The Précieuses Ridicules an Epoch in Comedy.

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We can best palliate the sentence of condemnation we pass on the play by stating that the scene in question is almost the only part which is entirely Molière's own, the rest being borrowed, either in idea or detail, from still worse Italian plays. The words 'dépit amoureux' might be translated lovers' quarrels,' though the word 'dépit' foreshadows that 'amoris redintegratio,' which Terence couples with the 'amantium iræ.' The scene in Molière's play (at the end of the fourth act) is the counterpart, or French version, of the famous 'Donec gratus eram tibi,' &c. of Horace. After the master and mistress have gone through their 'ira' and 'redintegratio,' valet and suivante follow suit. The effect of the contrast in style is so irresistibly comic, that it almost redeems the dull indecency of the remainder of the play.

Nearly a twelvemonth elapsed before Molière presented the public with a new piece. It is idle to conjecture how he catered for the amusement of the parterre at the Petit Bourbon during the interval. M. Bazin somewhat flauntingly asserts that doubtless he repeated the 'divertissemens,' or farces, with which he had entertained the provinces, and made his débût at Court an assertion shown to be false (we owe the fact to M. Taschereau's kindness) by the Régistre de Lagrange, a highly valuable record of the accounts &c. of Molière's troupe, from the pen of Molière's principal actor, and now deposited among the manuscripts of the Comédie Française. We are forced, then, to pass, per saltum, from November, 1658, to November, 1659, when the first representation of the Précieuses Ridicules taught the world to know, as by instinct, that yet greater things were in store for them—that a new era was opened in the history of comedy. 'Courage! courage! Molière, voilà la vraie comédie.' This greeting, with which Molière was hailed from the parterre, has been heartily responded to by every succeeding generation.

Sir Walter Scott endeavoured to console himself for the comparative failure of the Monastery, and especially of the delineation of the euphuist, Sir Percie Shafton, by reflecting that satirists of folly cease to attract when the particular folly aimed at is no longer on the wing; so that plays, for instance, fall into oblivion along with the peculiar absurdities and extravagances against which their ridicule was originally directed. Not such, assuredly, has been the fate of the Précieuses Ridicules; and we fear it is rather in the execution than the conception, that the author of Waverley should have searched for the cause of that coldness with which the euphuist knight was received. With regard to the particular folly aimed at by Molière (it might be called the euphuism of

France), a great deal of misconception might have been obviated, if persons had taken the play on Molière's own showing, or had even attended to the important qualification involved in the title: not, observe, Les Précieuses, but Les Précieuses Ridicules. Finding that some one had got a copy of his play by stealth, and was on the point of bringing it out, Molière had no alternative but to anticipate or prosecute the pirate. Of the two evils he chose what he thought to be the lesser; and thus gave to the Précieuses Ridicules an honour he had withheld from the Etourdi and the Dépit, to wit, publication. The preface, in which he bewails this dire necessity of rushing, nolens volens, into print, is full of dry humour.

Oh Lord! (he exclaims), what a strange to-do it is, bringing out a book, and what a novice an author is, the first time he prints. If they had only given me time, I should have been better able to look about me, and could have taken all the precautions which Messieurs les auteurs-my colleagues, I may now call them -are wont to adopt on these occasions. I should have begun by pouncing upon some grandee as a patron, will he nill he, working upon his liberality by a flowery letter of dedication. I should then have tried my hand at a fine, learned preface, having plenty of books which would have supplied me with all sorts of learned things about Tragedy and Comedy, their etymology, definition, origin, and the rest of it. Aye! and I should have laid hold of some friends who, to give the piece a lift, would not have grudged me some verses in French or Latin: I have actually got some who would have praised me in Greek, and everyone knows that a bit of Greek praise produces a wonderful effect at the head of a book.

Molière then goes on to explain his motive in the choice of his subject. Things the most excellent, he says, are liable to be badly aped by persons who deserve to be shown up. After some illustrations, he adds, aussi les veritables précieuses auraient tort de se piquer lorsqu'on joue les ridicules qui les imitent mal.' The popular idea of the Précieuses Ridicules is, that it is intended as a satire upon the Hôtel de Rambouillet, that famous réunion,' which numbered on its rolls names the most illustrious for wit, birth, and virtue, that can be found among the sons and daughters of France during the seventeenth century. A few words of explanation, based on historical facts, will serve to show the exaggeration involved in this popular fallacy. We must premise, however, that we would not be understood to subscribe to the equally exaggerated reactionary movement directed against Molière's play by M. Roederer, the author of the Histoire de la Société Polie.

To find the cradle of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, we must back to the first decade (1600-1610) of the century, which

Réunions at the Hôtel de Rambouillet.

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witnessed the marriages of Henry IV. with Marie de Medicis, and of Charles d'Angennes, Marquis de Rambouillet, with de Catherine de Vivonne, daughter of the Marquis de Pisani. The motive which originated the Hôtel de Rambouillet, which formed in the world of fashion a kind of imperium in imperio, set up against the Court, was the disgust of Catherine de Vivonne at the lewdness of Henry IV. and his licentious crew, especially his persecution of her father's old pupil, the Prince de Condé, for whose wife (Marie de Montmorency) Henry did everything in his power to gratify his passion. Commenced as a protest against these dissolute excesses of King and Court, the Hôtel de Rambouillet ended by becoming a focus of which the lustre has not yet grown dim. Men of letters the intellect of the head, accomplished women-the intellect of the heart, men of rank-the intellect of birth, (for, as Labruyère says of these fils des Dieux,' 'ils naissent instruits'); such were the elements of which this society was composed, such were the persons who met in the salon bleu of Madame de Rambouillet. It was there (to take it from the commencement) that Malherbe wedded energy of conception to elegance of execution-Malherbe, who shrewdly saw that the language of the simple should be a law to the wise-who in France was the first to invent a theory of style, and to vindicate the supremacy of order and of taste. There, too, Balzac shone-the Malherbe of prose-Balzac, who invented something more than the word 'urbanité,' and who gave to speech-that drapery of thought-many of those rich, ample folds which were hereafter to shroud the eloquence of a Pascal and a Bossuet. Nor must Voiture be forgotten'le père de l'ingénieuse badinerie,' as a contemporary styles him; a man who was the idol of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, the spoiled child of the age in which he lived; who seems to have made it his aim to combine a maximum of words with a minimum of meaning, and the fame of whose writings would be totally inexplicable, did we not call to mind that he was the first to restore to French literature what Frenchmen so dearly love 'esprit,'-and thus supplied a welcome relief from the solemn pedantry of the sixteenth century.* Space will not admit of our continuing this enumeration of the members who flocked to the 'salons' of Madame de Rambouillet. Indeed, there is one name which may well compensate for all the rest. For what are Ménage and Scudéri,

* Perhaps the best criticism ever passed upon Voiture was the remark of a girl of twelve years of age, Mademoiselle de Bourbon, who said she thought "qu'il fallait le conserver dans du sucre."

Chapelain and Conrart, or even De Retz, when compared with 'le grand Corneille.' Misplaced, most assuredly, are flouts and sneers, when directed against a 'réunion' where Corneille read his plays, and, we might add, where Bossuet preached his maiden sermon.* Or, to pass to the other sex, is it in such women as Madame de Sévigné, de Longueville, de Sablé, de Scudéri, that we are to look for the originals of the Précieuses Ridicules? Perhaps the name last mentioned may inspire some one with the audacity to reply in the affirmative. The authoress of the Grand Cyrus and the Clélie has been the object of such withering contempt, especially from those who would feel affronted if you suspected them capable of ever having read a line of her works, that she may possibly be considered a fit object for Molière's shafts. On the merit of these novels it would be highly flippant to pronounce in some dozen words-all we could now spare. We content ourselves with meeting the main charge brought against them, that of a nauseous, namby-pamby gallantry, by replying, that of the two, we consider the metaphysics of love a trifle less dangerous than the physics thereof, and that Mademoiselle de Scudéri―and, before her, d'Urfé, the author of Astrée-compassed no frivolous end, when, by way of protest against the coarse sensuality of a licentious court, they set themselves to trace pictures of love which could be witnessed without a blush, and dialogues between the sexes which could be written without asterisks. It must further be remembered that you lose the whole point of Molière's play-his précieuses cease to be ridicules-if you let go the fact, that what they take in earnest, with the véritables précieuses' was a mere wanton play of wit and words, absurd if you will, but admitted to be so by those who first gave them currency. In its original acceptation, the word précieuse was an honourable designation, signifying a woman who, to grace and dignity of manner, added elegance and culture of mind, and who in every way answered to the ideal which we are wont to form of the wellborn and well-bred daughter of Eve-pure and high-toned feeling, incarnate in simplicity of language and dignity of bearing. But when the Hôtel de Rambouillet came to be broken up, from death, and marriage, and such like catastrophes in the family of its founders, a number of other 'cercles' sprang into existence, who idly fancied that elevation of language could disguise the absence of elevation of feeling;

* See Bungener's tracts on the Hôtel de Rambouillet appended to his Sermon sous Louis XIV. The circumstances on which they are founded are authentic facts.

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OF THE

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Influence of these Réunions on French Literature, IVERSITY that the millinery of words could compensate for db-ORNIA

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stantial thought. We do not exaggerate when we say that it would be as ludicrous to take Thackeray's Book of Snobs for a true picture of the English gentleman, as for us to represent Molière's Précieuses Ridicules as a true delineation of the Sevignés, the Sablés, and the Longuevilles of France in the seventeenth century. We might go further, and sum up our brief sketch of the véritables Précieuses, by expressing our convictions that to the 'réunions' of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, as much as, if not more than to the exertions of Richelieu, France is indebted for the origin of her Academy. We need but look at the earliest orations delivered by the members of that world-famous body (who were also frequenters of the Hôtel de Rambouillet), in order to see the analogy between the topics which engaged the attention of both assemblies. In his recent and charming biography of Madame de Longueville, M. Cousin compares the tone of conversation which we may believe to have prevailed during the palmy days (1630—1648) of the Hôtel de Rambouillet to that of Plato's Symposium, or more generally, to that of the cultured minds that flocked around Aspasia at Athens, or hung upon the lips of the Scipios at Rome. That we should be able to quote such a name as M. Cousin's on our side is a sufficient guarantee that we have been justified in vindicating the claims of the Hôtel de Rambouillet to the position it deserves to occupy, as one of the most salutary instruments in the development of French literature. We now proceed to a closer examination of Molière's play.

Enter a brace of rejected lovers, whose homely ways have not found favour with Mesdemoiselles Madelon and Cathos, the nieces of an honest, simple-minded bourgeois, Gorgibus. They are bent on revenge. The execution of their plan forms the subject of the play. This, like all Molière's plots, is very simple. Their two valets pass themselves off as marquises, and after making dupes of the précieuses, are detected by their masters, who drub the pseudo-nobles out of the house, greatly to the mortification of the young précieuses, now doubly ridicules. The contrast between the plain-spoken uncle and the affectation of his nieces gives wonderful relief to the comic effect of the play. When asked how it came to pass that the two suitors had left the house so coldly, Madelon replies, 'La belle galanterie que la leur! Quoi! débuter d'abord par le mariage !!' Eh !! par où veux tu donc qu'ils débutent? par le concubinage?' Here follows a long remonstrance from the nieces, who describe in detail the forms and ceremonies to be adopted by wooers-the 'carte du Tendre,' and the rest of it.

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