Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/448

Rh 418 CORNEILLE appeared Horace with a dedication to Richelieu. The good offices of Madame de Combalet, to whom the Cid had been dedicated, and perhaps the satisfaction of the cardinal s literary jealousy, had healed what breach there may have been, and indeed the poet was in no position to quarrel with his patron. Richelieu not only allowed him 500 crowns a year, but soon afterwards employed his omnipo tence in reconciling the father of the poet s mistress, Marie de Lampe&quot;riera, to the marriage of the lovers. These were years of considerable importance to Corneille. Not only Horace but Cinna appeared therein. A brief but very serious illness attacked him, and the death of his father increased his family anxieties by leaving his mother in very indifferent circumstances. Towards the end of 1640 Polyeude was produced; and in the following year Corneille figured as a contributor to the Gidrlande de Julie, a famous album which the marquis de Montausier, assisted by all the literary men of the day, offered to his lady love Julie d Angennes. 1642 saw La Mort de Pompee and the memorable comedy of Le Menteur, which though adapted from the Spanish stood in relation to French comedy very much as Le Cid, which owed to Spain only its subject, stood to French tragedy. The sequel which followed it in 1644 was not popular, but Rodogune was a brilliant success. Theodore, a tragedy on a somewhat perilous subject, was the first of Corneille s plays which was definitely damned. Some amends may have been made to him by the commission which he received to write verses for the Triomphes poetiques de Louis XIII Soon after (January 22, 1647) the Academy at last (it had twice rejected him on frivolous pleas) admitted the greatest of living French writers. Heraclius (1647), Andromede (1650), a spectacle rather than a play, Don Sanche d Aragon (1650), and Nicomede (1651) were the products of the next few years work ; but in 1653 Pertharite was received with decided disfavour, and the poet in disgust resolved, like Ben Jonson, to quit the loathed stage. In this resolu tion he persevered for six years, during which he worked at a verse translation of the Imitation of Christ (finished in 1656), at his three Discourses on Dramatic Poetry, and at the Examens which are usually printed at the end of his plays. In 1659 Fouquet, the Maecenas of the time, per suaded him to alter his resolve, and (Edipe, a play which became a great favourite with Louis XIV., was the result. It was followed by La Toison d Or (1660), Sertorius (1662), and Sophonisbe (1663). In this latter year Corneille was included among the list of men of letters pensioned at the proposal of Colbert. He received 2000 livres. Othon (1664), Agesilas (1666), Attila (1667), and Tite et Berenice (1670), were generally considerel as proofs of failing powers, the cruel quatrain of Boileau Apres 1 Agesilas Holas! Mais aprt-s 1 Attila Hola! in the case of these two plays, and the unlucky comparison with Racine in the Berenice, telling heavily against them. In 1665 and 1670 some versifications of devotional works addressed to the Virgin had appeared. The part which Corneille took in Psyche (1671), Moliere and Quinault being his coadjutors, showed signs of renewed vigour ; but Pulcherie (1672) and Surena (1674) were allowed even by his faithful followers to be failures. He lived for ten years after the appearance of Surena, but was almost silent save for the publication, in 1G76, of some beautiful verses thanking Louis XIV, for ordering the revival of his plays. He died at his lodging in the Rue d Argenteuil on the 30th of September 1G84. For nine years (1674-81), and again in 1683, his pension had, for what reason is unknown, been suspended, and he was in great straits. The story goes that at last Boileau, hearing of this, went to the king and offered to resign his own pension if there were not money enough for Corneille, and that Louis sent the aged poet 200 pistoles. He might have said, with a great English poet in like case, &quot; I have no time to spend them.&quot; Two days afterwards he was dead. Corneille was buried in the church of St Roch, where no monument marked his grave until 1821. He had six children, of whom four survived him. Pierre, the eldest son, a cavalry officer, left posterity in whom the name has continued ; Marie, the eldest daughter, was twice married, and by her second husband, M. de Farcy, became the ances tress of Charlotte Corday. Repeated efforts have been made for the benefit of the poet s descendants, Voltaire, Charles X., and the Comedie Francaise having all borne part therein. The portraits of Corneille (the best and most trustworthy Pei of which is from the burin of Lasne, an engraver of Caen) api represent him as a man of serious, almost of stern counten- an( ance, and this agrees well enough with such descriptions as we have of his appearance and with the idea of him which we should form from his writings and conduct. His nephew Fontenelle admits that his general address and manner were by no means prepossessing. Others use stronger language, and it seems to be confessed that either from shyness, from pride, or from physical defects of utterance, probably from all three combined, he did not attract strangers. Racine is said to have assured his son that Corneille made verses &quot; cent fois plus beaux &quot; than his own, but that his own greater popularity was owing to the fact that he took some trouble to make himself personally agreeable. Almost all the anecdotes which have been recorded concerning the greatest of French dramatists tes tify to a rugged and somewhat unamiable self-contentment. &quot; Je n ai pas le me rite de ce pays-ci, &quot; he said of the court. &quot; Je n en suis pas moins Pierre Corneille,&quot; he is said to have replied to his friends whenever they dared to suggest certain shortcomings in his behaviour, manner, or speech. &quot; Je suis saoul de gloire et affame&quot; d argent &quot; was his reply to the compliments of Boileau. Yet tradition is unanimous as to his affection for his family and as to the harmony in which he lived with his brother Thomas who had married Marguerite de Larnperiere, younger sister of Marie, and whose household both at Rouen and at Paris was practically one with that of his brother. No story about Corneille is better known than that which tells of the trap between the two houses, and how Pierre, whose facility of versification was much inferior to his brother s, would lift it when hard bestead, and call out &quot; Sans-souci, une rime ! &quot; Notwith standing this domestic felicity, an impression is left on the reader of Corneille s biographies that he was by no means a happy man. Melancholy of temperament will partially explain this, but there were other reasons. He appears to have been quite free from envy properly so called, and to have been always ready to acknowledge the excellencies of his contemporaries. But, as was the case with a very different man Goldsmith praise bestowed on others always made him uncomfortable unless it were accompanied by praise bestowed on himself. As Guizot has excellently said, &quot; Sa jalousie fut celle d un enfant qui veut qu un sourire le rassure centre les caresses que re^oit son frere.&quot; Another cause of discomfort must have been the pressure of poverty. His pensions covered but a small part of his long life and were most irregularly paid. The occasional presents of rich men, such as Montauron (who gave him 1000, others say 200, pistoles for the dedication of Cinna) and Fouquet (who commissioned (Edipe}, were few and far between, though they have exposed him to reflections which show great ignorance of the manners of the age. Of his professional earnings, the small sum for which, as