XVIII. To Monsieur de Moliére, Valet de Chambre du Roi. Monsieur,--With what awe does a writer venture into the presence of the great Moliére! As a courtier in your time would scratch humbly (with his comb!) at the door of the Grand Monarch, so I presume to draw near your dwelling among the Immortals. You, like the king who, among all his titles, has now none so proud as that of the friend of Moliére--you found your dominions small, humble, and distracted; you raised them to the dignity of an empire: what Louis XIV. did for France you achieved for French comedy; and the ba'ton of Scapin still wields its sway though the sword of Louis was broken at Blenheim. For the King the Pyrenees, or so he fancied, ceased to exist; by a more magnificent conquest you overcame the Channel. If England vanquished your country's arms, it was through you that France _ferum victorem cepit_, and restored the dynasty of Comedy to the land whence she had been driven. Ever since Dryden borrowed 'L'Etourdi,' our tardy apish nation has lived (in matters theatrical) on the spoils of the wits of France. In one respect, to be sure, times and manners have altered. While you lived, taste kept the French drama pure; and it was the congenial business of English playwrights to foist their rustic grossness and their large Fescennine jests into the urban page of Moliére. Now they are diversely occupied; and it is their affair to lend modesty where they borrow wit, and to spare a blush to the cheek of the Lord Chamberlain. But still, as has ever been our wont since Etherege saw, and envied, and imitated your successes--still we pilfer the plays of France, and take our _bien_, as you said in your lordly manner, wherever we can find it. We are the privateers of the stage; and it is rarely, to be sure, that a comedy pleases the town which has not first been 'cut out' from the countrymen of Moliére. Why this should be, and what 'tenebriferous star' (as Paracelsus, your companion in the 'Dialogues des Morts,' would have believed) thus darkens the sun of English humour, we know not; but certainly our dependence on France is the sincerest tribute to you. Without you, neither Rotrou, nor Corneille, nor 'a wilderness of monkeys' like Scarron, could ever have given Comedy to France and restored her to Europe.