which give such an interesting variety to the lives of those who are actively engaged in the practical business of the world. For a man of such great celebrity, the particulars of Corneille's life are rather circumscribed, and belong rather to his professional pursuits than to himself to the poet rather than to the man; so that in truth the detail of his life is more a history of his dramatic career and successes than the biography of Peter Corneille. We have already mentioned that this great man was born in 1606. His first dramatic production of note appeared in 1626. He was then, of course, only nineteen years of age: and his Melite (that was the name of the piece) was begotten in the very arms of Romance. His genius, too elevated and enlarged for the study of the law, to which he was destined, frequently disclosed itself in small matters at a very early age, but exhibited so little of any particular tendency that nobody could conjecture what the bent of it was likely to be, nor was he himself perceived to feel any partial bias to the employment of it. The fire lay dormant, and only waited for the breath that was to blow it into a flame-the breath of love, which even at the tender age of seventeen or eighteen roused him into action, and spurred him forward into that career of glory which he was destined by nature to run. This love affair was marked by a singularity of circumstance which claims particular observation: and, as the world is indebted to an affair of gallantry for the comedy of Melite, it would be unpardonable in us to omit so interesting a circumstance in the history of the stage. A young gentleman, an intimate friend of our poet, was paying his addresses to a young lady with whom he was deeply in love, fondly imagining that his passion was returned. Being desirous to have the opinion of a person on whose taste he knew he could depend, and upon the sincerity of whose friendship he thought he could safely rely, respecting a subject so important as marriage, and a person so very dear to his heart as his chere amie, he brought Corneille to visit the young lady and introduced him to her in form. From that moment the fate of the unhappy lover, of Corneille, and of Melite, was decided: the lady fell in love with our young poet, and, without compunction or reserve, made choice of him, and rejected the lover. Dazzled by a compliment so flattering to his personal vanity, and charmed with the beauty and of course with the superior discernment of the person who had unsolicited given him the preference, Corneille became forgetful of his honour, and treacherously agreed to supplant the man who confided in him. This was a sorry deed; but the world readily overlooked a crime to which the emancipation of such a genius as Corneille from the trammels of the law was to be ascribed-Melite appeared and gave delight, and the culprit was forgiven. The discarded lover's rage was levelled at the perfidious girl, who was certainly most to blame, and who from that time went at Rouen by no other name than that of Melite. But the public acknowledged the highest obligations to her, and from that time were inspired with a passion and a just taste for dramatic entertainments, till before then unknown to them. Though the merits of this first production were certainly great, and were universally acknowledged to be so, it was objected to it, that the interest was enfeebled by too much simplicity. To counterbalance that cause of complaint, Corneille wrote a play called Clitandre. This second piece was a tragi-comedy; and here, in endeavouring to shun Sylla he fell into Charybdis: for Clitandre was still more extravagant than Melite was simple, and Corneille lost much in the public estimation. It happened too that Routrou, of whom mention has already been made, had about two years before brought out a comedy (his first production) called Le Baque de l'oubli, which had very great success, and following up this effort soon after with another comedy called Le Hypocondriaque, he was viewed as so reputable a competitor of Corneille that the superiority of the latter was questioned, and the tragi-comedy of Clitandre did much service to Routrou in the comparison. Encouraged by opinions so very flattering to his genius, Routrou brought out five plays in succession before Corneille added one production to the two already named. The names of these were, Doristée et Cléagénor; L'Heureuse Constance; Les Occasions Perdués; Les Menechemes; and Clemene. The title of the last but one sufficiently indicates that it was taken from the Menechmi of Plautus, to which not only Routrou and after him Regnard, but Shakspeare and Dryden were indebted for the same plot. And Clemene, after being corrected and retouched by Tristan, was transcribed anew by Routrou, and brought out with great success under a new name. While Clemene, under the name of Vanceslas, was in rehearsal, Routrou being put to jail for a gambling debt, was obliged to sell his property in that piece to the players. They gave him twenty pistoles for it; but the play having succeeded far beyond their expectations, they voluntarily presented him with a handsome sum. It is to be regretted that an act so truly honourable and exemplary should not be accompanied with the names of the performers in its transmission to posterity. These facts, however, abundantly prove that Routrou was in high estimation with the public. We have somewhere in our account of the Spanish stage observed, that the works of the Spanish dramatists, crude and irregular though they are allowed to be, were yet so replete with wit, humour, and eccentricity, that they formed a rich mine, from which the French dug up the most valuable materials for their dramas. Thus the Vanceslas of Routrou was taken from a Spanish play; nor was the great Corneille himself at all reluctant to delve in the same ground, being indebted to the Spanish for his inimitable play of The Cid. The popularity of Vanceslas was augmented by a circumstance so singular in dramatic annals as to be handed down along with it. It was the last play in which the celebrated actor BARON made his appearance. Baron had quit the stage for thirty years and returned to it again. On his leaving the stage the first time, his parting character was in this play, and on his leaving it the second time he again chose it for his last appearance. And here we may, once for all, without derangement of our subject, give a few words to that admirable actor and extraordinary man, Michal Baron. He was born at the beautiful and romantic town of Issoudun, in the department of Indre, and on the river Theols: his father was a merchant, but he took to the stage. His powers of expressing the passions were so great that he was called the Roscius of his time. He excessively loved popularity, yet was lofty, proud and independent, and professionally so arrogant that he used to observe, that a Cæsar might arise once in a century, but that two thousand years were requisite to produce a Baron. For his superior excellence he was entirely indebted to his own exertions; so that Racine, when he was representing his Andromache to the actors, with the judgment of a poet and of a man of feeling, paid him the high compliment to say that he could not give him any instruction: for " your own heart," said he, " will tell you more than any lessons of mine can suggest. ." When Baron, at the conclusion of his second career, undertook to perform in Vanceslas, he was seventy years old, and had such an asthma that he could scarcely speak. He was, however, entreated to perform; but had scarcely uttered twenty lines when he was obliged to quit the stage, which he did with these remarkable words: Si proche du cercueil ou je me vois descendre. It had been more dignified in Baron to have abstained from returning to the stage after his thirty years absence, being then very infirm: but he was so great a favourite with the public that they would have endured any thing from him. One evening, however, when he repeated the lines Je suis jeune il est vrai: mais aux ames bien nees they burst into an involuntary laugh. Baron, affecting to disregard the risible effect his pronunciation of the lines had upon the audience, gravely repeated the passage. This occasioned them to laugh more vehemently than before; upon which the old gentleman came forward and seriously addressed the parterre in these terms-"Gentlemen, I shall now begin for the third time; but if I hear any one laugh I shall quit the theatre immediately, never to return." This appeal so sensibly affected them that they took particular care not to offend him again; not but that they had still stronger motives to laughter, for when he was kneeling at the feet of his mistress and she desired him to rise, he was unable to get upon his legs again till two scene-shifters came on and helped him. To return to Routrou. He was so evidently making a formidable stand against Corneille, that the latter felt the necessity of resorting to exertions of no ordinary kind, in order to maintain his superiority. In one year, therefore, he brought out three pieces:-La Veuve; La Galerie de Palais; and La Suivante; but without affecting the character and success of Routrou in any material degree, or in the least augmenting his own reputation. Of his last comedy (La Suivante) a French wit said that its principal merit was that the five acts were so exactly of a length that there was not a single line in any one, more than in either of the others. These discouraging events are supposed to have constituted Corneille's principal inducement for joining himself to the cardinal Richelieu and his disreputable confederacy: for it was the year next after the appearance of La Suivante that the Tuilleries was performed a play to which Corneille was known to have given his hand, as one of the five poets. With this league, so unworthy of him, Corneille appears to have been soon disgusted: for, as the cardinal and Corneille were at variance at the time the latter brought out his CID, and as the Cid first appeared in 1636, it is evident to demonstration that Corneille's partnership with the coalition did not last, at the furthest, more than a year. That he never would have joined it at all but for the purpose of obtaining a liberal patron in Richelieu is probable. That he was disappointed in his views no one, who has a heart or understanding to appreciate the dignity of genius, will lament. In the year 1635, Corneille brought out a comedy intitled La Place Royale, and a tragedy, the first he ever published, called Medée. Neither of these met with any extraordinary marks of approbation; yet early in the next year he produced a comedy called L'Illusion, of which he himself confesses that he wrote it merely to divert his mind from the gloomy thoughts occasioned by the fate of his Medée, and of which he candidly avowed that it deserved but little notice. All this time, Routrou, was indefatigably employed, and brought out half a dozen plays, among which was L'Heureuse Naufrage, a comedy, which was well received, as indeed were all of them. While Routrou was thus apparently in the high road to first rate fame, the genius of Corneille burst out at once unexpectedly in a blaze which astonished the public, and struck Routrou's muse down to the earth. In two months after the appearance of L'Illusion came forth the CID, which gave Corneille a complete triumph, and cast all his competitors at an immeasurable distance. Never did a tragedy possess more extraordinary attraction,-never did one meet with more success;-it was committed to memory by all who were capable of reading;-the very children were taught to lisp the most beautiful lines of it—and when any one was desirous to express, in the strongest terms possible, his sense of superior beauty and excellence in any thing, he did so by comparison with this play: "beau comme le Cid" being the customary expression. While the Cid was overwhelmed, to an extent before unknown, with the applauses of the nation, and its author honoured with the congratulations of all the enlightened and honest men in France, a nest of poetical hornets, influenced by the cardinal, attacked his |