noise and
more pleasure. He was extremely fond of gardens, flowers, foliage.
Polyphile (La Fontaine) resembled him in this; but then Polyphile might
be said to love all things. Both of them were lyrically inclined, with
this difference, that Acanthus was rather the more pathetic, Polyphile
the more ornate."

When La Fontaine died, on the 13th of April, 1695, of the four friends
lately assembled at Versailles to read the tale of _Psyche,_ Moliere
alone had disappeared. La Fontaine had admired at Vaux the young comic
poet, who had just written the _Facheux_ for the entertainment given by
Fouquet to Louis XIV.:--

"It is a work by Moliere;
This writer, of a style so rare,
Is nowadays the court's delight
His fame, so rapid is its flight,
Beyond the bounds of Rome must be:
Amen! For he's the man for me."

In his old age he gave vent to his grief and his regret at Moliere's
death in this touching epitaph:--

"Beneath this stone Plautus and Terence lie,
Though lieth here but Moliere alone
Their threefold gifts of mind made up but one,
That witched all France with noble comedy.
Now are they gone: and little hope have I
That we again shall look upon the three
Dead men, methinks, while countless years roll by,
Terentius, Plautus, Moliere will be."

[Illustration: Moliere----664]

Moliere and French comedy had no need to take shelter beneath the mantle
of the ancients; they, together, had shed upon the world incomparable
lustre. Shakespeare might dispute with Corneille and Racine the sceptre
of tragedy; he had succeeded in showing himself as full of power, with
more truth, as the one, and as full of tenderness, with more profundity,
as the other. Moliere is superior to him in originality, abundance, and
perfection of characters; he yields to him neither in range, nor
penetration, nor complete knowledge of human nature. The lives of these
two great geniuses, authors and actors both together, present in other
respects certain features of resemblance. Both were intended for another
career than that of the stage; both, carried away by an irresistible
passion, assembled about them a few actors, leading at first a roving
life, to end by becoming the delight of the court and of the world. John
Baptist Poquelin, who before long assumed the name of Molier