sewhere, is felt the drawback of the method. Comparing Tartuffe with
Iago, we have all the difference between a skilful but not wholly
probable presentation of wickedness in the abstract, and a picture of a
wicked man. In _Amphitryon_, 1668, Moliere measured himself with Plautus
and produced an admirable play. _George Dandin_ (same date), the working
up of _La Jalousie du Barbouille_, is one of the happiest of his
sketches of conjugal infelicity. Then came _L'Avare_ (same date), in
which Moliere was once more indebted to the ancients and to his French
predecessors, but in which he amply justified his borrowings. At this
time he extended his field and brought his knowledge of provincial and
bourgeois life to bear. _M. de Pourceaugnac_, 1669, is an ingenious
satire, pushed to the verge of burlesque and farce, on the country
squires of France. _Les Amants Magnifiques_, 1670, shows the writer once
more in his capacity of court playwright. But _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_
(same date) is the most audacious and by far the most successful of the
wonderful extravaganzas in which a sound and perennial motive of satire
on society is wrapped up, the theme this time being the bourgeoisie of
Paris, of which the author was himself a member. _Psyche_, 1671, is,
perhaps, the most remarkable example of collaboration in literature,
Moliere, Pierre Corneille, and Quinault, the greatest comic dramatist,
the greatest tragic dramatist, and the greatest opera librettist of the
day, having joined their forces with a result not unworthy of them. _Les
Fourberies de Scapin_ (same date) is again farce, but farce such as only
Moliere could write; and in _La Comtesse d'Escarbagnas_ (same date) the
theme of _M. de Pourceaugnac_ is taken up with a certain heightening of
colour and manner. _Les Femmes Savantes_, 1672, brings the reader back
to what is as emphatically 'la bonne comedie' as its original _Les
Precieuses Ridicules_. The tone and treatment are more serious than in
the older piece and deal with a different variety of feminine coxcombry,
but the effect is not less happy, and is free from the broader elements
of farce. Lastly, _Le Malade Imaginaire_, 1673, the swan-song of
Moliere, combined both his greatest excellences, the power of raising
audacious farce into the region of true comedy and the power of
satirising social abuses with a pitiless but good-humoured hand. The
main theme here is the absurdity of the current practice of medicine,
but as