all the glory I can aspire to, is to amuse You. [Footnote: In spite of
all that has been said about Moliere's passionate fondness for his
profession, I imagine he must now and then have felt some slight, or
suffered from some want of consideration. Hence perhaps the above
sentence. Compare with this Shakespeare's hundred and eleventh sonnet:

"Oh! for my sake, do you with Fortune chide
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand;
And almost thence my nature is subdu'd
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand."]


The ambition of my wishes is confined to this; and I think that, to
contribute any thing to the diversion of her King, is, in some respects,
not to be useless to France. Should I not succeed in this, it shall
never be through want of zeal, or study; but only through a hapless
destiny, which often accompanies the best intentions, and which, to a
certainty, would be a most sensible affliction to SIRE, _Your_
MAJESTY'S _most humble, most obedient, and most faithful Servant_,

MOLIERE.


In the eighth volume of the "Select Comedies of M. de Moliere, London,
1732," the play of _The Bores_ is dedicated, under the name of
_The Impertinents_, to the Right Honourable the Lord Carteret,
[Footnote: John, Lord Carteret, born 22nd April, 1690, twice