Valet de Chambre du Roi Monsieur,--With what awe does a writer venture into the presence of the great Moliere!As a courtier in your time would scratch humbly (with his comb!)at the door of the Grand Monarch,so I presume to draw near your dwelling among the Immortals.You,like the king who,among all his titles,has now none so proud as that of the friend of Moliere--you found your dominions small,humble,and distracted;you raised them to the dignity of an empire:what Louis XIV.did for France you achieved for French comedy;and the baton of Scapin still wields its sway though the sword of Louis was broken at Blenheim.For the King the Pyrenees,or so he fancied,ceased to exist;by a more magnificent conquest you overcame the Channel.If England vanquished your country's arms,it was through you that France ferum victorem cepit,and restored the dynasty of Comedy to the land whence she had been driven.Ever since Dryden borrowed "L'Etourdi,"our tardy apish nation has lived (in matters theatrical)on the spoils of the wits of France.
In one respect,to be sure,times and manners have altered.While you lived,taste kept the French drama pure;and it was the congenial business of English playwrights to foist their rustic grossness and their large Fescennine jests into the urban page of Moliere.Now they are diversely occupied;and it is their affair to lend modesty where they borrow wit,and to spare a blush to the cheek of the Lord Chamberlain.But still,as has ever been our wont since Etherege saw,and envied,and imitated your successes--still we pilfer the plays of France,and take our bien,as you said in your lordly manner,wherever we can find it.We are the privateers of the stage;and it is rarely,to be sure,that a comedy pleases the town which has not first been "cut out"from the countrymen of Moliere.Why this should be,and what "tenebriferous star"(as Paracelsus,your companion in the "Dialogues des Morts,"would have believed)thus darkens the sun of English humour,we know not;but certainly our dependence on France is the sincerest tribute to you.
Without you,neither Rotrou,nor Corneille,nor "a wilderness of monkeys"like Scarron,could ever have given Comedy to France and restored her to Europe.
While we owe to you,Monsieur,the beautiful advent of Comedy,fair and beneficent as Peace in the play of Aristophanes,it is still to you that we must turn when of comedies we desire the best.If you studied with daily and nightly care the works of Plautus and Terence,if you "let no musty bouquin escape you"(so your enemies declared),it was to some purpose that you laboured.Shakespeare excepted,you eclipsed all who came before you;and from those that follow,however fresh,we turn:we turn from Regnard and Beaumarchais,from Sheridan and Goldsmith,from Musset and Pailleron and Labiche,to that crowded world of your creations."Creations"one may well say,for you anticipated Nature herself:you gave us,before she did,in Alceste a Rousseau who was a gentleman not a lacquey;in a mot of Don Juan's,the secret of the new Religion and the watchword of Comte,l'amour de l'humanite.
Before you where can we find,save in Rabelais,a Frenchman with humour;and where,unless it be in Montaigne,the wise philosophy of a secular civilisation?With a heart the most tender,delicate,loving,and generous,a heart often in agony and torment,you had to make life endurable (we cannot doubt it)without any whisper of promise,or hope,or warning from Religion.Yes,in an age when the greatest mind of all,the mind of Pascal,proclaimed that the only help was in voluntary blindness,that the only chance was to hazard all on a bet at evens,you,Monsieur,refused to be blinded,or to pretend to see what you found invisible.
