he greatest
possible number of popular sayings; a _Comedie des Chansons_ spun out of
a vast and precious collection of popular songs; a _Comedie des
Comedies_, which is a cento made up of extracts from Balzac, the
moralist and letter-writer; a _Comedie des Comediens_, in which the
famous actors of the day are brought on the stage in their own
persons[240], etc., etc. While French comedy was thus endeavouring to
find its way in all manner of tentative and sometimes grotesque
experiments, dramatists of talent occasionally struck, as if by
accident, into some of the side paths of that way, and directed their
successors into the way itself. The early comedies of Corneille have
been spoken of; despite the improbability of their Spanish plots, they
show a distinct feeling after real excellence. The eccentric Cyrano de
Bergerac, especially in his _Pedant Joue_, furnished Moliere with hints,
and displayed considerable comic power. Scarron, a not dissimilar
person, whose _Roman Comique_ shows the interest he felt in the theatre,
also wrote comedies, the chief of which were extremely popular, the
character of Jodelet in the play of the same name (1645) becoming for
the time a stock one both in name and type. Scarron's other chief pieces
were _Don Japhet d'Armenie_, _L'Heritier ridicule_, _La Precaution
inutile_. It was in the _Menteur_ of Corneille that Moliere himself
considered that true comedy had been first reached, and it was this play
which set him on the track. But French comedy of the seventeenth
century, before Moliere, is one of the subjects which have hardly any
but a historical and antiquarian interest. Although far less artificial
than contemporary tragedy, it is inferior as literature. It was
attempted by writers of less power, and it is disfigured by too frequent
coarseness of language and incident. It was on the whole the lowest of
literary styles during the first half of the century. With Moliere it
became at one bound the highest.

[Sidenote: Moliere.]

Jean Baptiste Poquelin[241], afterwards called Moliere, was born at
Paris, probably in January 1622, in the Rue St. Honore. The Poquelin
family seem to have come from Beauvais. Some hypotheses as to a Scotch
origin have been disproved. Moliere's father was an upholsterer, holding
an appointment in the royal household, and of some wealth and position.
Moliere himself had every advantage of education, being at school at the
famous Jesuit College de Clermont, and