Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/451

Rh   CORNEILLE, (1625-1709), was nearly twenty years younger than his brother, the day of his birth being August 20, 1625. 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. He soon followed his brother s steps, and his first piece, Les Engagements dn Hasard, was acted in 1647. From this time forward he produced a constant series of plays, sometimes in collabora tion, oftener alone. 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 Vaugelas in 16S7, and in 1G94 a dictionary 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 con stituted a &quot; veteran,&quot; 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 soon produced a large Geo graphical and Historical Dictionary in 3 vols. folio. This was his last labour. He died 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 b )re, would merit no notice. This is by no means the case ; on the contrary, he is rather to be commiserated for his con nection with a brother who outshone him as he would have outshone almost any one. 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 at the end of his brother s selected works. These are Ariane and the Comte d 1 Essex, in the former of which Rachel attained success. But of Laodice, Gamma, Stilico, and some other pieces, Pierre Corneille himself said that &quot; he wished he had written them,&quot; and he was not wont to peak lightly. Camma especially deserves notice. Thomas Corneille is in many ways remarkable in the literary history of his time. His Timocrate had the longest run recorded of any play in the century. For La DevineresseQ and his coadjutor De Vis6 received above 6000 livres, the largest sum known to have been thus paid. Lastly, one of his pieces (Le Baron dcs Foudrieres) contests the honour of being the first which was hissed off the stage.  CORNELIA, one of the greatest women in Roman history, was the younger daughter of Scipio Africanus the Elder, the conqueror of Carthage, and mother of the two great tribunes, Tiberius and Caius Gracchus, and of Cornelia, the wife of Scipio Africanus the younger. On the death of her husband, refusing numerous offers of marriage, including even one from King Ptolemy, she devoted herself to the education of her children, a task for which her lofty spirit and wide attainments rendered her admirably fitted, and which had the most extraordinary results. The only attack ever made upon her lofty reputa tion was theTcharge that she was concerned in the death of her son-in-law, Scipio, which was, there is no reason to doubt, a mere baseless slander. On her death a statue was erected to her memory bearing the inscription &quot; Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi.&quot; She is said to have presented her sons to a Campanian lady, who asked to see her jewels, as the only jewels of which she could boast. After the murder of Caius, the second of her sons, she retired to Misenum, where she devoted herself to Greek and Latin literature, and to the society of men of letters. See Plutarch s Lices of Tib. and C. Gracchus.  CORNELIUS,, the leader of the German art revival, was born in Diisseldorf in 1784, and died in Berlin, March 6, 1867. Cornelius, like other great painters, is reported to have manifested his artistic talent at a very early age. His father, who was inspector of the Diisseldorf Gallery, dying whilst the painter was yet a boy, the young Cornelius was stimulated to extraordinary exertions. The reasons for this he has himself pathetically expressed in a letter to tho Count Eaczynski. &quot; I was in my sixteenth year,&quot; he writes, &quot; when I lost my father, and it fell to the lot of an elder brother and myself to watch over the interests of a numerous family. It was at this time that it was attempted to persuade .my mother that it would be better for me to devote myself to the trade of a goldsmith than to continue to pursue painting in the first place, in consequence of the time necessary to qualify me for the art, and in the next, because there were already so many painters. My dear mother, however, rejected all this advice, and I felt myself impelled onward by an uncontrollable enthusiasm, to which the confidence of my mother gave new strength, which was supported by the continual fear that I should be removed from the study of that art I loved so much.&quot; His earliest work of importance was the decoration of the choir of St Quirinus Church at Neuss. At the age of twenty-six he produced his designs from Faust, On October 14, 1811, he arrived in Ptome, were he soon became one of the most promising of that brotherhood of young German painters which included Overbeck, Schadow, Veit, Schnorr, Pforr, Vogel, and &quot;Wachter, a member of a fraternity (some of whom selected a ruinous convent for their home) who were banded together for resolute study and mutual criticism. Out of this association came the men who, though they were ridiculed at the time, were destined to found a new German school of art. At Rome Cornelius participated, with other members of his fraternity, in the decoration of the Casa Bartoldi and the Villa Massimi, and while thus employed he was also engaged upon designs for the Nibelungenlied. From Rome he was called to Diisseldorf to remodel the Academy, 