Peter Corneille was born at Rouen, on the 6th of June, 1606. His father
was in the profession of the law, and held an office of trust under
Louis XIII. Young Corneille was educated in the Jesuits’ College at
Rouen; and, while there, formed an attachment to that society, which he
maintained unimpaired in after-life. He was destined for the bar, at
which he practised for a short time, but had no turn for business; and
with better warrant than the many, who mistake a lazy and vagabond
inclination for genius and the muse, he quitted the path of ambition and
preferment for a road to fame, shorter, and therefore better suited to
an aspiring, but impatient mind. A French writer congratulates his
country, that he who would have made an obscure and ill-qualified
provincial barrister, became, by change of place and pursuits, the glory
and ornament of a great empire in its most splendid day. Corneille “left
his calling for an idle trade,” without having bespoken the favour of
the public by any minor specimens of poetical talent. He seems indeed to
have hung loose upon society, till a petty affair of gallantry
discovered the mine of his natural genius, though not in his purest and
richest vein. The story is told by Fontenelle, and has been related of
many others with nearly the same incidents; being the common-place of
youthful adventure. One of Corneille’s friends had introduced him to his
intended wife; and the lady, without any imputation of treachery on the
part of the supplanter, took such a fancy to him, as induced her to play
the jilt towards his introducer. Corneille moulded the embarrassment
into a comedy entitled Melite. The drama had hitherto been at a low ebb
among the French. Their tragedy was flat and languid: to comedy,
properly so called, they had no pretensions. The theatre therefore had
hitherto been little attended by persons of condition. Racine describes
the French stage when Corneille began to write, as absolutely without
order or regularity, taste or knowledge, as to what constituted the real
merits of the drama. The writers, he says, were as ignorant as the
spectators. Their subjects were extravagant and improbable; neither
manners nor characters were delineated. The diction was still more
faulty than the action; the wit was confined to the lowest puns. In
short, all the rules of art, even those of decency and propriety, were
violated. This description gives us the history of the infant drama in
all ages and countries; of Thespis in his cart, and of Gammer Gurton’s
needle.
While the French theatre was in this state of degradation, Melite
appeared. Whatever its faults might be, there was something in it like
originality of character; some indications of a comic vein, and some
ingenious combinations. The public hailed the new era with delight, and
the poet was astonished at his own success. The stage seemed all at once
to flourish and to have taken its proper station among the elegant arts
and rational amusements. On the strength of this acquisition, a new
company of actors was formed; and the successful experiment was followed
up by a series of pieces of the same kind, between the years 1632 and
1635. Imperfect as they were, we may trace in them some sketches of new
character, which the more methodical and practised dramatists of a later
period filled out with more skill and higher colouring, but with little
claim to invention.
We owe to Corneille one of the most entertaining personages in modern
comedy,—the Chambermaid; who has succeeded to the office of the Nurse in
the elder drama. This change was partly, perhaps principally, produced
by that great revolution in the modern stage which introduced women upon
the boards. While female characters were consigned to male
representatives, the poet took every opportunity of throwing his
heroines into breeches to slur over the awkwardness of the boys; and the
subordinate instruments of the plot were duly enveloped in the hoods and
flannels of decrepit age, while the hard features of the adult male were
easily manufactured into wrinkles. But when once real women were brought
forward, they had their own interests to manage as well as those of the
author; and the artificial disguise of their persons would ill have
accorded with those speculations, of which personal beauty formed a main
ingredient. It was their business therefore, while they conducted the
love-affairs of their mistresses, to interweave an underplot between
themselves and the valets. Less attractive perhaps than their young
ladies in outward show, they obtained compensation in the piquancy of
wit intrusted to their delivery, and thus divided the interest among the
spectators in no disadvantageous proportion.
Corneille was also the first who brought the dialogue of polished
society upon the French stage, which had hitherto been confined to the
vulgarities of low comedy or the bombast of inflated tragedy. But it is
time to rescue him from the obscurity of his own early compositions.
His first tragedy was Medea, copied principally from the faulty model of
Seneca, whose prolix declamation, thus early adopted, probably exercised
an unfavourable influence on the after fortunes of the national tragedy.
His nephew Fontenelle, indeed, says that “he took flight at once, and
soared instantly to the sublime.” But this sentence has not been
confirmed by more impartial critics. The Continent has condemned the
witchcraft; but we are bound to uphold it in defence of our own
Shakspeare, who has clothed his hags with more picturesque and awful
attributes than the magnificent and imperial sorceries of Corneille,
Seneca, or even Euripides himself have exhibited.
The year 1637 was the era of the production of the Cid; the play not
only of France, but of Europe, for it has been translated into most
languages. But a sudden reputation involves its possessor in many
vexations. Poets were in those days compelled to be courtiers, if they
would prosper. At the Hotel de Rambouillet, an assembly was held,
consisting of courtly and fashionable authors, who wasted their time in
composing _thèses d’amour_ and other fopperies of romantic literature.
Over this society, as well as over the politics of Europe, Richelieu
chose to be umpire. He was also the founder of the French Academy, and
the avowed patron of its members. With this hold upon their good
manners, he kept four authors in pay, for the purpose of filling out his
own dramatic and poetical skeletons. Corneille consented to be one of
the party, and was so ignorant of the ways of courts as to fancy that he
might exercise his judgment independently. He was even simple enough to
be astonished that the well-meant liberty of making some alterations in
the plot of one of these ministerial dramas should give offence: but as
he was too proud to surrender his own judgment, or to risk future
affronts from the revulsion of the Cardinal’s goodwill, he withdrew from
the palace, and abandoned himself to uncontrolled intercourse with the
Muse. Richelieu therefore became the principal instigator of a cabal,
which the envy of the wits sufficiently inclined them to form. Under
such auspices, they entered into a conspiracy against the uncourtly
offender. The prime minister could not endure that the successful
intriguer in political life should be taxed with failure in unravelling
the intricacies of a fictitious interest: he therefore looked at the
real defects in a performance approved by the public with a jaundiced
eye, and with but a half-opened one at its unrivalled beauties. As
universal patron, he had settled a pension on the poet; but he levelled
insidious and clandestine shafts against his fame. The “irritable tribe”
willingly ran to arms, with Scuderi at their head, who wrote hostile
remarks on the Cid, addressed to the Academy in the form of an appeal,
in the course of which he quaintly termed himself _the evangelist of
truth_. According to the statutes of the Academy, that august body could
not take upon itself the decision, without the consent of both parties.
Corneille, however indignant professionally, was under too many personal
obligations to the Cardinal to spurn the authority of a tribunal erected
by him. He therefore gave his assent to the reference, but in terms of
considerable haughtiness. The Academy drew up a critique, to which they
gave the modest title of “Sentiments of the French Academy on the
tragicomedy of the Cid.” In the execution of this delicate commission,
the learned members contrived to reconcile the demands of sound taste
and criticism with the tact and suppleness of courtiers. They gratified
the splenetic temper of the minister by censures, the justice of which
could not be gainsayed: but they praised the beauties of the great
scenes with a nobleness of panegyric, which took from the author all
right to complain of partiality. This solemn judgment was given after
five months of debate and negotiation between the Cardinal and the
academicians, who dreaded official frowns if they wholly acquitted, and
public disgust if they condemned against evidence. If it be considered
that this infant institution owed its birth to Richelieu, and depended
on him for its future growth, the verdict is highly honourable to the
individuals, and creditable to the literary character, even when
disadvantageously circumstanced by being entangled in the trammels of a
court.
Our limits will not permit the examination of insulated passages, nor
even individual tragedies: but independently of the splendour of the
execution, other circumstances attending the career of the _Cid_
produced a strong impression on the remainder of Corneille’s dramatic
life. The Cid was taken from two Spanish plays, and several passages
were actual translations; but not in sufficient number to invalidate the
author’s claim to a large share of originality. To set that question at
rest, in the editions published by himself, he gave the passages taken
from the Spanish at the bottom of the page. Yet it was objected by his
rivals and libellers, that the author of Medea and the Cid could only
imitate or translate: that he had stolen the first of his tragedies from
Seneca, the second from Guillen de Castro: a clever borrower, without a
spark of tragic genius or invention! Unluckily for this bold assertion,
among other European languages, this French play was translated into
Spanish; and the nation, whence the piece was professedly derived,
thought it worth while to recover it in the dress given to it by an
illustrious foreigner. Against such unfounded censures it will be
sufficient to quote the authority of Boileau, who speaks of the Cid as a
_merveille naissante_.
Having achieved his first great success on a Spanish subject and after a
Spanish model, it is not improbable that, had all gone smoothly, he
would have continued to draw his resources from the same fountain. But
vexation and resentment, usually at variance with good policy, now
conspired with it; and put him on seeking a new road to fame. He had, as
it should seem, intended to transplant a succession of Spanish histories
and fables, with all the entanglement of Spanish contrivance in the
weaving of plots. But in weighing the objections started against his
piece, he found that they applied rather to his Spanish originals than
to his own adaptation; he therefore determined to cut the knot of future
controversy, by adopting the severity of the classical model. To this we
owe Horace, Pompée, Cinna, and Polyeucte;—masterpieces which his more
polished but more feeble successors in vain aspired to emulate. Thus did
this eager war of criticism produce a crisis in the dramatic history of
France. Its stage would probably, but for this, have been heroic and
chivalrous, not, as it is, Roman, and after the manner of the ancients.
It might even have rivalled our own in tragicomedy;—that monster
stigmatized by Voltaire as the offspring of barbarism, although, and
perhaps because, he “pilfered snug” from it; and might hope, by
undervaluing the article, to escape detection as the purloiner.
At the end of three years, devoted to the study of the ancients, the
injured author avenged the injuries levelled against the Cid by the
production of Horace. Although the impetuous poet had not yet subdued
his genius to the trammels of just arrangement, unity of action, and the
other severe rules of the classic drama, such was the originality of
conception, the force of character, and grandeur of sentiment displayed
in this performance, that new views of excellence were opened to the
astonished audience. Voltaire, with all the pedantry of mechanical
criticism, objects to Horace, that in it there are three tragedies
instead of one. Whatever may be the force of this objection with the
French, it will weigh little with a people inured to the irregular
sublimity and unfettered splendour of Shakspeare. Cinna redeemed many of
the errors of Horace, and improved upon its various merits. The
suffrages of the public were divided between it and Polyeucte, as the
author’s masterpiece. But Dryden considered the Cid and China as his two
best plays; and speaks of Polyeucte sarcastically, as “in matters of
religion, as solemn as the long stops upon our organs.”
Before the performance of Polyeucte, Corneille read it at the Hotel de
Rambouillet. That tribunal affected sovereign authority in affairs of
wit. Even the reputation of the author, now in all its splendour, could
no further command the civilities of the critics, than to “damn with
faint praise.” Some days afterwards, Voiture called on Corneille, and,
after much complimentary circumlocution, took the liberty of just
hinting, that its success was not likely to answer expectation: above
all, that its _Christian spirit_ was calculated to give offence.
Corneille, much alarmed, was about to withdraw it from rehearsal: the
persuasions of an inferior player spirited him up to risk the
consequences of avowing himself a Christian in an infidel court. Thus,
probably, a hanger-on of the theatre had the honour of preventing a
repetition of that malice, by which rival wits attempted to arrest the
career of the Cid.
The winter of 1641–42 produced La Mort de Pompée and Le Menteur.
The opening of La Mort de Pompée has been frequently commended for
grandeur of conception and originality; and the skill cannot be denied,
by which the enunciation of the circumstances producing the interest of
the piece is rendered consistent with the dignity of the subject and
characters. The same praise cannot be conceded to the inflation of the
dialogue and the intolerable length of the speeches. But the concluding
speech of Cæsar to the second scene of the third act, and the whole of
the fourth act, notwithstanding the censure of Dryden, both on this
tragedy and the Cinna, that “they are not so properly to be called
plays, as long discourses of reason and state,” may be selected as
favourable specimens of the style and power of French dialogue.
A short notice will be sufficient for the comedy of Corneille; and the
production of Le Menteur, his most celebrated piece, affords the fittest
opportunity. As the Cid was imitated from Guillen de Castro, Lopé de
Vega furnished the groundwork of Le Menteur. It is considered to be the
first genuine example of the comedy of intrigue and character in France;
for Melite was at best but a mere attempt. Before this time, there was
no unsophisticated nature, no conventional manners, no truth of
delineation. Mirth was raised by extravagance, and curiosity by
incidents bordering on the impossible. Corneille appealed to nature and
to truth: however imperfect the execution, in comparison with that of
his next successor in comedy, he proved that he knew how Thalia as well
as Melpomene ought to be drawn. The greatest compliment, perhaps, that
can be paid to his genius is, that he pointed out the road both to
Racine and Moliere.
The year 1645 gave birth to Rodogune, in which, having before touched
the springs of wonder and pity, he worked on his audience by the more
powerful engine of terror. His subsequent pieces were below his former
level, and betrayed, not so much the decay of genius from the growing
infirmities of nature, as that fatal mistake in _writing themselves
out_, so common to authors in the province of imagination. The cold
reception of Pertharite disgusted the poet, and he renounced the stage
in a splenetic little preface to the printed play, complaining that “he
had been an author too long to be a fashionable one.” The turmoil of the
court and the gaiety of the theatre had not effaced his early sentiments
of piety and religion; he therefore betook himself to the translation of
Kempis’s Imitation of Jesus Christ, which he performed very finely. This
gave rise to a ridiculous and unfounded story, that the first book was
imposed on him as a penance; the second, by the Queen’s command; and the
third, by the terrors of conscience during a severe illness.
As the mortification of failure faded away with time, his passion for
the theatre revived. Notwithstanding some misgivings, he was encouraged
by Fouquet Destrin in 1659, after six years’ absence. He began again,
with more benefit to his popularity than to his true fame, with
Œdipus;—the noblest and most pathetic subject, most nobly treated, of
ancient tragedy. La Toison d’Or came next; a spectacle got up for the
King’s marriage;—a species of piece in which the poet always plays a
subordinate part to the scene-painter and the dressmaker. Sertorius is
to be noticed as having given scope to the fine declamatory powers of
Mademoiselle Clairon, the Siddons of the French stage.
Berenice rose to an unenviable fame, principally in consequence of the
following circumstances. Henrietta of England, then Duchess of Orleans,
whom Fontenelle had the good manners to compliment as “a princess who
had a high relish for works of genius, and had been able to call forth
some sparks of it _even in a barbarous country_,” privately set
Corneille and Racine to work on the same subject. Their pieces were
represented at the same time; and the struggle between a worn-out
veteran and a champion in the vigour of youth, terminated, as might have
been expected, in the victory of the latter. This literary contest was
known by the title of “the duel.” The experiment proves the love of
mischief, but says little for the good taste or benevolence of the royal
instigator. Pulchérie and Surena were his last productions: both better
than Berenice, with sufficient merit to render the close of his literary
life respectable, if not splendid.
The personal history of Corneille furnishes little anecdote; we have
only further to state, that he was chosen a Member of the French Academy
in 1647, and was Dean of that society at the time of his death, which
took place in 1684, in his seventy-ninth year.
He is said to have been a man of a devout and melancholy cast. He spoke
little in company, even on subjects which his pursuits had made his own.
The author of ‘Melanges d’Histoire et du Literature,’ a work published
under the name of Vigneut Marville, but really written by the Pêre
Bonaventure d’Ayounne, a Cistercian monk of Paris, says, that “the first
time he saw him, he took him for a tradesman of Rouen. His conversation
was so heavy as to be extremely tiresome if it lasted long.” But
whatever might be the outward coarseness or dulness of the man, he was
mild of temper in his family, a good husband, parent, and friend. His
worth and integrity were unquestionable; nor had his connexion with the
court, of which he was not fond, taught him that art of cringing so
necessary to fortune and promotion. Hence his reputation was almost the
only advantage accruing to him from his productions. His works have been
often printed, and consist of more than thirty plays, tragedies and
comedies.
Those who wish for a more detailed account of this great writer will
find it in his life, by Fontenelle, in Voltaire’s several prefaces, in
Racine’s Speech to the French Academy on the admission of his brother
Thomas, and in Bayle. Many scattered remarks on him may also be found
throughout Dryden’s critical prefaces.
[Illustration: Tragic Masks, from Pompeii.]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by W. T. Fry._