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This, surely, is a sufficient answer to the feudal gabble of a man, who is every day lessening that splendour of character which once illuminated the kingdom, then dazzled, and afterwards inflamed it; and for whom it will be happy if the nation shall, at last, dismiss him to nameless obscurity, with that equipoise of blame and praise which Corneille allows to Richelieu, a man who, I think, had much of his merit, and many of his faults: "Chacun parle
The taste of the age of Louis XV. affected to admire Corneille to the disadvantage of all other rivals, and Voltaire was not far from blaming Vauvenargues for his "extreme predilection" for Racine.
Janus is a fable signifying criticism and the symbol of Genius. The Almighty alone is triform. What raises Moliere and Corneille above the rest of us but the faculty of saying one thing with an Alceste or an Octave, and another with a Philinte or a Cinna? Rousseau wrote a letter against dueling in the Nouvelle Heloise, and another in favor of it.
Our own literary monuments must rest on other ground. "This ground is not the ground of Corneille or Racine, nor is it that of Shakespeare; it is our own; but Shakespeare's system, as it appears to me, may furnish the plans according to which genius ought now to work.
Of Corneille, who from the imitation of Spanish comedies acquired a name before he was known as a tragic author, only one piece keeps possession of the stage, Le Menteur, from Lope de Vega; and even this evinces, in our opinion, no comic talent. The poet, accustomed to stilts, moves awkwardly in a species of the drama the first requisites of which are ease and sweetness.
He was surprised by the pleasant relations existing between M. Watelet and the Abbe Corneille: he was no less surprised to find a priest who was a democrat, and a revolutionary who was an aristocrat: it upset all his preconceived ideas. He tried vainly to classify them in any social category: for he always had to classify people before he could begin to understand them.
Their names were: Fathers Jesuits Enemond Massé, Anne de Noüe and Jean de Brébeuf, Fathers Récollets Joseph de la Roche d'Aillon, and Joseph Le Caron, Brothers Jesuits François Charton and Gilbert Burel, and the Récollet Friars Gervais Mohier, Jean Gaufestre and Pierre Langoissieux. Among the clerks who returned home were Corneille de Vendremur, Thierry-Desdames, Eustache Boullé, and Destouches.
In tacit disdain for the work that had been entrusted to him, Corneille had abandoned Richelieu's pieces; he had retired to Rouen; far away from the court, he had only his successes to set against the perfidious insinuations of his rivals. The triumph of the Cid seemed to the resentful spirit of a neglected and irritated patron a sort of insult.
The Blue made use of the short, snappy English style of text-book, while Harvard pinned its faith to the more deliberate German seminar system. After the contest captains for the following year were elected. Yale chose Bridgman, who did splendid work on Corneille and the poets of the Pléiade, while Harvard's choice fell on Butterworth, probably the best intercollegiate expert on Cervantes.
Two young men, wrapped in cloaks, thus thrown one against the other, recognized each other by the light of a torch placed at the foot of the statue of Henri IV, which had been lately raised. "What! still at Paris?" said Corneille to Milton. "I thought you were in London." "Hear you the people, Monsieur? Do you hear them? What is this ominous chorus, 'Les rois sont passes'?"
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