Note 33 — CABINET CYCLOPÆDIA. (continued 3)

Biographers are apt to invent, if they cannot discover the causes of even trifling events. That the son replaced the father on this occasion, made the elder biographers state that the latter was prevented by his advanced age. Beffara has discovered that the grandfather of Molière married 11th July, 1594, consequently that the father could not be more than forty-six years of age in 1641. A thousand reasons may be found for the substitution of the son. The aversion that Parisians have for travelling might suffice—the large motherless family that the elder Poquelin must leave behind, or a wish to introduce his son to the notice of the king, &c.