piece with all the virulence which falsehood and malice could supply. The cardinal, it seems, had a vast appetite to be looked upon as the author of the Cid, and made overtures to Corneille to that effect. But that great poet, in conformity to the principle which should ever actuate men of genius, regarded genuine fame so much more than favour or emoluments, that he peremptorily, and with marks of contempt, rejected the proposal. Richelieu was not one of those who readily overlook a slight; nor could his haughty soul brook a repulse. That he who could command every one under the sovereign, and mould all France to his will, should be resisted in a wish of his, by a poor poet, was not to be forgiven; and he resolved that, since the play was not to pass for his, the success of it should be interrupted, and its reputation destroyed. He, therefore, contrived that the Cid should be carefully examined by the academy, and that their sentence upon its merits should be given to the public. Of the cooperation of his creatures in the academy he was certain; nor was he wrong when he laid his account with it. But, blinded as he was by pride and malice, he now perceived that the public thought very little of the opinion of the academy, and would ultimately judge for themselves. In compliance with the cardinal's desire, and in their zeal to oblige their patron, those honest members contrived to find nothing but faults in the Cid, and, above all, they charged that every rule of the drama was violated in that composition. To this charge the partisans of Corneille agreed, but insisted that the violation of those rules was productive of the greatest beauties; and from it they drew conclusions in favour of the Cid, in which the public feeling as well as the purest and most enlightened judgments concurred.

The fact is, that the play, though a marvellous fine production, has some glaring faults. The Cid was known and much celebrated long before Corneille. To a Spanish poet of the name of Guillim de Castro, he acknowledges that he owes it; and Fontenelle says that there was no nation, however barbarous, to which the Cid was unknown. To Corneille it was allotted to give it to the world in a polished form.

Had the glory, nay the existence of France, and the fate of all Europe been at stake, the cardinal could not have called forth his energies to meet the emergency with greater warmth and industry than he did on this occasion. It must have been a curious spectacle to behold the ardour with which his eminence entered

into the investigation of the merits and demerits of the play, the vast importance of which he considered it, the authoritative solemnity with which he handed it over to the academy for trial, and the hypocritical gravity with which that contemptible body sat down to deliberate upon it! And so despotic was the influence which their patron exercised over that contemptible body of men, that they all joined in passing sentence of condemnation on the Cid,—all but that very man who alone, if personal competition can be considered a palliation of injustice, would have been least unjustifiable in joining theme ROUTROU turned with scorn from the league, generously asserted the excellence of the play and maintained the great superiority of Corneille, as a dramatic poet, to all men existing. Such are the ennobling effects of real genius; and where those are wanting, it may reasonably be concluded that, whatever brilliance may meet the eye, it is little more than specious and superficial, and that at the bottom some ingredient material to the composition of exalted genius is wanting. Routrou had so long been considered as standing in a reputable degree of competion with Corneille, that he might reasonably be pardoned for imagining himself his equal. To be at once put down from that high station might have awakened jealousy and kindled animosity even in the bosom of a good man. How can we then enough praise the integrity of heart and nobleness of nature displayed by him in relation to the great object of his emulation, whom he not only zealously defended, but panegyrized in the most enthusiastic terms of praise and veneration, and publicly placed the palm upon his head, calling him his father, his instructer, and the first object of his reverential regards upon earth.-Heavens, how little-how minute and miserable appears the great cardinal Richelieu in this transaction, when compared with Routrou!-that Routrou, who was compelled to sell one of his best plays for perhaps a tenth part of its value to save himself from a jail.

It has been suggested that the principal cause of the cardinal's dislike to the Cid was of a political nature, and proceeded from certain exalted sentiments it contained, which coward conscience whispered in his eminence's ears were meant to expose the corrupt influence of his administration, and to satirize his injustice and his rapacity. In corroboration of this, the great caution he observed in the proceeding, and the cunning with which he ensconced himself behind others, while he carried on the attack against the Cid, are

mentioned, and indeed not without much plausibility of reasoning. He first made one of his poetical slaves (Scudery) abuse the Cid, and then, under a pretence of respect and friendship, got Boisrobert to represent to Corneille how advantageous it would be to him to hand his production over to the academy for an examination, which, as it would no doubt be highly favourable, could not fail to put an end to all clamours, and at once silence Scudery and all such libellers. Corneille was not at all at a loss to perceive the drift of the application, and drily returned for answer, that he would not attempt to oppose the Cid's going before the academy, provided that body's passing judgment on it would afford his eminence the least amusement.

An answer so poignantly satirical would have made any man hesitate, who was not blinded by the most perverse malignity and pride; but on the cardinal it had no such effect. He, on the contrary, construed it into a full and voluntary consent on the part of Corneille. In consequence of which a committee was appointed to examine the Cid; and, the better to assume an appearance of impartiality, the attack of Scudery was also referred for examination to the committee. The report of the committee, and all the observations contained in it, were then debated in a full meeting of the academy: the debates upon the amendments proposed were long, and it was some time before that body came to a conclusion. But it so happened that the cardinal's cunning overshot the mark. As it is the nature of guilty men of every kind to keep their real motives concealed, his eminence was more reserved with his creatures of the academy than he ought to have been, and declined to instruct any of them with the particulars of his objections to the play. The consequence was that they ran headlong from one extreme to another; and instead of expunging or amending the faults, they expunged all the beauties, and thus rendered the objectionable parts still more striking. Having done this, they ordered it to be printed in the state to which they had reduced it, and the first sheet was sent to the cardinal for his opinion.

Richelieu, convinced that the public mind would revolt at the barbarous havoc committed by the academy, and that he himself would, in the end, be exposed, thought it expedient to limit his malice with a little prudence, and ordered the printing to be delayed till he revised the alterations; when, contenting himself VOL. III. 2 M

with a few inconsiderable alterations, to which, rather than go to open war with him, Corneille agreed, the piece was left in the state in which we see it at this day.

(To be continued.)

BIOGRAPHY.

A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF WILLIAM WARREN,

Actor and Manager of the Philadelphia Theatre.
[Continued from page 221.]

THE building of the theatre, of which Davis was now to become manager, originated in a kind of civil feud. In many of the chief cities and corporate towns of Great Britain, the magistracy is regarded with jealousy and dislike by a considerable portion of the people, who generally constitute an opposition party, having its leaders, its orators, and its demagogues. In all free nations there exist multitudes intolerant of laws and power, and too often intolerant in proportion to their actual exemption from restraint. The municipal power exercised in the towns alluded to is, on several accounts, more odious in its nature, and, to the people, appears infinitely more vexatious than that exercised by the great national government. As the municipal magistrates, in general, are persons who have risen, by sordid occupations, from the lower classes of society, they are viewed with contempt and irreverence by their fellow citizens; and being for the same reason prone to exert their brief authority even to abuse, and to bolster up their personal meanness with excessive arrogance, they are very offensive in the discharge of their offices. The sordid habits of their antecedent lives, too, renders them rapacious; while ignorance, the result of a defective education, commits them to the tyranny of their own tempers, without a guide to direct them to the right, or reason to control them from going wrong. This is pretty nearly true of all the corporate towns in England, and is more particularly so of the episcopal sees, in which the civil authority, being originally intermingled with that of the church, or derived from it, still retains a

strong spice of ecclesiastical rigour and haughty despotism. Exeter is one of these, and yields to none of them in the vulgar ignorance of its corporate magistrates, or in the stupid, we might say fanatical, rigour of the execution of its municipal laws. In those parts of the suburbs therefore, to which the power of the mayor and corporation does not extend, a kind of warfare is maintained against them; and Westout, being out of the reach of the corporation of Exeter, was fixed upon as a proper place to set up a theatre in opposition to that in the city. Mr. Friar, a gentleman of consequence and great goodness, who was the leader of the party, was the principal promoter, and, by his influence, the chief support, of the new theatre. They opened with She Stoops to Conquer, and The Waterman; in which Warren played young Marlow and Bundle. Cross, lately of the Philadelphia theatre, performed the same night. As they had strong reinforcements pouring in upon them, their success exceeded their expectations, and the old established theatre felt the opposition severely. Nor was the mortification experienced by the opposite party confined to the theatre: the company joined their patrons in a hostility of another and more ludicrous kind. To ridicule the mayor and corporation of the city, they instituted a mock body which they called the corporation of Westout; the terms of admission to it were fixed at four pence, for which he who paid it received a tankard of beer. When the corporation of Exeter went to the play, the corporation of Westout went also and took the opposite side of the house, and, in short, kept up a mock emulation of them in every thing. Nay, as the former had their contested elections, the latter had their contested elections also. For the office of Mayor of Westout two candidates were started; a mock contest was carried on with great spirit and much merriment; both candidates retained counsel, who, in their arguments and scuffles, caricatured the proceedings of the Exeter corporation. Warren particularly remembers that Itinerant RYLEY was retained by one of them; and that, dressed in a gown and big wig, he excited much mirth with the wit and humour of his pleadings before the mock court, which was held at a public house called the Green Tree, in St. Thomas's, otherwise Westout.

The company went on swimmingly for a few weeks, when unfortunately Mr. Friar was suddenly taken ill: his life was despaired of, and in him the company lost their main prop. His influence kept the people alive to the interests of the new theatre; and when that