nt
and reserved, unless in conversation with that more intimate circle whose
literature aided his genius, or whose friendship consoled for his domestic
disturbances, his habits were minutely methodical; the strictest order was
observed throughout his establishment; the hours of dinner, of writing, of
amusement, were allotted, and the slightest derangement in his own
apartment excited a morbid irritability which would interrupt his studies
for whole days.

Who, without this tale of Moliere, could conjecture, that one skilled in
the workings of our nature would have ventured on the perilous experiment
of equalizing sixteen years against forty--weighing roses against grey
locks--to convert a wayward coquette, through her capricious womanhood,
into an attached wife? Yet, although Mademoiselle could cherish no
personal love for the intellectual being, and hastened to change the
immortal name she bore for a more terrestrial man, she seems to have been
impressed by a perfect conviction of his creative genius. When the
Archbishop of Paris, in the pride of prelacy, refused the rites of
sepulture to the corpse of Moliere THE ACTOR, it was her voice which
reminded the world of Moliere THE POET, exclaiming--"Have they denied a
grave to the man to whom Greece would have raised an altar!"

* * * * *

THE SENSIBILITY OF RACINE.

The "Memoirs of the poet Racine," composed by his son, who was himself no
contemptible poet, may be classed among those precious pieces of biography
so delightful to the philosopher who studies human nature, and the
literary man whose curiosity is interested in the history of his republic.
Such, works are rare, and rank in merit next to autobiographies. Such
biographical sketches, like Boswell's of Johnson, contain what we often
regret is wanting in the more regular life of a professed biographer.
These desultory memoirs interest by their warmth, their more personal
acquaintance with the hero, and abound with those minuter strokes which
give so much life to the individual character.

The prominent feature in the character of Racine was an excessive
tenderness of feeling; his profound sensibility even to its infirmity, the
tears which would cover his face, and the agony in his heart, were perhaps
national. But if this sensibility produced at times the softest emotions,
if it made him the poet of lovers, and even the poet of imagination, it
also rendered him too feelingly al