but flitting from one topic to another like bees that meet as they go with different sorts of flowers.  Envy, malignity, or cabal had no voice amongst them; they adored the works of the ancients, refused not the moderns the praises which were their due, spoke of their own with modesty, and gave one another honest advice when any one of them fell ill of the malady of the age and wrote a book, which happened now and then.  In this case, Acanthus (Racine) did not fail to propose a walk in some place outside the town, in order to hear the reading with less noise and more pleasure.  He was extremely fond of gardens, flowers, foliage.  Polyphile (La Fontaine) resembled him in this; but then Polyphile might be said to love all things.  Both of them were lyrically inclined, with this difference, that Acanthus was rather the more pathetic, Polyphile the more ornate.”

When La Fontaine died, on the 13th of April, 1695, of the four friends lately assembled at Versailles to read the tale of Psyche, Moliere alone had disappeared.  La Fontaine had admired at Vaux the young comic poet, who had just written the Facheux for the entertainment given by Fouquet to Louis XIV.:—­

“It is a work by Moliere;
This writer, of a style so rare,
Is nowadays the court’s delight
His fame, so rapid is its flight,
Beyond the bounds of Rome must be: 
Amen!  For he’s the man for me.”

In his old age he gave vent to his grief and his regret at Moliere’s death in this touching epitaph:—­

“Beneath this stone Plautus and Terence lie,
Though lieth here but Moliere alone
Their threefold gifts of mind made up but one,
That witched all France with noble comedy. 
Now are they gone:  and little hope have I
That we again shall look upon the three
Dead men, methinks, while countless years roll by,
Terentius, Plautus, Moliere will be.”

[Illustration:  Moliere——­664]

Moliere and French comedy had no need to take shelter beneath the mantle of the ancients; they, together, had shed upon the world incomparable lustre.  Shakespeare might dispute with Corneille and Racine the sceptre of tragedy; he had succeeded in showing himself as full of power, with more truth, as the one, and as full of tenderness, with more profundity, as the other.  Moliere is superior to him in originality, abundance, and perfection of characters; he yields to him neither in range, nor penetration, nor complete knowledge of human nature.  The lives of these two great geniuses, authors and actors both together, present in other respects certain features of resemblance.  Both were intended for another career than that of the stage; both, carried away by an irresistible passion, assembled about them a few actors, leading at first a roving life, to end by becoming the delight of the court and of the world.  John Baptist Poquelin, who before long assumed the name of Moliere, was born