to his literary labours. But the poet replied to his friend Boileau, the bearer of this communication, that "too many individuals of his company depended on his theatrical labours for support to allow him for a moment to think of it;" a reply of infinitely more service to his memory than ail the academic honours that could have been heaped upon him, This illustrious body, however, a century after his decease, paid him the barren compliment (the only one then in their power) of decreeing to him an éloge, and of admitting his bust within their walls, with this inscription upon it:
{{c|" Nothing is wanting to his glory: he was wanting to ours."
The catalogue of Academicians contemporary with Molière, most of whom now rest in sweet oblivion, or, with Cotin and Chapelain, live only in the satires of Boileau, shows that it is as little in the power of academies to confer immortality on a writer as to deprive him of it.
We have not time to notice the excellent comedy of the Femmes Savantes, and some inferior pieces, written by our author at a later period of his life, and must hasten to the closing scene. He had been long affected by a pulmonary complaint, and it was only by severe temperance, as we have before stated, that he was enabled to preserve even a moderate degree of health. At the commencement of the year 1673, his malady sensibly increased. At this very season he composed his Malade Imaginaire—the most whimsical, and, perhaps, the most amusing of the compositions in which he has indulged his rail-
