Ruskin regarded Molière with great respect and he frequently quoted or alluded to the Frenchman's plays and beliefs throughout his work. In Modern Painters III (1856), for example, he identified Molière as a dramatist who confronted artifice and superficial perfection in his work:
Living in the blindest period of the world's history, in the most luxurious city, and the most corrupted court, of the time, he yet manifests through all his writings an exquisite natural wisdom; a capacity for the most simple enjoyment; a high sense of all nobleness, honour, and purity, variously marked throughout his slighter work, but distinctly made the theme of his two perfect plays-the Tartuffe and Misanthrope; and in all that he says of art or science he has an unerring instinct for what is useful and sincere, and uses his whole power to defend it, with as keen a hatred of everything affected and vain. And, singular as it may seem, the first definite lesson read to Europe in that school of simplicity of which Wordsworth was the supposed originator among the mountains of Westmorland, was, in fact, given in the midst of the court of Louis XIV, and by Molière. The little canzonet "J'aime mieux ma mie," is, I believe, the first Wordsworthian poem brought forward on philosophical principles, to oppose the schools of art and affectation. ( Works, 5.375)
In an issue of the Academy Notes published in 1875 (see Works, 14.267) and in The Three Colours of Pre-Raphaelitism (1878) (see Works, 34.167), Ruskin argues that Molière's views, particularly as expressed in Le Misantrope, represent 'the first general statements' of Pre-Raphaelite ideals ( Works, 14.267). Other important discussions of the dramatist are included in Lectures on Architecture and Painting (1854) (see Works, 12.119) and The Ethics of the Dust (1866) (see Works, 18.340, 344).