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Rh littéraires, in Port-Royal, and in the Nouveaux Lundis of Sainte-Beuve. More recently, besides essays by MM. Brunetière, Faguet and Lemaître and the part appurtenant of M. E. Rigal’s work on 16th century drama in France, see Gustave Lanson’s “Corneille” in the Grands Écrivains français (1898); F. Bouquet’s Points obscurs et nouveaux de la vie de Pierre Corneille (1888); Corneille inconnu, by J. Levallois (1876); J. Lemaître, Corneille et la poétique d’Aristote (1888); J. B. Segall, Corneille and the Spanish Drama (1902); and the recently discovered and printed Fragments sur Pierre et Thomas Corneille of Alfred de Vigny (1905). On the Cid quarrel E. H. Chardon’s Vie de Rotrou (1884) bears mainly on a whole series of documents which appeared at Rouen in the proceedings of the Société des bibliophiles normands during the years 1891–1894. The best-known English criticism, that of Hallam in his Literature of Europe, is inadequate. The translations of separate plays are very numerous, but of the complete Théâtre only one version (into Italian) is recorded by the French editors. Fontenelle tells us that his uncle had translations of the Cid in every European tongue but Turkish and Slavonic, and M. Picot’s book apprises us that the latter want, at any rate, is now supplied. Corneille has suffered less than some other writers from the attribution of spurious works. Besides a tragedy, Sylla, the chief piece thus assigned is L’Occasion perdue recouverte, a rather loose tale in verse. Internal evidence by no means fathers it on Corneille, and all external testimony is against it. It has never been included in Corneille’s works. It is curious that a translation of Statius (Thebaid, bk. iii.), an author of whom Corneille was extremely fond, though known to have been written, printed and published, has entirely dropped out of sight. Three verses quoted by Ménage are all we possess.

CORNEILLE, THOMAS (1625–1709), French dramatist, was born at Rouen on the 20th of August 1625, being nearly twenty years younger than his brother, the great Corneille. His skill in verse-making seems to have shown itself early, as at the age of fifteen he composed a piece in Latin which was represented by his fellow-pupils at the Jesuits’ college of Rouen. His first French play, Les Engagements du hasard, was acted in 1647. Le Feint Astrologue, imitated from the Spanish, and imitated by Dryden, came next year. At his brother’s death he succeeded to his vacant chair in the Academy. He then turned his attention to philology, producing a new edition of the Remarques of C. F. Vaugelas in 1687, and in 1694 a dictionary of technical terms, intended to supplement that of the Academy. A complete translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (he had published six books with the Heroic Epistles some years previously) followed in 1697. In 1704 he lost his sight and was constituted a “veteran,” a dignity which preserved to him the privileges, while it exempted him from the duties, of an academician. But he did not allow his misfortune to put a stop to his work, and in 1708 produced a large Dictionnaire universel géographique et historique in three volumes folio. This was his last labour. He died at Les Andelys on the 8th of December 1709, aged eighty-four. It has been the custom to speak of Thomas Corneille as of one who, but for the name he bore, would merit no notice. This is by no means the case; on the contrary, he is rather to be commiserated for his connexion with a brother who outshone him as he would have outshone almost any one. But the two were strongly attached to one another, and practically lived in common. Of his forty-two plays (this is the utmost number assigned to him) the last edition of his complete works contains only thirty-two, but he wrote several in conjunction with other authors. Two are usually reprinted as his masterpieces at the end of his brother’s selected works. These are Ariane (1672) and the Comte d’ Essex, in the former of which Rachel attained success. But of Laodice, Camma, Stilica and some other pieces, Pierre Corneille himself said that “he wished he had written them,” and he was not wont to speak lightly. Camma (1661, on the same story as Tennyson’s Cup) especially deserves notice. Thomas Corneille is in many ways remarkable in the literary gossip-history of his time. His Timocrate boasted of the longest run (80 nights) recorded of any play in the century. For La Devineresse he and his coadjutor de Visé (1638–1710, founder of the Mercure galant, to which Thomas contributed) received above 6000 livres, the largest sum known to have been thus paid. Lastly, one of his pieces (Le Baron des Fondrières) contests the honour of being the first which was hissed off the stage.

There is a monograph, Thomas Corneille, sa vie et ses ouvrages (1892), by G. Reynier. See also the Fragments inédits de critique sur Pierre et Thomas Corneille of Alfred de Vigny, published in 1905.

 CORNELIA (2nd cent. ), daughter of Scipio Africanus the Elder, mother of the Gracchi and of Sempronia, the wife of Scipio Africanus the Younger. On the death of her husband, refusing numerous offers of marriage, she devoted herself to the education of her twelve children. She was so devoted to her sons Tiberius and Gaius that it was even asserted that she was concerned in the death of her son-in-law Scipio, who by his achievements had eclipsed the fame of the Gracchi, and was said to have approved of the murder of Tiberius. When asked to show her jewels she presented her sons, and on her death a statue was erected to her memory inscribed, “Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi.” After the murder of her second son Gaius she retired to Misenum, where she devoted herself to Greek and Latin literature, and to the society of men of letters. She was a highly educated woman, and her letters were celebrated for their beauty of style. The genuineness of the two fragments of a letter from her to her son Gaius, printed in some editions of Cornelius Nepos, is disputed.

See L. Mercklin, De Corneliae vita (1844), of no great value; J. Sörgel, Cornelia, die Mutter der Gracchen (1868), a short popular sketch.

 CORNELIUS, pope, was elected in 251 during the lull in the persecution of the emperor Decius. Two years afterwards, under the emperor Gallus, he was exiled to Centumcellae (Civita Vecchia), where he died. He was very intimate with St Cyprian, and is commemorated with him on the 16th of September, which is not, however, the anniversary of his death. He died in June 253.

 CORNELIUS, CARL AUGUST PETER (1824–1874), German musician and poet, son of an actor at Wiesbaden, grandson of the engraver Ignaz Cornelius, and nephew of Cornelius the painter, was born at Mainz on the 24th of December 1824. In his childhood his bent was towards languages, but his musical gifts were carefully cultivated and he learned to sing and to play the violin. Cornelius the elder, anxious for his son to become an actor, himself taught the boy the elements of the art. These theatrical studies, however, were interrupted early by a visit paid by Peter Cornelius to England as second violin in the Mainz orchestra. On returning home young Cornelius made his stage debut as John Cook in Kean. But after two more appearances, as the lover in the comedy Das war Ich and as Perin in Moreto’s Donna Diana, he practically abandoned the stage for music, his idea being to become a comic opera composer. In 1843 his father died. Hitherto Cornelius’s musical studies had been unsystematic. Now opportunity served to remedy this, for his relative, Cornelius the painter, summoned him in 1844 to Berlin, and enabled him a year later to become a pupil of Siegfried Wilhelm Dehn (1799–1858), counterpoint and theory generally being worked at laboriously. After leaving Dehn, Cornelius proved his independence by writing a trio in A minor, a quartet in C, as well as two comic opera texts. In 1847 he returned to Dehn and immediately composed an enormous mass of music, including a second trio, 30 vocal canons, several sonatas, a Mass, a Stabat Mater; he also wrote a number of translations of old French poems, which are classics of their kind. In 1852 he first came in touch with Liszt, through his uncle’s instrumentality. At Weimar, whither he went in 1852, he heard Berlioz’s delightful Benvenuto Cellini, a work which ultimately exercised great influence over him. For the time, however, he devoted himself, on Liszt’s advice, to further Church compositions, the influence of the Church on him at that time being so great that he applied, but vainly, for a place in a Jesuit college. Still his mind was bent on the production of a comic opera, but the composition was long delayed by the work of translating the prefaces for Liszt’s symphonic poems and the texts of works by Berlioz and Rubinstein. Between October 1855 and September in the following year, Cornelius wrote the book of the Barbier von Bagdad, and on December 15, 1858, the opera was produced at Weimar under Liszt, and hissed off the stage. Thereupon Liszt resigned his post, and shortly afterwards Cornelius went to Vienna and Munich, and still later came very much under Wagner’s influence. Cornelius’s Cid was completed and produced at Weimar in 1865. For the last nine years of his life (1865–1874)