representation, the services rendered by him to his art are not the less services rendered to society, concerning which the laughter of genuine comedy tells the truth. He raised the comedy of character out of the lower sphere of caricature, and in his greatest creations subordinated to the highest ends of all dramatic composition the plots he so skilfully built, and the pictures of the manners he so faithfully reproduced. Molière's contemporaries and successors. Even among the French comic dramatists of this age there must have been many who "were not aware" that Molière was its greatest poet. For though he had made the true path luminous to them, their efforts were still often of a tentative kind, and one was reviving _Pathelin_ while another was translating the _Andria_. A more unique attempt was made in one of the very few really modern versions of an Aristophanic comedy, which deserves to be called an original copy--the _Plaideurs_ of Racine. The tragic poets Quinault and Campistron likewise wrote comedies, one[122] or more of which furnished materials to contemporary English dramatists, as did one of the felicitous plays in which Boursault introduced Mercury and Aesop into the theatrical _salon_.[123] Antoine Montfleury (1640-1685), Baron and Dancourt, who were actors like Molière, likewise wrote comedies. But if the mantle of Molière can be said to have fallen upon any of his contemporaries or successors, this honour must be ascribed to J. F. Regnard, who imitated the great master in both themes and characters,[124] while the skilfulness of his plots, and his gaiety of the treatment even of subjects tempting into the by-path of sentimental comedy,[125] entitle him to be regarded as a comic poet of original genius. With him C. R. Dufresny occasionally collaborated.