that soul, so easy to be moved, that a religious ceremony or a representation of _Esther_ at Saint-Cyr touched to tears, that pitied the misfortunes of the people, that found in its pity and its charity the courage to speak one day the truth to Louis XIV., and was extinguished by the first breath of disgrace. Moliere is, in comparison with Aristophanes, what Corneille is, in comparison with Shakspeare. The author of _Plutus_, the _Wasps_, and the _Clouds_, has doubtless an imagination, an explosive buffoonery, a creative power, above all comparison. Moliere has not as great poetical conceptions: he has more, perhaps; he has characters. His coloring is less brilliant, his graver is more penetrating. He has engraved in the memory of men a certain number of irregularities and vices which will ever be called _l'Avare_ (_the Miser_), _le Malade Imaginaire_ (the _Hypochondriac_), _les Femmes Savantes_ (the _Learned Women_), _le Tartufe_ (the _Hypocrite_), and _Don Juan_, not to speak of the _Misanthrope_, a piece apart, touching as pleasant, which is not addressed to the crowd, and cannot be popular, because it expresses a ridicule rare enough, excess in the passion of truth and honor. Of all fabulists, ancient and modern, does any one, even the ingenious, the pure, the elegant Phaedrus, approach our La Fontaine? He composes his personages, and puts them in action with the skill of Moliere; he knows how to take on occasion the tone of Horace, and mingle an ode with a fable; he is at once the most naive, and the most refined of writers, and his art disappears in its very perfection. We do not speak of the tales, first, because we condemn the kind, then, because La Fontaine displays in them qualities more Italian than French, a narrative full of nature, malice, and grace, but without any of those profound, tender, melancholy traits, that place among the greatest poets of all time the author of the _Two Pigeons_ (_Deux Pigeons_), the _Old Man_ (_Vieillard_), and the _Three Young Persons_ (_Gens_).