But although when having conceived the project of a play his labour was light, his life, like that of all great authors, was spent in study--the study of mankind. Boileau called him the contemplator. He was silent and abstracted in company--he listened, and felt; and carried away a knowledge that displayed itself afterwards in his conception of character, in his perception of the ridiculous, in his portraitures of the human heart. Perhaps nothing proves more the original and innate bent of genius than the fact, that Molière was a comic writer. His sense of the ridiculous being intuitive, forced him to a species of composition, which, by choice, he would have exchanged for tragic and pathetic dramas: but he could only idealise in one view of life; his imagination was tame when it tried to soar to the sublime, or to touch by tenderness. Of course he has not escaped criticism even in the pieces in which his genius is most displayed. Voltaire says that his farce is too broad, and his serious pieces want interest; and that he almost always failed in the _dénouement_ of his plots. The latter portion of this remark is truer than the former; though there is foundation for the whole. Voltaire, like Boileau, was bitten by the then Gallic mania for classical (_i.e._ in modern literature, imitative instead of original) productions. Boileau too often considers that Molière sacrificed good taste to the multitude when he made his audience laugh. Boileau's poetry is arid, with all its wit; and he had no feeling for humour: his very sarcasms, full of point and epigram as they are, turn entirely on manner; he seldom praises or blames the higher portions of composition. Schlegel, in his bigotted dislike for all things French, by no means does Molière justice[46]; and many of his criticisms are quite false. As, for instance, that on the "Avare;" where he says, that no miser at once hides a treasure and lends money on usury. Any one who consults the history of our celebrated English misers of the last century will find that they, without exception, united the characters of misers and money-lenders. It has been mentioned that Molière did not succeed in the serious, the sentimental, the fanciful. Voltaire mentions his little one-act piece of "L'Amour Peintre" as the only one of the sort that has grace and spirit. This slight sketch is evidently the groundwork of the "Barber of Seville;" it contains the same characters and the same situations in a more contracted space.