“Comme un morceau de cire entre mes mains elle est,
Et je lui puis donner la forme qui me plaît.”
[308] M. Henri Bergson (op. cit., chap, iii.) seems to me to push his helpful idea of a mechanical rigidity (raideur) in Molière’s characters a little too far.
[309] The play closes with the “aside” of Covielle: “Si l’on en peut voir un plus fou, je l’irai dire à Rome”.
[310] Mr. Meredith remarks that it was “here and there Bacchanalian beyond the Aristophanic example” (op. cit., p. 11).
[311] See above, p. 92 f.
[312] Coleridge saw clearly enough how far comedy is from making morality its basis. He remarks that the new comedy of Menander and the whole of modern comedy (Shakespeare excepted) is based on rules of prudence (Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare, Bell’s Edition, 1884, p. 191).
[313] Cf. supra, p. 139.
[314] Hist. of Eng. Lit., Bk. III., chap. i. Mr. Meredith is nearer the mark when he speaks of the comic poet as being “in the narrow field, or enclosed square of the society he depicts” (op. cit., p. 85).
[315] Op. cit., Bd. IV., s. 2.