to consideration. Most of our readers, no doubt, are acquainted with the anecdote of Belloc, an agreeable poet of the court, who, on hearing one of the servants in the royal household refuse to aid the author of the Tartuffe in making the king's bed, courteously requested "the poet to accept his services for that purpose," Madame Campan's anecdote of a similar courtesy on the part of Louis the Fourteenth is also well known, who, when several of these functionaries refused to sit at table with the comedian, kindly invited him to sit down with him, and, calling in some of his principal courtiers, remarked that "he had requested the pleasure of Molière's company at his own table, as it was not thought quite good enough for his officers." This rebuke had the desired effect. However humiliating the reflection may be, that genius should have, at any time, stood in need of such patronage, it is highly honourable to the monarch who could raise himself so far above the prejudices of his age as to confer it.
It was the same unworthy prejudice that had so long excluded Molière from that great object and recompense of a French scholar's ambition, a seat in the Academy; a body affecting to maintain a jealous watch over the national language and literature, which the author of the Misanthrope and the Tartuffe, perhaps more than any other individual of his age, had contributed to purify and advance. Sensible of this merit, they at length offered him a place in their assembly, provided he would renounce his profession of a player, and confine himself in future
