Eminent literary and scientific men of France.

Date:
1838-1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Eminent literary and scientific men of France. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    pete with its rival in tragedy : when the curtain fell, therefore, he stepped forward, and, after thanking the audience for their kind reception, asked the king’s leave to represent a little divertisement which had acquired a reputation in the provinces : the king assented; and the performers went on, to act “ Le Docteur Amoureux ” one those farces, several of which he had brought out in Languedoc, conceived in the Italian taste, full of buf- foonery and bustle. The king was amused, and the piece succeeded ; and hence arose the fashion of adding a short farce after a long serious play. The success also secured the establishment of his company ; they acted at first at the Theatre du Petit Bourbon, and after- wards, when that theatre was taken down to give place to the new building of the colonnade of the Louvre, the king gave him that of the Palais Royal, and his com- pany assumed the name of Comediens de Monsieur. Parisian society opened a new field for Moliere’s ta- lents ; subjects for ridicule multiplied around him. The follies which appeared most ludicrous were so nursed and fostered by the high-born and wealthy, that he almost feared to attack them. But they were too tempting. In addition to the amusement to be derived from ex- hibiting in its true colours an affectation the most laugh- able, he wras urged by the hope of vanquishing by the arms of wit, a system of folly, which had taken deep root even with some of the cleverest men in France; — we allude to the coterie of the Hotel de Rambouillet; and to the farce of the “Precieuses Ridicules,” which en- tered the very sanctum, and caused irremediable disorder and flight to all the darling follies of the clique. The society of the Hotel de Rambouillet had a lan- guage and conduct all its own ; these were embodied in the endless novels of mademoiselle Scuderi. Gal- lantry and love were the watchwords, and metaphysical disquisitions were the labours of the set. But these were not allowed to subsist in homely phrase or a natural man- ner. The euphuism of our Elizabethian coxcombs was tame and tropeless in comparison with the high flights of the heroes and heroines of the Hotel de Ram-