(Boileau's Criticism.)

Boileau found fault with Moliere for humouring too much those that sat in the pit; which is a reasonable censure in some respects, but unjust in the main. Moliere was dead when Boileau praised him in one of his epistles; as much, or more, than in the satire he had inscribed to him. It is therefore a great piece of injustice to say, that he praised him out of policy, and for fear of being bantered by him upon the stage, if he should say nothing to his advantage, or if he should venture to criticise him. But some will say, he criticised him when he had nothing to fear, and therefore the suspicion entertained of him seems to be well grounded. I am not of that opinion; I believe that if he had made his Art Poëtique in Moliere’s life-time, he would have inserted in it the censure contained in the following verses. It was, in a manner, essential to his subject; there is in it a very judicious observation, which should be an inviolable rule, if comedies were only made to be printed; but because they are chiefly designed to appear on the stage in the presence of all sorts of people, it is not just to require they should be adapted to Boileau's taste. These are his words:—

Etudiez la cour, & connoissez la ville,
L’une & l’autre est toûjours en modèles fertile.
C'est par là que Moliere illustrant ses écrits
Peut-être de son art eût remporté le prix;

Si moins ami du peuple en ses doctes peintures,
Il n’eût point fait souvent grimacer ses figures,
Quitté pour le bouffon, l’agréable & le fin.
Et sans honte à Terence allié Tabarin.
Dans ce sac ridicule où Scapin s'envelope,
Je ne reconnois plus l'auteur du Misanthrope.
Desperaux Art. Poétique, Canto iii, ver. 391, & seq.

Study the court, and know the city well:
So shall your various characters excel. It was by this that Moliere in his plays
Perhaps, as victor, might have claim'd the bays;
If he, to please the rabble of the town,
Had not sometimes affected the buffoon; Preferr'd low farce and drollery to wit,
And more like Tabarin than Terence writ.
In that same bag which Scapin doth enclose,
The author of the Misanthrope I lose.

He blames Moliere for endeavouring to please, not only men of a nice judgment, but also the common people. Moliere had some reasons for it, and might have said what Arlequin answered in a like case. “Those jests, said I to him, (to Arlequin) are pleasant enough in your plays; it is pity they are not equally good. I own it, replied he, but they please several young people, who come to our play-house only to laugh, and who laugh at any thing, and very often without knowing why. Our plays are frequently acted before such people, and if our jests were not suited to their capacity, our house would be very often empty. I am sorry, said I to him, that you have almost left your old pieces off; they were well approved by men of sense, they contained many things of good use in morality, and I dare say, that your stage was a place where vice was so effectually ridiculed, that every body found himself inclined to love virtue merely out of reason. Should we act none but our old pieces, replied he, our play-house would be little resorted to, and I will tell you what Cinthio formerly told St Evremond, that good actors

would be starved notwithstanding their excellent plays.” It ought to be observed, that players are at great charges, and that plays are no less designed for the diversion of the people, than for the diversion of the senate; and therefore they must be adapted to the taste of the public, in order to bring a numerous audience; for without that, although they were a perfect compound of ingenious, nice, and exquisite thoughts, the actors would be ruined by them, and they would be of no use to the people.

This is what may be said, not only against those who censure Moliere, but also against those who find fault with many other books, because they do not consider the several uses they are designed for, and because there are many things in them which they could wish the author had left out. What do I care for that, says one? What is it to me, says another, that such a one had a bad wife? To what purpose so many quotations, so many merry thoughts, so many philosophical reflections, &c? Such are the complaints of those who censure this dictionary: but they will give me leave to tell them, that they want the most necessary notion to pass a right judgment upon this work. They do not consider that it ought to be of some use to all sorts of readers, and that if it had been entirely framed according to the taste of the greatest purists; it would go out of its natural sphere. I would have them to consider, that if I had kept to their notions of perfection, my book would indeed have been acceptable to them, but then many others had been displeased with it, and it had remained in the dust of the booksellers’ warehouses. What a poor thing would two or three large folios be for him, if there were nothing in them but what may please those who pretend to gravity, and to an exquisite taste, and who would have the most copious subjects explained in the shortest way? They may, if they please, make such a reflection as Socrates

made at the sight of a fair; but the fair will nevertheless be as it ought to be. The fellow feeling of Bayle with Arlequin on this occasion is very amusing; so would a numerous tribe of buzzing periodical dramatic critics be much injured by a full consideration of his reasoning on the situation of theatrical proprietors.—Ed. ⁹¹—Art. Moliere.