Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/652

Rh 624 M O L M L may be found in the Bill. Cornubiensis, vols. i. and iii. The name of Sir William Molesworth is frequently mentioned in the biographies of Mill, Cobden, Carlyle, Grote, and Panizzi. MOLFETTA, a city and seaport of Italy, in the province of Bari, 16 miles by rail north-north-west of Bari. From the sea it presents a fine appearance with its white stone houses and the remains of its turreted walls ; and there are several buildings of considerable pretensions. The castle was in the 14th century the prison of Otho, duke of Brunswick. The cathedral is dedicated to St Conrad. Molfetta has well-frequented markets, a small foreign trade (6000 tons in 1881), and such industries as cotton and net weaving, soap-boiling, and rope-spinning. The population was 26,516 in 1871. Molfetta (Melficta or Malfitum) was given by Charles V. to the duke of Termoli in 1522, and during his lordship it was grievously sacked by the French under Lautrec. In 1631 Cesare Gonzaga took the title of duke of Guastalla and prince of Molfetta; but in 1640 the fief was sold to the Spinola family, and in 1798 incorporated with the royal domain. The bishopric holds directly of the papal see. MOLIERE (1622-1673), to give Jean Baptiste Poquelin the stage name which he chose, for some undiscovered reason, to assume, was born in Paris, probably in January 1622. The baptismal certificate which is usually, and almost with absolute certainty, accepted as his is dated 15th January 1622, but it is not possible to infer that he was born on the day of his christening. The exact place of his birth is also disputed, but it seems tolerably certain that he saw the light in a house of the Rue St Honore. His father was Jean Poquelin, an upholsterer, who, in 1631, succeeded his own uncle as &quot;valet tapissier de chambre du roi.&quot; The family of Poquelin came from Beauvais, where for some centuries they had been prosperous tradesmen. The legend of their Scotch descent seems to have been finally disproved by the researches of M. E. Reverend du Mesnil. The mother of Moliere was Marie Cresse ; and on his father s side he was connected with the family of Mazuel, musicians attached to the court of France. In 1632 Moliere lost his mother ; his father married again in 1633. The father possessed certain shops in the covered Halle de la Foire, Saint Germain des Pres, and the biographers have imagined that Moliere might have received his first bent towards the stage from the spectacles offered to the holi day people at the fair. Of his early education little is known ; but it is certain that his mother possessed a Bible and Plutarch s Lives, books which an intelligent child would not fail to study. In spite of a persistent tradition, there is no reason to believe that the later education of Moliere was neglected. &quot; II fit ses humanitez au College de Clermont,&quot; says the brief life of the comedian published by his friend and fellow-actor, La Grange, in the edition of his works printed in 1682. La Grange adds that Moliere &quot; eut 1 ad vantage de suivre M. le Prince de Conti dans toutes ses classes.&quot; As Conti was seven years younger than Moliere, it is not easy to understand how Moliere came to be the school contemporary of the prince. Among more serious studies the Jesuit fathers encouraged their pupils to take part in ballets, and in later life Moliere was a distinguished master of this sort of enter tainment. According to Grimarest, the first writer who published a life of Moliere in any detail (1705), he not only acquired &quot;his humanities,&quot; but finished his &quot;philo sophy &quot; in five years. He left the College de Clermont in 1641, the year when Gassendi, a great contemner of Aris totle, arrived in Paris. The Logic and Ethics of Aristotle, with his Physics and Metaphysics, were the chief philoso phical text-books at the College de Clermont. But when he became the pupil of Gassendi (in company with Cyrano de Bergerac, Chapelle, and Hesnaut), Moliere was taught to appreciate the atomic philosophy as taught by Lucretius. There seems no doubt that Moliere began, and almost or quite finished, a translation of the De Natura Rerum. According to a manuscript note of Trallage, published by M. Paul Lacroix, the manuscript was sold by Moliere s widow to a bookseller. His philosophic studies left a deep mark on the genius of Moliere. In the Jugement de Pluton sur les deux Parties des Nouveaux Dialogues des Moris (1684), the verdict is &quot;que Moliere ne parleroit point de Philosophic.&quot; To &quot; talk philosophy&quot; was a favourite exer cise of his during his life, and his ideas are indicated with sufficient clearness in several of his plays. There seems no connexion between them and the opinions of &quot; Moliere le Critique &quot; in a dialogue of that name, published in Hol land in 1709. From his study of philosophy, too, he gained his knowledge of the ways of contemporary pedants, of Pancrace the Aristotelian, of Marphorius the Carte sian, of Trissotin, &quot; qui s attache pour 1 ordre au Peripa- tetisme &quot;, of Philaminte, who loves Platonism, of Belise, who relishes &quot;les petits corps,&quot; and Armande, who loves &quot; les tour billons.&quot; Grimarest has an amusing anecdote of a controversy in which Moliere, defending Descartes, chose a lay-brother of a begging order for umpire, while Chapelle appealed to the same expert in favour of Gassendi. His college education over, Moliere studied law, and there is even evidence that of tradition in Grimarest, and of Le Boulanger de Chalussay, the libellous author of a play called JSlomire Hypochondre to prove that he was actually called to the bar. More trustworthy is the pass ing remark in La Grange s short biography (1682), &quot; au sortir des ecoles de droit, il choisit la profession de come- dien.&quot; Before joining a troop of half-amateur comedians, however, Moliere had some experience in his father s busi ness. In 1637 his father had obtained for him the right to succeed to his own office as &quot;valet tapissier de chambre du roi.&quot; The document is mentioned in the inventory of Moliere s effects, taken after his death. When the king travelled the valet tapissier accompanied him to arrange the furniture of the royal quarters. There is very good reason to believe (Loiseleur, Points Obscurs, p. 94) that Moliere accompanied Louis XIII. as his valet tapissier to Provence in 1642. It is even not impossible that Moliere was the young valet de chambre who concealed Cinq Mars just before his arrest at Narbonne, 13th June 1642. But this is part of the romance rather than of the history of Moliere. Our next glimpse of the comedian we get in a document of 6th January 1643. Moliere acknowledges the receipt of money due to him from his deceased mother s estate, and gives up his claim to succeed his father as &quot;valet de chambre du roi.&quot; On 28th December of the same year we learn, again from documentary evidence, that Jean Baptiste Poquelin, with Joseph Bejard, Madeleine Bejard, Genevieve Bejard, and others, have hired a tennis-court, and fitted it up as a stage for dramatic performances. The company called themselves L lllustre Theatre, illustre being then almost a slang word, very freely employed by the writers of the period. We now reach a very important point in the private history of Moliere, which it is necessary to discuss at some length in defence of the much maligned character of a great writer and a good man. Moliere s connection with the family of Bejard brought him much unhappiness. The father of this family, Joseph Bejard the elder, was a needy man with eleven children at least. His wife s name was Marie Herve. The most noted of his children, com panions of Moliere, were Joseph, Madeleine, Genevieve, and Armande. Of these, Madeleine was a woman of great talent as an actress, and Moliere s friend, or perhaps mis tress, through all the years of his wanderings. Now, on 14th February 1662 (for we must here leave the chrono logical order of events), Moliere married Armande Claire Elisabeth Gresinde Bujard. His enemies at that time,