Moliere's genius could achieve nothing higher than _Tartufe_ and the _Misanthrope_. His powers suffered no decline, but he did not again put them to such strenuous uses. In 1668 the brilliant fantasy of _Amphitryon_, freely derived from Plautus, was succeeded by an admirable comedy in prose, _Georges Dandin_, in which the folly of unequal marriage between the substantial farmer and the fine lady is mocked with bitter gaiety. Before the year closed Moliere, continuing to write in prose, returned to Plautus, and surpassed him in _L'Avare_. To be rich and miserly is in itself a form of fatuity; but Harpagon is not only miserly but amorous, as far as a ruling passion will admit one of subordinate influence. _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_ (1670), a lesson of good sense to those who suffer from the social ambition to rise above their proper rank, is wholly original; it mounts in the close from comedy to the extravagance of farce, and perhaps in the uproarious laughter of the play we may discover a touch of effort or even of spasm. The operatic _Psyche_ (1671) is memorable as having combined the talents of Moliere, Corneille, and Quinault, with the added musical gifts of Lulli. In _Les Femmes Savantes_ (1672) Moliere returned to an early theme, with variations suited to the times. The Hotel de Rambouillet was closed; the new tribe of _precieuses_ had learnt the Cartesian philosophy, affected the sciences, were patronesses of physics, astronomy, anatomy. Something of the old romantic follies survived, and mingled strangely with the pretensions to science and the pedantries of erudition. Trissotin (doubtless a portrait in caricature from the Abbe Cotin) is the Tartufe of spurious culture; Vadius (a possible satire of Menage) is a pedant, arrogant and brutal. Shall the charming Henriette be sacrificed to gratify her mother's domineering temper and the base designs of an impostor? The forces are arrayed on either side; the varieties of learned and elegant folly in woman are finely distinguished; of the opposite party are Chrysale, the bourgeois father with his rude common-sense; the sage Ariste; the faithful servant, Martine, whose grammar may be faulty, but whose wit is sound and clear; and Henriette herself, the adorable, whom to know is more of a liberal education than to have explored all the Greek and Latin masters of Vadius and Trissotin. The final issue of the encounter between good sense, good nature, reason and folly, pedantry and pride, cannot be uncertain.