the bondage of the artificial and pantomime performances that until
then had passed for plays, and that, together with Moliere, he laid
the foundations of the drama as it is understood in our days. Indeed,
Voltaire, in his admiration for the Venetian playwright, also called
him "the Italian Moliere," a comparison that is more accurate than
such comparisons between authors of different countries are apt to
be, though, like all such judgments, somewhat rough and ready. It is
interesting in this respect to confront the two most popular dramas of
the two dramatists, Moliere's "Le Misanthrope" and Goldoni's "Il Burbero
Benefico." Goldoni, while superior in imagination, in spontaneity, deals
more with the superficial aspects of humanity. Moliere, on the contrary,
probes deep into the human soul, and has greater elegance of form. In
return, Goldoni is more genial and kindly in his judgments, and, while
lacking none of Moliere's keenness of observation, is devoid of his
bitter satire. Both have the same movement and life, the same intuitive
perception of what will please the public, the same sense of dramatic
proportion. Goldoni was, however, less happy than Moliere as regards
the times in which his lines were cast. The French dramatist, like
Shakespeare, was born at an age in which his fatherland was traversing
a glorious epoch of national story. The Italian lived instead in the
darkest period of that political degradation which was the lot of the
fairest of European countries, until quite recently, when she emancipated
herself, threw off the chains of foreign bondage, and proclaimed herself
mistress of her own lands and fortunes. And manners and customs were no
less in decadence in private as well as in public,--a sad epoch, truly,
though to outsiders it looked light-hearted and merry enough. Goldoni's
lot was cast in the final decades of the decrepitude of Venice, the last
of the Italian proud Republics, which survived only to the end of the
eighteenth century, indeed dissolved just four years after her great
dramatist's demise. His long life comprised almost the whole of that
century, from the wars of the Spanish Succession, which open the history
of that era, to the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle and the French Revolution.

Historical events had, however, merely an outward and accidental
influence on this great artist-nature, entirely absorbed in his work,
and indifferent, even unconscious, to all that surged around him in this
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