daughter, some say a younger sister, who had hitherto resided at Avignon, and who she declared was the offspring of the count of Modena, by a secret marriage. Armande Béjard soon attracted the paternal attentions of the poet. She became the secret idol of his retired moments, while he fondly thought that he could mould a young mind, in its innocence, to his own sympathies. The mother and the daughter never agreed. Armande sought his protection; and one day rushing into his study, declared that she would marry her friend. The elder Béjard freely consented to avenge herself on De Brie. De Brie was indulgent, though "the little creature," she observed, was to be yoked to one old enough to be her father. Under the same roof were now heard the voices of the three females, and Molière meditating scenes of feminine jealousies.

Molière was fascinated by his youthful wife; her lighter follies charmed: two years riveted the connubial chains. Molière was a husband who was always a lover. The actor on the stage was the very man he personated. Mademoiselle Molière, as she was called by the public, was the Lucile in "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme." With what fervour the poet feels her neglect! with what eagerness he defends her from the animadversions of the friend who would have dissolved the spell!

truly loved. In her absence her image is before me; in her presence, I am deprived of all reflection; I have no longer eyes for her defects; I only view her amiable. Is not this the last extreme of folly? And are you not surprised that I, reasoning as I do, am only sensible of the weakness which I cannot throw off?'

Few men of genius have left in their writings deeper impressions of their personal feelings than Molière. With strong passions in a feeble frame, he had duped his imagination that, like another Pygmalion, he would create a woman by his own art. In silence and agony he tasted the bitter fruits of the disordered habits of the life of a comedian, a manager, and a poet. His income was splendid; but he himself was a stranger to dissipation. He was a domestic man, of a pensive and even melancholy temperament. Silent 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 Molière, could conjecture, that one skilled in the workings of our nature would have ventured on the perilous experiment of equalising sixteen years against forty

wayward coquett., 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 Molière THE ACTOR, it was her voice which reminded the world of Molière THE POET, exclaiming-"Have they denied a grave to the man to whom Greece would have raised an altar !"

The poet was doomed to endure more poignant sorrows than slights. Mademoiselle had the art of persuading Molière that he was only his own "cocu imaginaire ;" but these domestic embarrassments multiplied. Mademoiselle, reckless of the distin--weighing roses against grey locks-to convert a guished name she bore, while she gratified her personal vanity by a lavish expenditure, practised that artful coquetry which attracted a crowd of loungers. Molière found no repose in his own house, and retreated to a country-house, where, however, his restless jealousy often drove him back to scenes which he trembled to witness. At length came the last argument of outraged matrimony-he threatened confinement. To prevent a public rupture, Molière consented to live under the same roof, and only to meet at the theatre. Weak only in love, however divided from his wife, Molière remained her perpetual lover. He said, in confidence, "I am born with every disposition to tenderness. When I married, she was too young to betray any evil inclinations. My studies were devoted to her, but I soon discovered her indifference. I ascribed it to her temper; her foolish THE Memoirs of the poet Racine, composed by passion for Count Guiche made too much noise to his son, who was himself no contemptible poet, leave me even this apparent tranquillity. I resolved may be classed among those precious pieces of to live with her as an honourable man, whose repu- biography so delightful to the philosopher who tation does not depend on the bad conduct of his studies human nature, and the literary man whose wife. My kindness has not changed her, but my curiosity is interested in the history of his republic. compassion has increased. Those who have not Such works are rare, and rank in merit next to experienced these delicate emotions have never autobiographies. Such biographical sketches,

THE SENSIBILITY OF RACINE.

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, was 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 alive to criticism, it embittered his days with too keen a perception of the domestic miseries which all men must alike undergo.

During a dramatic performance at St. Cyr, the youthful representative of Esther suddenly forgot her part; the agitated poet exclaimed, “Oh, mademoiselle, you are ruining my piece!" Terrified at this reprimand, the young actress wept ; the poet flew to her, wiped away her tears, and with contagious sympathy shed tears himself. "I do not hesitate," says Louis Racine, "to relate such minute circumstances, because this facility of shedding tears shows the goodness of the heart, according to the observation of the ancients

ἀγαθοὶ δ ̓ ἀριδάκρυες ἄνδρες.”

them; I endeavour to amuse them with matters which please them. My talent in their company is, not to make them feel that I have any genius, but to show them that they possess some themselves. When you observe the duke pass several hours with me, you would be surprised, were you present, that he frequently quits me without my having uttered three words; but gradually I put him in a humour of chatting, and he leaves me more satisfied with himself than with me." When Rochefoucault said that Boileau and Racine had only one kind of genius, and could only talk about their own poetry, it is evident that the observation should not have extended to Racine, however it might to Boileau. It was Racine's excessive sensibility which made him the finest dramatic reciter. The celebrated actress Chammelay, the heroine of his tragedies, had no genius whatever for the stage, but she had beauty, voice, and memory. Racine taught her first to comprehend the verses she was going to recite, showed her the appropriate gesture, and gave her the variable tones, which he even sometimes noted down. His pupil, faithful to her lessons, though a mere actress of art, on the stage seemed inspired by passion; and as she, thus formed and fashioned, naturally only played thus effectively in the dramas of her preceptor, it was supposed that love for the poet inspired the

actress.

When Racine read aloud he diffused his own enthusiasm ; once with Boileau and Nicole, amid a literary circle, they talked of Sophocles, whom Racine greatly admired, but from whom he had never dared to borrow a tragic subject. Taking up a Greek Sophocles, and translating the Edipus, the French poet became so deeply imbued with the Greek tragedian, that his auditors caught all the emotions of terror and pity. "I have seen," says one of those auditors, "our best pieces represented by our best actors, but never anything approached the agitation which then came over us; and to this distant day I have never lost the recollection of Racine, with the volume in his hand, full of emotion, and we all breathlessly pressing around him."

This morbid state of feelings made his whole literary life uneasy; unjust criticism affected him as much as the most poignant, and there was nothing he dreaded more than that his son should become a writer of tragedies. "I will not dissimulate," he says, addressing his son, "that in the heat of composition we are not sometimes pleased with ourselves; but you may believe me, when the day after we look over our work, we are astonished not to find that excellence we admired in the evening; and when we reflect that even what we find good ought to be still better, and how distant we are still from perfection, we are discouraged and dissatisfied. Besides all this, although the approbation I have received has been very flattering, the least adverse criticism, even miserable as it might be, has always occasioned me more vexation than all the praise I received could give me pleasure." And, again, he endeavours to impress on him that the favour he received from the world he owed not to his verses. "Do in the Port-Royal; but when Nicole, one of that not imagine that they are my verses that attract all these kindnesses. Corneille composes verses a hundred times finer than mine, but no one regards him. His verses are only applauded from the mouths of the actors. I do not tire men of the world by reciting my works; I never allude to

It was the poet's sensibility that urged him to make the most extraordinary sacrifice that ever poet made; he wished to get rid entirely of that poetical fame to which he owed everything, and which was at once his pleasure, his pride, and his property. His education had been a religious one,

illustrious confraternity, with undistinguishing
fanaticism, had once asserted that all dramatic
writers were public poisoners of souls, Racine, in
the pride and strength of his genius, had elo-
quently repelled the denouncement.
But now,
having yet only half run his unrivalled course, he

turned aside, relinquished its glory, repented of his success, and resolved to write no more trage dies. He determined to enter into the austere order of the Chartreux; but his confessor, more rational than his penitent, assured him that a character so feeling as his own, and so long accustomed to the world, could not endure that terrible solitude. He advised him to marry a woman of a serious turn, and that little domestic occupations would withdraw him from the passion he seemed most to dread, that of writing verses.

presence of strangers he dared to be a father, and used to join us in our sports. I well remember our processions in which my sisters were the clergy, I the rector, and the author of Athaliah, chanting with us, carried the cross."

At length this infirm sensibility abridged his days. He was naturally of a melancholic temperament, apt to dwell on objects which occasion pain, rather than on those which exhilarate. Louis Racine observes that his character resembled Cicero's description of himself, more inclined to dread unfortunate events, than to hope for happy ones; semper magis adversos rerum exitus metuens quam sperans secundos. In the last incident of his life his extreme sensibility led him to imagine as present a misfortune which might never have occurred.

Madame de Maintenon, one day in conversation with the poet, alluded to the misery of the people. Racine observed it was the usual consequence of long wars; the subject was animating, and he entered into it with all that enthusiasm peculiar to himself. Madame de Maintenon was charmed with his eloquent effusion, and requested him to give her his observations in writing, assuring him they should not go out of her hand. She was reading his memoir when the king entered her apartment; he took it up, and after having looked over a few pages, he inquired with great quickness who was the author. She replied it was a secret; but the king was peremptory, and the author was named. The king asked with great dissatisfaction, Is it because he writes the most perfect verses, that he thinks that he is able to become a statesman?"

The marriage of Racine was an act of penance -neither love nor interest had any share in the union. His wife was a good sort of woman, but perhaps the most insensible of her sex; and the properest person in the world to mortify the passion of literary glory, and the momentary exultation of literary vanity. It is scarcely credible, but most certainly true, since her own son relates the fact, that the wife of Racine had neither seen, acted, nor ever read, nor desired to read, the tragedies which had rendered her husband so celebrated throughout Europe; she had only learned some of their titles in conversation. She was as insensible to fortune as to fame. One day, when Racine returned from Versailles, with the princely gift from Louis XIV. of a purse of 1000 louis, he hastened to embrace his wife, and to show her the treasure. But she was full of trouble, for one of the children for two days had not studied! "We will talk of this another time," exclaimed the poet; "at present let us be happy." But she insisted he ought instantly to reprimand this child, and continued her complaints; while Boileau in astonishment paced to and fro, perhaps thinking of his Satire on Women, and exclaiming, "What Madame de Maintenon told the poet all that insensibility! Is it possible, that a purse of 1000 had passed, and declined to receive his visits for louis is not worth a thought!" This stoical apathy the present. Racine was shortly after attacked did not arise in Madame Racine from the grandeur, with violent fever. In the languor of recovery he but the littleness, of her mind. Her prayer-books addressed Madame de Maintenon to petition to and her children were the sole objects that inter- have his pension freed from some new tax ; and he ested this good woman. Racine's sensibility was added an apology for his presumption in suggestnot mitigated by his marriage; domestic sorrows ing the cause of the miseries of the people, with weighed heavily on his spirits; when the illness an humiliation that betrays the alarms that existed of his children agitated him, he sometimes ex-in his mind. The letter is too long to transcribe, claimed, "Why did I expose myself to all this? Why was I persuaded not to be a Chartreux ?" His letters to his children are those of a father and a friend; kind exhortations or pathetic reprimands; he enters into the most domestic detail, while he does not conceal from them the mediocrity of their fortune. "Had you known him in his family," said Louis Racine, 46 you would be more alive to his poetical character, you would then know why his verses are always so full of sentiment. He was never more pleased than when, permitted to be absent from the court, he could come among us to pass a few days. Even in the

but it is a singular instance how genius can degrade itself when it has placed all its felicity on the varying smiles of those we call the great. Well might his friend Boileau, who had nothing of his sensibility nor imagination, exclaim, with his good sense, of the court:—

'Quel séjour étranger, et pour vous et pour moi!" Racine afterwards saw Madame de Maintenon walking in the gardens of Versailles; she drew aside into a retired allée to meet him; she exhorted him to exert his patience and fortitude, and told him that all would end well. "No, madam," he replied,

46 never!" "Do you then doubt,"

To this last point of misery and degradation was this great genius reduced. Shortly after, he died, and was buried at the feet of his master in the chapel of the studious and religious society of Port-Royal.

OF STERNE.

CERVANTES is immortal-Rabelais and STERNE have passed away to the curious.

she said, "either my heart, or my influence?" He replied, "I acknowledge your influence, and know your goodness to me; but I have an aunt who loves me in quite a different manner. That pious woman every day implores God to bestow on These fraternal geniuses alike chose their subme disgrace, humiliation, and occasions for peni-jects from their own times. Cervantes, with the tence, and she has more influence than you." As innocent design of correcting a temporary folly of he said these words, the sound of a carriage was his countrymen, so that the very success of the heard; "The king is coming!" said Madame de design might have proved fatal to the work itself; Maintenon, "hide yourself!" for when he had cut off the heads of the Hydra, an extinct monster might cease to interest the readers of other times, and other manners. But Cervantes, with judgment equal to his invention, and with a cast of genius made for all times, delighted his contemporaries and charms his posterity. He looked to the world and collected other follies than the Spanish ones, and to another age than the administration of the duke of Lerma; with more genuine pleasantry than any writer from the days of Lucian, not a solitary spot has soiled the purity of his page; while there is scarcely a subject in human nature for which we might not find some apposite illustration. His style, pure as his thoughts, is, however, a magic which ceases to work in all translations, and Cervantes is not Cervantes in English or in French; yet still he retains his popularity among all the nations of Europe; which is more than we can say even of our Shakespeare!

The sacred dramas of " Esther" and "Athaliah" were among the later productions of Racine. The fate of "Athaliah," his masterpiece, was remarkable. The public imagined that it was a piece written only for children, as it was performed by the young scholars of St. Cyr, and received it so coldly that Racine was astonished and disgusted. He earnestly requested Boileau's opinion, who maintained it was his capital work. "I understand these things," said he, "and the publie y reviendra." The prediction was a true one, but it was accomplished too late, long after the death of the author; it was never appreciated till it was publicly performed.

Boileau and Racine derived little or no profit from the booksellers. Boileau particularly, though fond of money, was so delicate on this point, that be gave all his works away. It was this that made him so bold in railing at those authors qui mettent leur Apollon aux gages d'un libraire, and he declared that he had only inserted these verses,

** Je sai qu'un noble esprit peut sans honte et sans crime Tirer de son travail un tribut légitime,”

to console Racine, who had received some profits from the printing of his tragedies. Those profits were, however, inconsiderable; the truth is, the king remunerated the poets.

Racine's first royal mark of favour was an order signed by Colbert for six hundred livres, to give him the means of continuing his studies of the belles-lettres. He received, by an account found among his papers, above forty thousand livres from the cassette of the king, by the hand of the first valet-de-chambre. Besides these gifts, Racine had a pension of four thousand livres, as historiographer, and another pension as a man of letters.

Which is the more honourable? to crouch for a salary brought by the hand of the first valet-dechambre, or to exult in the tribute offered by the public to an author?

Rabelais and Sterne were not perhaps inferior in genius, and they were read with as much avidity and delight as the Spaniard. "Le docte Rabelais" had the learning which the Englishman wanted; while unhappily Sterne undertook to satirise false erudition, which requires the knowledge of the true. Though the "Papemanes," on whom Rabelais has exhausted his grotesque humour and his caustic satire, have not yet walked off the stage, we pay a heavy price in the grossness of his ribaldry and his tiresome balderdash for odd stories and flashes of witty humour. Rabelais hardly finds readers even in France, with the exception of a few literary antiquaries. The day has passed when a gay dissolute abbé could obtain a rich abbey by getting Rabelais by heart, for the perpetual improvement of his patron-and Rabelais is now little more than a Rabelais by tradition.

In my youth the world doted on Sterne ! Martin Sherlock ranks him among "the luminaries of the century." Forty years ago, young men, in their most facetious humours, never failed to find the archetypes of society in the Shandy familyevery good-natured soul was uncle Toby, every humorist was old Shandy, every child of Nature was Corporal Trim! It may now be doubted whether Sterne's natural dispositions were the humorous or the pathetic: the pathetic has survived!

There is nothing of a more ambiguous nature