y notice. Quinault may almost be said to have
founded a new literary school (in which none of his pupils has surpassed
him) by the excellence of his operas. Of these _Armida_ is held the
best. His comedies proper are not quite so good as his operas, but much
better than his tragedies. One of them, _L'Amant Indiscret_, supplied
Newcastle and Dryden with hints to eke out _L'Etourdi_, and most of them
show a considerable command of comic situation, if not of comic
expression. Montfleury, whose real name was Antoine Jacob, was, like
Moliere, an actor. He belonged to the old or rival company of the Hotel
de Bourgogne, and was born in 1640. He wrote sixteen comedies, partly on
contemporary subjects and partly adaptations of Spanish originals. The
two best are _La Femme Juge et Partie_ and _La Fille Capitaine_. They
belong to an older style of comedy than Moliere's, being both
extravagant and coarse, but there is considerable _vis comica_ in them.
Boursault, who was born in 1638 and died in 1701, had still more merit,
though he too was an enemy of Moliere. His _Mercure Galant_ is his
principal play, besides which _Esope a la Cour_, _Esope a la Ville_, and
_Phaeton_ may be mentioned. He was decidedly popular both as a man and a
writer. Vanbrugh imitated more than one of his plays. In all these
comedies a certain smack of the pre-Molieresque fancy for _Comedies des
Chansons_ and other _tours de force_ may be perceived. Besides these
three writers others of Moliere's own contemporaries wrote comedies with
more or less success. La Fontaine himself was a dramatist, though his
dramas do not approach his other work in excellence. Thomas Corneille
wrote comedies, but none of importance; and Campistron attained a
certain amount of success in comic as in tragic drama. No one of these,
however, approached the authors of the younger generation who have been
mentioned.

[Sidenote: The School of Moliere-Regnard.]

Jean Francois Regnard, the second of French comic dramatists in general
estimation (though it is doubtful whether any single piece of his equals
_Turcaret_), was born at Paris in 1656, and lived a curious life. He was
heir to considerable wealth and increased it, singular to say, by
gambling. He had also a mania for travelling, and when he was only
two-and-twenty was captured by an Algerian corsair and enslaved. After
some adventures of a rather dubious character he was ransomed, but
continued to travel for some years. At last he