that
Menander and Moliere stand alone specially as comic poets of the feelings
and the idea. In each of them there is a conception of the Comic that
refines even to pain, as in the Menedemus of the Heautontimorumenus, and
in the Misanthrope. Menander and Moliere have given the principal types
to Comedy hitherto. The Micio and Demea of the Adelphi, with their
opposing views of the proper management of youth, are still alive; the
Sganarelles and Arnolphes of the Ecole des Maris and the Ecole des
Femmes, are not all buried. Tartuffe is the father of the hypocrites;
Orgon of the dupes; Thraso, of the braggadocios; Alceste of the 'Manlys';
Davus and Syrus of the intriguing valets, the Scapins and Figaros. Ladies
that soar in the realms of Rose-Pink, whose language wears the nodding
plumes of intellectual conceit, are traceable to Philaminte and Belise of
the Femmes Savantes: and the mordant witty women have the tongue of
Celimene. The reason is, that these two poets idealized upon life: the
foundation of their types is real and in the quick, but they painted with
spiritual strength, which is the solid in Art.

The idealistic conceptions of Comedy gives breadth and opportunities of
daring to Comic genius, and helps to solve the difficulties it creates.
How, for example, shall an audience be assured that an evident and
monstrous dupe is actually deceived without being an absolute fool? In Le
Tartuffe the note of high Comedy strikes when Orgon on his return home
hears of his idol's excellent appetite. 'Le pauvre homme!' he exclaims.
He is told that the wife of his bosom has been unwell. 'Et Tartuffe?' he
asks, impatient to hear him spoken of, his mind suffused with the thought
of Tartuffe, crazy with tenderness, and again he croons, 'Le pauvre
homme!' It is the mother's cry of pitying delight at a nurse's recital of
the feats in young animal gluttony of her cherished infant. After this
masterstroke of the Comic, you not only put faith in Orgon's roseate
prepossession, you share it with him by comic sympathy, and can listen
with no more than a tremble of the laughing muscles to the instance he
gives of the sublime humanity of Tartuffe:

'Un rien presque suffit pour le scandaliser, Jusque-le, qu'il se vint
l'autre jour accuser D'avoir pris une puce en faisant sa priere, Et de
l'avoir tuee avec trop de colere.'

And to have killed it too wrathfully! Translating Moliere is like humming
an air one has heard performed by an accompl