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 detect the abortive conceptions of some of his future pieces.  The severe judgment of Moliere suffered his skeletons to perish; but, when he had discovered the art of comic writing, with equal discernment he resuscitated them.

Not only had Moliere not yet discovered the true bent of his genius, but, still more unfortunate, he had as greatly mistaken it as when he proposed turning avocat, for he imagined that his most suitable character was tragic.  He wrote a tragedy, and he acted in a tragedy; the tragedy he composed was condemned at Bordeaux; the mortified poet flew to Grenoble; still the unlucky tragedy haunted his fancy; he looked on it with paternal eyes, in which there were tears.  Long after, when Racine, a youth, offered him a very unactable tragedy,[A] Moliere presented him with his own:  —­“Take this, for I am convinced that the subject is highly tragic, notwithstanding my failure.”  The great dramatic poet of France opened his career by recomposing the condemned tragedy of the comic wit in La Thebaide. In the illusion that he was a great tragic actor, deceived by his own susceptibility, though his voice denied the tones of passion, he acted in one of Corneille’s tragedies, and quite allayed the alarm of a rival company on the announcement.  It was not, however, so when the author-actor vivified one of his own native personages; then, inimitably comic, every new representation seemed to be a new creation.

[Footnote A:  The tragedy written by Racine was called Theagene et Chariclee, and founded on the tale by Heliodorus.  It was the first attempt of its author, and submitted by him to Moliere, while director of the Theatre of the Palais Royal; the latter had no favourable impression of its success if produced, but suggested La Thebaide as a subject for his genius, and advanced the young poet 100 louis while engaged on his work, which was successfully produced in 1664.—­ED.]

It is a remarkable feature, though not perhaps a singular one, in the character of this great comic writer, that he was one of the most serious of men, and even of a melancholic temperament.  One of his lampooners wrote a satirical comedy on the comic poet, where he figures as “Moliere hypochondre.”  Boileau, who knew him intimately, happily characterised Moliere as le Contemplateur.  This deep pensiveness is revealed in his physiognomy.