actually is, but as it is transmuted in a legendary imagination. Unfortunately, Hugo professes to write about real people and not about dragons, and we constantly find ourselves applying psychological tests as we read him. When Gilliatt drowns himself in Les Travailleurs de la mer we complain not only of the dubious psychology but of the mechanical theatrical effect. Victor Hugo, we feel at such moments, was a great "producer" rather than a great artist. He would, undoubtedly, had he lived, have taken full advantage of the over-emphasis of the cinema. On the other hand, the over-emphasis of which his critics complain is not the over-emphasis of weakness straining after strength. It is rather an overflow of the Gothic imagination. "His flat foot," he tells us, of a certain character, "was a vulture's claw. His skull was low at the top and large about the temples. His ugly ears bristled with hair, and seemed to say: 'Beware of speaking to the animal in this cave.' His style is essentially the exaggerated style. His genius is the genius of exaggeration. Luckily, he exaggerates, not wholly in clouds, but in carved gnomes and all manner of fantastic detail. He omits not a comma from his dreams and nightmares. That is why his short sentences and paragraphs still startle us into attention when we open one of his

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novels. His imagination at least teems on every page-teems with absurdities, perhaps, as well as with truth and beauty, but teems always with interest. Madame Duclaux's excellent biography should send many readers back to the work of this magnificent and preposterous legend-maker and lover of his fellow-men.

III

MOLIÈRE

The way of entertainers is hard. It is a good enough world for those who entertain us no higher than the ribs, but to attempt to entertain the mind is another matter. Comedy shows men and women (among other things) what humbugs they are, and, as the greatest humbugs are often persons of influence, the comic writer is naturally hated and disparaged during his lifetime in some of the most powerful circles. That Molière's body was at first refused Christian burial may have been due to the fact that he was an actor-in theory, an actor was not allowed even to receive the Sacrament in those days unless he had renounced his profession-but his profession of comic writer had during the latter part of his life brought him into far worse disrepute than his profession of comic actor. He was the greatest portrayer of those companion figures, the impostor and the dupe, who ever lived, and, as a result, every kind of impostor and dupe, whether

religious, literary, or fashionable, was enraged against him. That Molière was a successful author is not disputed, but he never enjoyed a calm and unchallenged success. He had the support of Louis XIV and the public, but the orthodox, the professional and the highbrow lost no opportunity of doing him an injury.

Molière was nearly forty-two when he produced L'École des Femmes. He had already, as Mr. Tilley tells us, in his solidly instructive study, "become an assured favourite with the public," though Les Précieuses ridicules had given offence in the salons, and performances were suspended for a time. With the appearance of L'École des Femmes he at length stood forth a great writer, and the critics began to take counsel together. A ten months' war followed, in the course of which he delivered two smashing blows against his enemies, first in La Critique de l'École des Femmes and L'Impromptu de Versailles. Then "on May 12, 1664, he presented at Versailles the first three acts of Tartuffe." This began a new war which lasted, not merely ten months, but five years. It was not until 1669 that Molière received permission to produce in public the five-act play that we now know. The violence of the storm the play raised may be gauged from the quotation Mr.

Tilley makes from Pierre Roullé's pamphlet, in which Roullé called Molière "un démon vêtu de chair et habillé en homme, un libertin, un impie digne d'un supplice exemplaire." Mr. Shaw himself never made people angrier than Molière. Having held a religious hypocrite up to ridicule, Molière went on to paint a comic portrait of a freethinker. He gave the world Dom Juan, which was a great success-for a week or two. Suddenly, it was withdrawn, and Molière never produced it again. Nor did he publish it. It had apparently offended not only the clergy but the great nobles, who disliked the exposure of a gentleman on his way to Hell.

It was, we may presume, these cumulative misfortunes that drove him into the pessimistic mood out of which Le Misanthrope was born. He had now written three masterpieces for the purpose of entertaining his fellows, and he was being treated, not as a public benefactor, but as a public enemy. One of the three had been calumniated; one was prohibited; the third had to be withdrawn. And, in addition to being at odds with the world, he was at odds with his wife. He had married her, a girl under twenty, when he himself was forty, and she apparently remained a coquette after marriage. One could not ask for clearer evidence of the sanity of