all the Pocquelins.

The father groaned, the grandfather clapped, the boy remonstrated till, at
fourteen years of age, he was consigned, as "un mauvais sujet" (so his
father qualified him), to a college of the Jesuits at Paris, where the
author of the "Tartuffe" passed five years, studying--for the bar!

Philosophy and logic were waters which he deeply drank; and sprinklings of
his college studies often pointed the satire of his more finished
comedies. To ridicule false learning and false taste one must be intimate
with the true.

On his return to the metropolis the old humour broke out at the
representation of the inimitable Scaramouch of the Italian theatre. The
irresistible passion drove him from his law studies, and cast young
Pocquelin among a company of amateur actors, whose fame soon enabled them
not to play gratuitously. Pocquelin was the manager and the modeller, for
under his studious eye this company were induced to imitate Nature with
the simplicity the poet himself wrote.

The prejudices of the day, both civil and religious, had made these
private theatres--no great national theatre yet existing--the resource
only of the idler, the dissipated, and even of the unfortunate in society.
The youthful adventurer affectionately offered a free admission to the
dear Pocquelins. They rejected their _entrees_ with horror, and sent their
genealogical tree, drawn afresh, to shame the truant who had wantoned into
the luxuriance of genius. To save the honour of the parental upholsterers
Pocquelin concealed himself under the immortal name of Moliere.

The future creator of French comedy had now passed his thirtieth year, and
as yet his reputation was confined to his own dramatic corps--a pilgrim in
the caravan of ambulatory comedy. He had provided several temporary
novelties. Boileau regretted the loss of one, _Le Docteur Amoureux;_ and
in others we detec