practice of transporting criminals to colonial localities occupied by free settlers, its recommendation that they should be employed in penitentiaries, and punished or rewarded by marks which were to delay or accelerate the period of their release, marked an era in the discussion of the criminal question. From 1841 to 1845 Sir William Molesworth was without a seat in the house of commons, and devoted himself to study and literature. In 1835 he had founded the London Review, and for some time he co-operated with his friend Mr. John Stewart Mill in the management of the quarterly organ of philosophical radicalism, which arose out of its junction with the Westminster, and was known as the London and Westminster Review. In 1839, too, he had begun at his own expense the costly publication of a complete edition of the works, both English and Latin, of Hobbes, which was not completed until 1846. In 1845 he became member for Southwark, which he represented until his decease. The principles of colonial government, whatever might be their value, which he had long advocated, were accepted by the imperial legislature, when on the formation of Lord Aberdeen's coalition ministry, December, 1852, he was appointed first commissioner of works. His claims were still more conspicuously recognized, when soon after Lord Palmerston's first accession to the premiership, the "colonial reformer," par excellence, was offered and accepted, July, 1855, the seals of the colonial secretaryship, of course with a seat in the cabinet. He did not, however, live long to labour in a sphere so congenial, dying suddenly of apoplexy on the 22nd October, 1855. His parliamentary oratory scarcely did justice to his intellect and accomplishments, and his tenure of high office was too brief to exhibit his administrative capacity. In private he was amiable and generous.—F. E.
MOLIÈRE was the name assumed by the French dramatist, manager, and actor, Jean Baptiste Poquelin, pronounced by such a judge as Sir Walter Scott to be "the prince certainly of comic writers." He was born at Paris in the Rue Saint Honoré on the 15th January, 1622. His father, a "tapissier" by trade, became, when Molière was nine, "valet-de-chambre tapissier" of the king; and three years later procured for his son the reversion of the place, so that on the accession of Louis XIV. in 1640 Molière was connected with the household of the Grand Monarque. According to his earliest but often inaccurate biographer, Grimarest, who has done for Molière's pretty much what Rowe did for Shakspeare's life, he served in his father's shop until he was fourteen, receiving no other education than a knowledge of reading and writing. A grandfather, it is added, was in the habit of taking him to the play; and finding him disgusted with his trade, persuaded his father to send him as a day-scholar to the college of Clermont conducted by the Jesuits. To the college it is certain he did go; and among his fellow-pupils were the Prince de Conti, afterwards his patron; Chapelle the poet; and Bernier, who became famous by his account of the court of the Great Mogul. On leaving college, Molière, with Bernier and others, was placed under the amiable and eminent Gassendi, in metaphysics the precursor of Locke, and from whom he learned that contempt for the current philosophy of the schools, laughably expressed in the scene between Pancrace and Sagnarelle in the "Mariage Forcé." Gassendi was an upholder of the Epicurean against the Aristotelian philosophy; and to his influence may be ascribed a translation of Lucretius afterwards begun by Molière, and of which survives only the fragment on love, declaimed by Cléante in the Misanthrope. Whether so early as 1642 he was in attendance on Louis XIV. as the substitute or successor of his father is uncertain; but there is no doubt that about this time he studied law, and there is reason to believe that he was received an avocat. It was in 1645 that he embraced the career which has indirectly made him famous. He joined a company of actors, who beginning as amateurs adopted the stage as a profession. It was not a reputable profession, and to explain its adoption by Molière several of his biographers have supposed that he joined the company to be near one of its members, Madeleine Béjart, the sister, or as some say, the mother of Armande Béjart, to whom he afterwards transferred his affections, and who became his wife. The pupil of Gassendi remained an actor to the end of his days; and it might be said literally that he died upon the stage. Unlike Shakspeare, Molière, as he called himself from the moment that he went upon the stage, was only less eminent as an actor than as a dramatist. As a comic actor he was among the first of his time—performing the principal parts in all his own pieces. The company of actors which he first joined called itself the Illustre Théatre, but after a year's trial quitted the metropolis for a long and wandering career in the provinces. From 1646 to 1658 Molière and the company of which he had become the manager, played up and down in the provinces—a mode of life which enriched so quick an observer with a knowledge of the varieties and peculiarities of French provincial character, sometimes very happily made available in his plays. It was at Lyons in 1653, in the course of this twelve years' tour, that Molière produced the first of his original plays—his lively and amusing "L'Etourdi," which, translated by the duke of Newcastle and adapted by Dryden, became the Sir Martin Marplot of the English stage. At last, in 1658, he and his company were allowed to play before the king in Paris, and the result was that they were authorized to establish themselves in the metropolis in the theatre of the Petit Bourbon; to call themselves the Troupe de Monsieur, the king's brother; and to perform in rivalry with the chief company of players in Paris, the comedians of the Hotel de Bourgogne. His "L'Etourdi" had been followed by another lively and amusing piece, "Le dépit Amoureux;" when in 1659 Molière made his first great hit as a dramatist and manager by the production of "Lés Précieuses Ridicules." Unlike his former pieces it was in prose, not in verse, and it was a satire on contemporary manners. It covered with genial ridicule the fair euphuists of the Hotel de Rambouillet, and revealed to Molière where his own strength lay. After some minor or less-known pieces—the company meanwhile removing to the theatre of the Palais Royal—Molière in 1661 produced "L'Ecole des Maris," one of his best comedies. He was now a famous man; the "Ecole des Maris" was repeated, and that exquisite trifle, "Les Fâcheux," played for the first time at the splendid fetes given by Fouquet in the summer and autumn of 1661 to Louis XIV. and the court. In 1662 Molière brought upon himself the only serious calamity which marked the course of his prosperous and otherwise happy life. In February, 1662, in his fortieth year, he married Armande Glesinde Béjart, a girl of scarcely eighteen. Under the name of Mademoiselle Molière, she assisted him as an actress while he remained a manager; but she repaid his strong affection by frequent infidelities, and during much of their married life they were virtually separated, though they appeared together in public. At the close of his marriage year, by a curious coincidence, he produced one of the best of his comedies, "L'Ecole des Femmes," imitated by Wycherley in the Country Wife. The story is that of an old gentleman who secludes and keeps in ignorance of life and love a simple country maiden with the view of marrying her. In spite of her youth and simplicity she is more than a match for her guardian, and an Agnès has become a name typical of her class. Molière's fame was now great enough to make him enemies, who based their attacks on some free and easy expressions in the "Ecole des Femmes." He retaliated by his "Critique de l'Ecole des Femmes," and "L'Impromptu de Versailles"—in the latter his troupe being at once the actors and the dramatis personæ. One enemy even accused him to the king of having married his own daughter. Louis consoled him by standing godfather to his first child; and tradition tells more than one anecdote of the friendly familiarity with which the Grand Monarque treated Molière, to shame such of his household as pretended to despise their comrade the actor. Molière could now patronize as well as be patronized. He seems to have given the young and unknown Racine an order for a tragedy. At this time Molière, Racine, and La Fontaine visited together two or three evenings in each week at the house of Boileau, a gathering of celebrities not easily paralleled in the biography of French literature. His next piece was the farcical "Mariage Forcé," January, 1664; and on the 12th of May was played before the king an instalment, the first three acts, of what out of his own country is regarded as his masterpiece, the celebrated "Tartuffe." The king, in his regard for religion, while recognizing the good intentions of the author, prohibited or suspended the representation of "Tartuffe" in public. Unfortunately for Molière, too, the anger of the zealots, whose suspicions were roused by the reports of the character of the new piece, found an excuse for an outbreak in his "Don Juan ou le Festin de Pierre," February, 1665, a play on a subject which it is difficult to treat without giving offence. The king, however, remained constant, and in the August of 1665 Molière received a new mark of the royal favour: he and his company became his
