e, too, our poet invited even children to be present on such
rehearsals, and at certain points would watch their emotions. Hence, too,
in his character of manager, he taught his actors to study nature. An
actress, apt to speak freely, told him, "You torment us all; but you
never speak to my husband." This man, originally a candle-snuffer, was a
perfect child of nature, and acted the Thomas Diaforius, in _Le Malade
Imaginaire_. Moliere replied, "I should be sorry to say a word to him; I
should spoil his acting. Nature has provided him with better lessons to
perform his parts than any which I could give him." We may imagine
Shakspeare thus addressing his company, had the poet been also the
manager.

A remarkable incident in the history of the genius of Moliere is the
frequent recurrence of the poet to the passion of jealousy. The "jaundice
in the lover's eye," he has painted with every tint of his imagination.
"The green-eyed monster" takes all shapes, and is placed in every position.
Solemn, or gay, or satirical, he sometimes appears in agony, but often
scorns to make its "trifles light as air," only ridiculous as a source of
consolation. Was _Le Contemplateur_ comic in his melancholy, or melancholy
in his comic humour?

The truth is, that the poet himself had to pass through those painful
stages which he has dramatised. The domestic life of Moliere was itself
very dramatic; it afforded Goldoni a comedy of five acts, to reveal the
secrets of the family circle of Moliere; and l'Abbate Chiari, an Italian
novelist and playwright, has taken for a comic subject, _Moliere, the
Jealous Husband_.

The French, in their "petite morale" on conjugal fidelity, appear so
tolerant as to leave little sympathy for the real sufferer. Why should
they else have treated domestic jealousy as a foible for ridicule, rather
than a subject for deep passion? Their tragic drama exhibits no Othello,
nor their comedy a Kitely, or a _Suspicious Husband_. Moliere, while his
own heart was the victim, conformed to the national taste, by often
placing the object on its comic side. Domestic jealousy is a passion which
admits of a great diversity of subjects, from the tragic or the pathetic,
to the absurd and the ludicrous. We have them all in Moliere. Moliere
often was himself "Le Cocu Imaginaire;" he had been in the position of the
guardian in _L'Ecole des Maris_. Like Arnolphe in _L'Ecole des Femmes_, he
had taken on himself to rear a young wife who pl