terity. The obsolete Chapelain is there recorded "as the greatest French poet who has ever existed;" in consideration of which, his stipend amounted to three thousand livres, while Boileau's name, for which his satires had already secured an imperishable existence, is not even noticed! It should be added, however, on the authority of Boileau, that Chapelain himself had the principal hand in furnishing this apocryphal scale of merit to the minister,
In the month of September, 1665, Molière produced his L'Amour Médecin, a comédie-ballet, in three acts, which, from the time of its conception to that of its performance, consumed only five days. This piece, although displaying no more than his usual talent for caustic raillery, is remarkable as affording the earliest demonstration of those direct hostilities upon the medical faculty, which he maintained at intervals during the rest of his life, and which he may be truly said to have died in maintaining. In this he followed the example of Montaigne, who, in particular, devotes one of the longest chapters in his work to a tirade against the profession, which he enforces by all the ingenuity of his wit, and his usual wealth of illustration. In this, also, Molière was subsequently imitated by Le Sage, as every reader of Gil Blas will readily call to mind. Both Montaigne and Le Sage, however, like most other libellers of the healing art, were glad to have recourse to it in the hour of need. Not so with Molière. His satire seems to have been without affectation, Though an habitual valetudinarian, he relied almost
