are still read with delight. Indeed, they are among the classics of French literature.

FENELON (1661-1715) was intrinsically a much abler man than Bossuet. Indeed, he was one of the very ablest, most learned, and most widely read men of his age. Unlike Bossuet, too, his gifts of character and of heart were remarkable, and had he lived under happier auspices, in a freer, nobler, more virile and natural age, it can scarcely be said what he might not have done or accomplished. In our day he is most remembered for a work that he wrote for a pupil. This is his well-known "Telemachus," a poem in prose, a work of art, all grace and color and rhythmic beauty; a work, too, of noble moral purpose. It

FÉNELON.

need scarcely be said that Fénelon was not a favorite at

court.

Bossuet and Fénelon were men of wide purview; men of affairs; men that, though ecclesiastics, knew the external life. Bourdaloue and Massillon were men of simpler character, of simpler aims, and simpler lives. Of BOURDALOUE (1632-1704) it was said: "He preached, confessed, consoled, and then he died. " He was an olden prophet come back to the world, a voice crying in the wilderness. Of stainless life himself, he sought to

make purity general-a hopeless task in the age in which he lived.

MASSILLON (1663-1742), though equally simple in character and equally single-hearted in his devotion to his calling, was of greater power. He must increase, but I must decrease," said Bourdaloue of him when he first heard him. Although the last of the great preachers, yet in the vital elements of the preacher's art, the power of persuading and convincing men, and changing their hearts and their consciences, Massillon was the greatest of them all. His was also the best finished, the most artistic style. But equally blameless in his life with Bourdaloue, he was equally insistent in enjoining a life of purity upon his hearers. "Other preachers make me content with them," said Louis XIV.; "Massillon makes me discontented with myself." Indeed, the great preacher's sermons became too powerful for his august patron. After a course, during Lent in 1704, of more than usual fervency, Massillon was never asked to preach at court again.

VI. MOLIÈRE.

The greatest name in the whole history of French literature is that of Molière. His greatness lies in the fact that he was more than the typical poet of a particular era, even though that era was the classic era of French literature-that he was more than the representative genius of a great nation, even though that nation was France-in that he was one of the three great masters of modern literature whose fame belongs to all times, and to all countries. Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Molière, are the three great creators whose works appeal to all educated persons; whose satire and whose humor is eternal, because it illumines the passions and the weaknesses of all humanity; and whose influence is greater than that of other writers because of their vast and sympathetic knowledge of the thoughts and characters of real men and real women. Not to know the plays of Shakespeare, not to know "Don Quixote," not to know the comedies of Molière, is not to be acquainted with the great masterpieces of modern literature.

The barest summary of the facts of Molière's life is all that can be attempted in the present article as an introduction to an examination of his place in the history of French literature. Almost as little is known of his early years, and of the circumstances under which his genius developed, as is known of the early years of Shakespeare. The enthusiasm of generations of schol

ars has brought out but few biographical facts, and has failed to clear up many mysteries; but, as in the case of Shakespeare, Molière's best monument is to be found in his works.

Jean A. Baptiste Poquelin was the eldest son of Jean Poquelin, a tapissier (upholsterer), who became in 1631 a minor official at the court of King Louis XIII. of France, and of Marie Cressé, his wife. He was born at Paris on January 15, 1622, and received a good education at the Collège de Clermont in that city. On leaving school he probably studied law for a time, and he certainly attended the instruction given by Gassendi in philosophy, when he had among his fellow-pupils Cyrano de Bergerac, whose name and fame have been suddenly revived by the genius of a modern French dramatic writer. About the year 1645 he abandoned his studies for the stage and became an actor, probably because he had fallen in love with an actress named Madeleine Béjart, and he assumed as his nom de théâtre the name of Molière, which he was to make immortal. The actor's profession was in the seventeenth century not considered respectable; the days of large salaries and wide. publicity had not yet dawned; actors were deemed vagabonds without civil rights or any claims upon the services of the church; and Molière fared no better than the rest of the theatrical company he had joined. These actors were a wandering race, much resembling the circus performers of the present time, and giving performances in booths set up at festival times at the street corners of towns and cities, or in impromptu theaters arranged for them in the palaces of great nobles, who hired them for the amusement of their guests. An admirable account has been given of the bohemian life of these wandering players of the seventeenth century in

Théophile Gautier's celebrated novel "Le Capitaine Fracasse." With such a company Molière seems to have wandered throughout France from 1646 to 1658, acquiring doubtless on his travels the knowledge of men and manners which he was later to exhibit in his comedies. He undoubtedly became the playwright of his company, for in those days the dramatist's art had not much advanced, and each company had its poet to write the plays which it presented. A more admirable training in stagecraft can not be imagined, and one reason that the plays of Molière still hold the stage is to be found in the fact that he, like Shakespeare, was himself an actor and knew all the tricks and devices of stage management. It was toward the close of this wandering period that the first of the extant plays of Molière, "L'Étourdi," was produced at Lyons in 1653, and the second, "Le Dépit Amoureux," at Béziers in 1656.

In 1658 the company of which Molière was manager, playwright, and principal actor, was established in Paris under the name of the "troupe de Monsieur," and performed for the first time before the young king, Louis XIV., upon a stage set up in the guardroom of the royal palace of the Louvre. Its earliest performances, like those which it had given when wandering about France, seem to have been of farces composed by Molière. These farces consisted mainly of rapidly played plots abounding in ludicrous situations, in which the actors made up their own dialogue. But in 1659 Molière produced his first real comedy, "Les Précieuses Ridicules," and from that time onward there flowed from his pen and appeared under his stage management for more than fifteen years the long series of comedies which are the glory of French dramatic literature. "L'Ecole des Femmes was produced in 1662, "Tartuffe" in 1664,