We exhausted that subject last week, and were complimented upon it, which we took ill. Probably advisable to be ill this week, to let our absence be felt, or to make up with scraps and quotation. To transcribe four different accounts of the Tartuffe, Sir Walter Scott’s, Mr. Leigh Hunt’s, Monsieur Perlet’s, and one of our own, and to make it understood that the last is the best. To remark that Monsieur Perlet, ‘that soul of pleasure and that life of whim,’ is a provoking actor—for there is no fault to be found with him, and to give the reader an idea of his peculiar excellence is next to impossible. Whatever he does, his ease, self-possession, and spirit are the same. To make it a rule not to tell any one who asks me the plot of the Ecole des Maris, but to tell it myself. Borrowers of plots are like borrowers of snuff:—every one his own box-keeper. (Ha, ha, ha!) The laugh here comes from a friend of ours to whom we read this, and who kept repeating the whole evening—‘Every man his own box-keeper.’ (Ha, ha, ha!) Very well indeed. Sganarelle and Ariste are two brothers, both of them in years, who have two wards, Isabelle and Leonore, whom they propose to marry. Sganarelle is an old blockhead, who brings up his intended bride with the greatest severity, and will let her see no plays, go to no balls, receive no visits, lest it should corrupt her manners or divert her affection from him. He is very angry at his brother Ariste, who gives full liberty to his mistress Leonore, and contends that bars, bolts, female Arguses, and ill-humour are not the way to make women in love with virtue, or to prevent their inclination from wandering. Sganarelle laughs at him, but he turns out a true prophet. Isabelle, not thinking the disagreeable the most agreeable thing in the world, meets with a lover (Valere) more to her mind than her guardian. And here begins the interest of the plot. Having no other mode of communication, she sends Sganarelle to him, to let him know that she is apprized of the state of his affections, and to beg him not to persecute her with his amorous thoughts, if he has any regard for her honour or peace of mind. He understands the hint, and sends the supposed husband away, delighted with his confusion and repulse, who has no sooner returned to his intended, than she desires him to go back with a letter, which Ariste has just had the assurance to send her in his absence, full of his absurd passion. This Sganarelle consents to do, but proposes to open the letter first, which she will not allow him to do, saying it would betray curiosity to break the seal, and no woman of virtue should feel even a wish to know the improper sentiments entertained towards her. Her guardian delivers the letter with an air of triumph and pity for his rival, which Valere reads, and finds it a frank and passionate declaration of Isabelle’s attachment to him. Not satisfied with this, she informs Sganarelle that he has a design to carry her off by force, who goes to reproach him with the baseness of his conduct and the pretended terror and uneasiness of his ward. Valere affirming that Sganarelle has no authority to bring him these disdainful messages from the lady, Sganarelle brings them together in his presence, when an admirable scene of double-entendre follows: Isabelle declaring that she sees two objects before her, one which she adores, the other which she abhors, Sganarelle taking to himself the preference which is intended for Valere, and the latter rapturously kissing her hand behind his back, while her guardian affectionately embraces her. But in recompense for her fondness, he proposes to marry her the next day instead of at the end of eight days; and this driving Isabelle to despair, she takes the resolution to quit the house in the middle of the night, but is met by her guardian, who asking the meaning of this nocturnal expedition, she tells him that her sister has come to her house, violently in love with Valere, whom she is going in search of, to console her; but Sganarelle not being satisfied with this assignation, will not allow her to remain, and presently after turns his own bride out of doors, thinking it to be his brother’s ward Leonore, and goes with great glee to inform Ariste of the adventure, and to lecture him on the difference of their schemes of female education. In the meantime Leonore comes in from a ball, is scandalized at the story that she hears told of her; and the Notary that Sganarelle had sent for to witness her elopement and the treachery of Valere, having married him to Isabelle, she comes out from his house, and explains the whole mystery to the delight of every one but Sganarelle.—The plot is charming, and the style is profuse of sense and wit; but there is this remark to be made here, as on other of Moliere’s plays, that however elegant, ingenious, or natural, the scene must be laid in France, that the whole passes under that empire of words, which is confined to her airy limits, and that there is a credulous and unqualified assent to verbal professions necessary to carry on the plot, which can be found nowhere but in France. This comedy was correctly but somewhat faintly represented. Mademoiselle Falcoz, who played Isabelle, was dressed as we have an idea servants were formerly dressed, with a full handkerchief and a black silk apron. Perhaps it was the costume of young ladies at that period; but we suspect that this is carrying literal correctness too far, where it shocks instead of assisting the imagination, and instructing us at the expense of our amusement, which is against the law of dramatic propriety. If the play was not done quite as it might be, it received a brilliant comment from the looks of some of the audience: and as the stage is a mirror to nature, so these are a mirror to the stage itself. Bright eyes! Laughing lips! Tell-tale eyebrows! spare us or we retire incontinently from the French play,—‘To the woods, to the waves, to the winds we’ll complain’ of your inexorable cruelty and endless persecution!