Molière died soon after entering upon his fifty-second year. He is represented to have been somewhat above the middle stature, and well proportioned; his features large, his complexion dark, and his black, bushy eye-brows so flexible, as to admit of his giving an infinitely comic expression to his physiognomy. He was the best actor of his own generation, and by his counsels, formed the celebrated Baron, the best of the succeeding. He played all the range of his own characters, from _Alceste_ to _Sganarelle_; though he seems to have been peculiarly fitted for broad comedy. He produced all his pieces, amounting to thirty, in the short space of fifteen years. He was in the habit of reading these to an old female domestic, by the name of La Forêt; on whose unsophisticated judgment he greatly relied. On one occasion when he attempted to impose upon her the production of a brother author, she plainly told him that he had never written it. Sir Walter Scott may have had this habit of Molière's in his mind, when he introduced a similar expedient into his "Chronicles of the Canongate." For the same reason, our poet used to request the comedians to bring their children with them, when he recited to them a new play. The peculiar advantage of this humble criticism, in dramatic compositions, is obvious. Alfieri himself, as he informs us, did not disdain to resort to it. Molière was naturally of a reserved and taciturn temper; insomuch that his friend Boileau used to call him the _Contemplateur_. Strangers who had expected to recognise in his conversation the sallies of wit which distinguished his dramas, went away disappointed. The same thing is related of La Fontaine. The truth is, that Molière went into society as a spectator, not as an actor; he found there the studies for the characters, which he was to transport upon the stage; and he occupied himself with observing them. The dreamer, La Fontaine, lived too in a world of his own creation. His friend, Madame de la Sablière, paid to him this untranslateable compliment; "En vérité, mon cher La Fontaine, vous seriez bien bête, si vous n'aviez pas tant d'esprit." These unseasonable reveries brought him, it may be imagined, into many whimsical adventures. The great Corneille, too, was distinguished by the same apathy. A gentleman dined at the same table with him for six months, without suspecting the author of the "Cid." Molière enjoyed the closest intimacy with the great Condé, the most distinguished ornament of the court of Louis the Fourteenth; to such an extent indeed, that the latter directed, that the poet should never be refused admission to him, at whatever hour he might choose to pay his visit. His regard for his friend was testified by his remark, rather more candid than courteous, to an Abbé of his acquaintance, who had brought him an epitaph, of his own writing, upon the deceased poet. "Would to heaven," said the prince, "that he were in a condition to bring me yours."