Abbe Cottin and Menage.  The stultified booby of Limoges, Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, and the mystified millionaire, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, were copied after life, as was Sganarelle, in Le Medecin malgre lui.  The portraits in that gallery of dramatic paintings, Le Misanthrope, have names inscribed under them; and the immortal Tartuffe was a certain bishop of Autun.  No dramatist has conceived with greater variety the female character; the women of Moliere have a distinctness of feature, and are touched with a freshness of feeling.  Moliere studied nature, and his comic humour is never checked by that unnatural wit where the poet, the more he discovers himself, the farther he removes himself from the personage of his creation.  The quickening spell which hangs over the dramas of Moliere is this close attention to nature, wherein he greatly resembles our Shakspeare, for all springs from its source.  His unobtrusive genius never occurs to us in following up his characters, and a whole scene leaves on our mind a complete but imperceptible effect.

The style of Moliere has often been censured by the fastidiousness of his native critics, as bas and du style familier.  This does not offend the foreigner, who is often struck by its simplicity and vigour.  Moliere preferred the most popular and naive expressions, as well as the most natural incidents, to a degree which startled the morbid delicacy of fashion and fashionable critics.  He had frequent occasions to resist their petty remonstrances; and whenever Moliere introduced an incident, or made an allusion of which he knew the truth, and which with him had a settled meaning, this master of human life trusted to his instinct and his art.

This pure and simple taste, ever rare at Paris, was the happy portion of the genius of this Frenchman.  Hence he delighted to try his farcical pieces, for we cannot imagine that they were his more elevated comedies, on his old maid-servant.  This maid, probably, had a keen relish for comic humour, for once when Moliere read to her the comedy of another writer as his own, she soon detected the trick, declaring that it could not be her master’s.  Hence, 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.