Part 5

An Italian secretary of the queen, Mary d'Medici, named Chalons, having retired to Rouen, advised Corneille to learn Spanish, and pointed out the "Cid" of Guillen de Castro as affording an admirable subject for a drama.[13] There are several old Spanish romances which narrate the history of the blow received by the father of the Cid from the Count Lozano--the death of the former by the youthful hand of the avenging son--and the subsequent demand which Ximena, daughter of Lozano, makes the king of the hand of Rodrigo. The Spanish poet saw that, by interweaving the idea of a prior attachment between Rodrigo and Ximena, the struggle of passion that must ensue, ere she could consent to marry the slayer of her father, presented a grand, deeply moving subject for a drama. Corneille followed closely in Guillen de Castro's steps: he rejected certain puerilities adopted by the Spaniard from the ancient ballads of their country, which were venerable in Spain, but might excite ridicule in France; but he at the same time injured his subject by too much attention to French rules. The senseless notion of unity of time takes away from the probability of the circumstances; and that which becomes natural after a lapse of years, is monstrous when crowded into twenty-four hours; so that we repeat Scuderi's exclamation, "How actively his personages were employed!" The French rule of having but two or three persons on the stage at a time detracts from the spirited scene, where, in the Spanish play, the nobles quarrel, and the blow is given at the council board of the sovereign. Corneille mentions one or two defects himself, which show rather his erroneous notions than defects in his play. Speaking of the weakness of purpose and want of power which the king displays as a fault, he says, no king ought to be introduced but as powerful and prudent; though he gives no reason why a dramatic sovereign should be an abstract idea, instead of an historic and real personage. When the king, in Guillen de Castro, shows himself as he was, the lord paramount of turbulent feudal nobles, whom he was unable to control, and yet to whom he will not yield, and exclaims----

"Rey soy mal obecido, Castigarè mis vasallos!"--

we see at once the various motives of action which rendered him eager to crush a quarrel between two influential families by uniting them in marriage. Corneille makes the scene take place at Seville, a city not in possession of the Spaniards till many years after. Certainly, the countryman of Shakspeare have no right to be severe on anachronisms; but the reason Corneille gives for his choice of place displays slender knowledge of the ancient state of a neighbouring country, or even of its geography. He says he does it to make the sudden incursion of the Moors, and the unprepared state of the king, more probable, by causing the attack to come by sea; when, in fact, in those days the boundaries of the warring powers were so uncertain, and the inroads so predatory, that nothing was more frequent than unforeseen invasions; and, besides, Seville is on the Guadalquivir, and several miles from the coast.

The real interest of the play, resting on the position of Rodrigo, who, despite his affection for Ximena, avenges his father, and of the miserable daughter, who feels her attachment for her lover survive the death of her parent, and the mutual struggles that ensue, overpowers these minor defects, aided as it is by powerful language and energy of passion. The success of the tragedy was unprecedented, it was received with enthusiasm in Paris, and all France re-echoed the praise, till a sort of epidemic transport was spread through the country. It became a national phrase to applaud any thing or person by calling them as excellent as the Cid (_beau comme de Cid_); the name spread through the world; translations of the play were made in all languages; a knowledge of it became incorporated with all minds. "I knew two men," says Fontenelle, in his life of Corneille, "a soldier and a mathematician, who had never heard of any other play that had ever been written; but the name of the Cid had penetrated even the barbarous state in which they lived."

So much renown of course inspired his would be rivals with rancour; they tried to detract from the merit of the successful play, and to show that at least it _ought_ not to have succeeded. Scuderi published a bitter and elaborate attack, remarkable chiefly for the entire ignorance it displays of all the real springs of human passion and human interest. He calls Chimene a monster, and speaks of "the odious struggle of love and honour." He appealed to the French academy to decide on the justice of his criticism. The academy, not long before instituted by the cardinal de Richelieu, penetrated the minister's annoyance at Corneille's success, and his wish to have a rival crushed; so they by no means liked to come forward in defence of the poet; nor, on the other hand, did they relish the invidious task of pronouncing against him; they signified, therefore, that they should remain silent, unless invited by the author himself to decide on his merits. The cardinal, eager for a blow against the young poet, commissioned Corneille's intimate friend Boisrobert to write to him at Rouen on the subject. Corneille evaded giving an assent, on the score that the task in question was unworthy to occupy the academy; but, pressed by reiterated letters, he at last replied, that the academy could do as it liked; adding, "and as you say that his eminence would be glad to see their decision, and be diverted by it, I can have no objection." On this, Richelieu urged the academy to its task. Three of their number. De Bourzey, Des Marets, and Chapelain, were commissioned to draw up a judgment: each performed his work apart; and Chapelain cooked it into form, and presented it to the cardinal for his approbation. Richelieu wrote his observations in the margin, and his grudge against the poet suggested at least one ill-natured one. The academy, as an excuse for their criticisms, remarked, that the discussions concerning the greatest works, the "Jerusalem" of Tasso, and the "Pastor Fido," tended to improve the art of poetry. Richelieu observed on this, "The praise and blame of the 'Cid' is a dispute between the learned and the ignorant, while the discussions on the other works mentioned were between clever men."[14] The work of the academy was, however, not over. The cardinal recommended that a few handsful of flowers should be scattered over Chapelain's criticism; but, when these flowers were added, he found them far too fragrant and ornamental, and had them plucked up and thrown away. [Sidenote: 1637. Ætat. 31.] After a good deal of discussion, and five months' labour, the judgment of the academy was got up and printed. Scuderi hailed it as a sentence in his favour: Corneille was not so well pleased; but, after some indecision, he resolved to abstain from all reply. Such a course was the most dignified; and he excused the failure of respect it might show to the academy on the score that it marked a higher degree towards the cardinal.

He never, it may be believed, forgot the cardinal's ill offices on this occasion, though his fear of offending caused him to dedicate his play of "Horace" to him in an adulatory address. [Sidenote: 1639. Ætat. 33.] This tragedy shows a considerable advance in the power of expressing noble and heroic sentiments. The framework is too slight, being the duel of the Horatii and the Curiatii, and the subsequent murder of his sister by the surviving Horatius, when she reproached him for slaying her betrothed. Such a subject in the hands of Shakspeare had not, indeed, been threadbare. He would have brought the jealousies of the states of Rome and Alba in living scenes before our eyes. We should have beheld the collision of turbulent, ambitious spirits, and felt that the world was not large enough for both. The pernicious rule of unity of time and place prevented this: the ambition of Rome could be displayed only in the single person of Horatius. All we have, therefore, are various scenes between him, his sister, his wife, and the Curiatius, betrothed to the former, and brother to the latter; and these scenes are, for the most part, repetitions one of another; for the same rules confining the time of action, restrict the whole play to the delineation of the catastrophe; variety of incident and feeling is excluded, and the art of the French dramatist consists principally in petty devices, to delay the catastrophe, and so to drag it through long _tête-à-tête_ conversations, till the fifth act: often they are unable to defer it beyond the fourth, and then the fifth is an appendix of little account.

"Horace" is, however, a masterpiece. Corneille could speak as a Roman, and the character of the hero is conceived with a simplicity and severity of taste worthy of his country.

In his next piece Corneille rose yet higher. "Cinna" is usually considered his _chef d'œuvre_. It contains admirable scenes, unsurpassed by any author. Did the scene in which Augustus asks the advice of Cinna and Maximus as to his meditated abdication pass between the personages (Mecænas and Agrippa) who really were called into consultation on the subject, it had been faultless. The mixture of admirable reasoning, covert and delicate flattery, forcible eloquence, and happy versification, is perhaps unequalled in any work that exists. It is, to a degree, spoiled as it stands; for the false part which the conspirators act, and the peculiarly base conduct of Cinna, deteriorate from the interest of the whole drama; and, although in subsequent portions of the play he appears in the more interesting light of a man struggling between remorse and love, we cannot recover from the impression, and thus the character wants that congruity and likelihood necessary for an ideal hero. As works of art, we may say, once for all, Corneille's tragedies are far from perfect. Very inferior poets have attained happier combinations of plot: but not one among his countrymen--few of any nation--have equalled him in scenes; in declamations full of energy and poetry; in single expressions that embody the truth of passion and the result of a life of experience; in noble sentiments, such as made the great Condé weep from admiration. In this play he did not happily confine himself to absolute unity of place. Such was his erroneous notion that he mentions this as a fault; while Voltaire drolly, yet seriously, observes that unity of place had been preserved had the stage represented two apartments at once. How far this would have helped the imagination it is impossible to say; but in real life no spectator commands a view of the interior of two separate rooms at once, except, indeed, in a penitentiary.

[Sidenote: 1640. Ætat. 34.]

The tragedies that followed "Cinna" continued to sustain the reputation of the poet. "Polyeucte," which succeeded to it the following year, is, perhaps, the most delightful of all his plays. I know no other work of the imagination in which a woman, loving one man and marrying another, preserves at once dignity and sweetness. Pauline loves Severus with all the enthusiasm of a girl's first passion;--she fears to see him again, so well does she remember the power of that love; but, though she fears, she does not lament: we perceive that conjugal tenderness for a young and virtuous husband, a sense of duty, hallowed by purity of feeling and softened by affection, have gathered over the ruins of a former attachment for another, while the heroism and generosity of Severus adds dignity to the character of her who once loved him so fondly. The only fault that strikes at all forcibly in this piece is a sort of _brusquerie_, or want of keeping, in the character of the martyr. The tragedy opens with his wishing to defer the sacrament of baptism because his wife had had a bad dream; and, after this, we are not prepared for his sudden resolution to overthrow the altars of his country, and to devote himself on the instant to martyrdom. The poet meant that we should feel this increase of fervour as the effect of baptism; but he has somewhat failed, by not making us expect it: and to raise expectation, so that no event should appear startling, is the great art of dramatic writing. The real fault is in the senseless notion of unity of time: had the author given his personages space to breathe, all had been in harmony. It must not be omitted, that when Corneille read this play, before its representation, to an assembly of _beaux esprits_, at the hotel de Rambouillet, the learned conclave came to the decision that it would not succeed, and deputed Voiture to persuade the author to withdraw it, as Christianity introduced on the stage had offended many. Corneille, frightened at this sentence, endeavoured to get it out of the hands of the actors, but was persuaded by one among them to let it take its chance.[15] The fine people of Paris could not imagine that a Christian martyr would command the interest and sympathy of an audience. Where the scene, however, is founded on truth and nature, the hearts of the listeners are carried away; and Corneille could always command admiration for his heroes, through the power of the situations he conceived, and the elevation and beauty of his language.

Corneille again attempted a comedy. Voltaire justly observes, that the French owe their first tragedy and their first comedy of character to the Spanish. The "Menteur" of Corneille is taken from "El Verdad sospechosa" of Lope de Vega; and bears marks of its Spanish origin in the intricacy of its intrigue, and its love-making out of window, so usual in Spain, and unnatural elsewhere. This comedy had the greatest success; many of the verses passed into sayings--the very situations became proverbs. "The Liar" had just arrived from Poietiers; and it grew into a fashion, when any man told an incredible story, to ask whether he had come from Poietiers?

[Sidenote: 1646. Ætat. 40.]

"Rodogune," which succeeded, is (with the lamentable defect of the unlucky unity of time and place) more like a Spanish or an English play than any other of Corneille's, except the "Cid." The very intricacy and faults of the plot, founded, as it is, on some old forgotten tale, give it the same wild romantic interest. Corneille, indeed, says he took the story from Appian and other historical sources; but, as the tale existed, perhaps he saw that first, and then consulted the ancient authorities. Voltaire, in his remarks, scarcely knows what to say to it. It succeeded brilliantly, kept possession of the stage, and always ranks as one of Corneille's best tragedies. He is forced, therefore, to acknowledge its merit, although the fault in the conduct and story struck him forcibly. He repeats, perpetually, "The pit was pleased; so we must allow this play to have merit, though there is so much in it to shock an enlightened critic." Corneille himself favoured this tragedy with particular regard. "I have often been asked at court," he says, "which of my poems I preferred; and I found all those who questioned me so partial either to 'Cinna or the 'Cid,' that I never dared declare all the tenderness I felt for this one, to which I would willingly have given my suffrage, had I not feared to fail in some degree in the respect I owed to those who inclined the other way. My preference is, perhaps, the result of one of those blind partialities which fathers sometimes feel for one child rather than another: perhaps some self-love mingles with it, since this tragedy seems to me more entirely my own than any of its predecessors, on account of its surprising incidents, which are all my own invention, and which had never before been witnessed on the stage; and, finally, perhaps a little real merit renders this partiality not entirely unjust." Fontenelle mentions, as another cause for it, the labour he bestowed; since he spent a year in meditating the subject. There might be another reason, to which neither Corneille nor his biographer allude--that this play occasioned him a triumph over a rival. Gilbert brought out a tragedy on the same subject a few months before: as it is acknowledged that Corneille's was written first, he, perhaps, heard of the subject, and took the details from the novel in question. However that may be, Gilbert's play was never acted a second time; yet it met with powerful patrons in its fall, and was published, with a flourishing dedication to the king's brother; but nothing could preserve it from oblivion. The German critics are particularly severe on "Rodogune," and with some justice: there is want of nature in the situations and sentiments; we are attached to none of the characters; and the heroine herself is utterly insignificant.

Corneille had now reached the acme of his fame. Other plays succeeded, which did not deserve the name of tragedies, but ought, as Voltaire remarks, to be entitled heroic comedies.[16] These pieces were of unequal merit; having here and there traces of the great master's hand, but defective as wholes. Usually, he introduces one character of power and interest that elevates them, and which, when filled by a good actor, rendered them successful; but they were not hailed with the enthusiasm that attended his earlier plays. The great Condé looked cold on "Don Sancho," and it was heard of no more; while the fastidious taste of the French revolted from the subject of "Theodore." Worse overthrow was in store. "Pertharite," founded on a Lombard story, failed altogether; and its ill fortune, he tells us, so disgusted him as to induce him to retreat entirely from the theatre. He turned his thoughts to other works. He wrote his "Essays on the Theatre," which contain much acute and admirable criticism; though, like all French writers on that subject, he misses the real subject of discussion. He translated, also, the "Imitation of Jesus Christ" into French--being persuaded to this design by the jesuits. He fails, as our poets are apt to fail, when they versify the psalms; the dignified simplicity of the original being lost in the frippery of modern rhyme.

It had been happy for Corneille had he adhered to his resolves to write no more for the theatre. But M. Fouquet, the celebrated and unfortunate minister of finances to Louis XIV., caused him to break it. Fouquet begged him to dramatise one of three subjects which he mentioned. Corneille chose Œdipus, "Its success," he writes, "compensated to me for the failure of the other; since the king was sufficiently pleased to cause me to receive solid testimonials of his satisfaction; and I took his liberality as a tacit order to consecrate to the amusement of his majesty all the invention and power which age and former labours had spared." This was a melancholy resolve--his subsequent plays were not worthy of their predecessors. They contain fine scenes and eloquent passages; but a hard dry spirit crept over him, which caused him to mistake exaggerated sentiments for nobleness of soul. The plots, also, were bad; the conduct enfeebled by uninteresting episodes, or by the worse expedient of giving the hero himself some under amatory interest that lowered him entirely. Voltaire remarks, "Corneille's genius was still in force. He ought to have been severe on himself, or to have had severe friends. A man capable of writing fine scenes might have written a good play. It was a great misfortune that no one told him that he chose his subjects badly." It is sad to be obliged to make excuses for genius. No doubt Corneille failed in invention as he grew older. His former power of boldness and felicity of expression often shed rays of light upon his feebler works; but he could no longer conceive a whole, whose parts should be harmonious, whose entire effect should be sublime.

The bounty of the king in bestowing a pension on him, it is probable, was one cause of his establishing himself in Paris, and his brother's recent success as a dramatist a yet more urgent one. Hitherto Corneille had resided at Rouen, visiting the capital only at intervals, when he brought out any new play. In 1642 he had been elected member of the French academy; but that circumstance caused no change in his mode of life. He was not formed to shine at court, nor in the gay Parisian circles. Simple, almost rustic, in his manners and appearance, his genius was not discernible to the casual observer. "The first time I saw him," says a writer of the day, "I took him for a merchant of Rouen--his exterior gave no token of his talents, and he was slow, and even dull, in conversation." Corneille certainly neglected the refinements of society too much; or, rather, nature, who had been so liberal to him in rich gifts, had withheld minor ones. When his familiar friends, who desired to see him perfect, spoke to him of his defects, he replied with a smile, "I am not the less Pierre Corneille." La Bruyère bears the same testimony: "Simple and timid; tiresome in conversation--he uses one word for another--he knows not how to recite his own verses."[17]

In truth, Corneille's merit did not, as with many Frenchmen, lie on the surface. Conscious of his own desert, ambitious of glory, proud, yet shy, he shrunk from society where all excellence is despised that does not sparkle and amuse. We are inclined to believe from these considerations that his migration to Paris is attributable rather to his brother than to himself.

Thomas Corneille was twenty years the junior. The brothers had married two sisters of the name of De Lampériere, between whom existed the same difference of age. The family was united by all the bonds of affection and virtue. Their property, even, was in common; and it was not until after Corneille's death that the inheritance of their wives was divided, and that each sister received her share. The brothers were fondly attached, and lived under the same roof. We are told that Thomas wrote verses with much greater facility than Pierre, and he well might, considering what his verses are; and, when Pierre wanted a rhyme, he opened a trap door communicating with his brother's room, and asked him to give one. Nor was Pierre less attached to his sister, to whom he was accustomed to read his pieces when written. She had good taste and an enlightened judgment, and was worthy of her relationship to the poet.

Thomas Corneille had lately met with success in the same career as his brother. His play of "Timocrates" was acted for six months together; and the king went to the unfashionable theatre of the Marais, at which it was brought out, for the purpose of seeing it. Nothing could be more dissimilar than the productions of the brothers. Thomas Corneille had merit, and one or two of his plays ("Le Comte d'Essex" in particular) kept possession of the stage: he had, however, knack instead of genius. He could contrive interesting situations to amuse the audience; but his verses are tame, his dialogue trivial, his conceptions altogether mediocre. Still, in its day, success is success, and, under its influence, the younger Corneille aspired to the delights of a brilliant career in the capital.

[Sidenote: 1662. Ætat. 56.]