her the castle and town of Asolo for life, and there in the midst of a learned and brilliant little court, of which Cardinal Bembo (q.v.) was a shining light, she spent the rest of her days in idyllic peace. She died in July 1510. Titian’s famous portrait of her is in the Uffizi gallery in Florence.
Bibliography.—A. Centelli, Caterina Cornaro e il suo regno (Venice, 1892); S. Romanin, Storia documentata di Venezia, vol. iv. (Venice, 1855), and his Lezioni di storia Veneta (Florence, 1875); L. de Mas Latrie, Histoire de l’île de Chypre (Paris, 1852–1861); and Horatio Brown’s essay in his Studies in Venetian History (London, 1907), which gives the best sketch of the queen’s career and a list of authorities. (L. V.*)
CORNARO, LUIGI (1467–1566), a Venetian nobleman, famous for his treatises on a temperate life. In his youth he lived freely,
but after a severe illness at the age of forty, he began under
medical advice gradually to reduce his diet. For some time he
restricted himself to a daily allowance of 12 oz. of solid food and
14 oz. of wine; later in life he reduced still further his bill of
fare, and found he could support his life and strength with no
more solid meat than an egg a day. At the age of eighty-three
he wrote his treatise on The Sure and Certain Method of Attaining
a Long and Healthful Life, the English translation of which went
through numerous editions; and this was followed by three
others on the same subject, composed at the ages of eighty-six,
ninety-one and ninety-five respectively. The first three were
published at Padua in 1558. They are written, says Addison
(Spectator, No. 195), “with such a spirit of cheerfulness, religion
and good sense, as are the natural concomitants of temperance
and sobriety.” He died at Padua at the age of ninety-eight.
CORNBRASH, in geology, the name applied to the uppermost
member of the Bathonian stage of the Jurassic formation in
England. It is an old English agricultural name applied in
Wiltshire to a variety of loose rubble or “brash” which, in that
part of the country, forms a good soil for growing corn. The
name was adopted by William Smith for a thin band of shelly
limestone which, in the south of England, breaks up in the
manner indicated. Although only a thin group of rocks (10-25
ft.), it is remarkably persistent; it may be traced from Weymouth
to the Yorkshire coast, but in north Lincolnshire it is very thin,
and probably dies out in the neighbourhood of the Humber.
It appears again, however, as a thin bed in Gristhorpe Bay,
Cayton Bay, Wheatcroft, Newton Dale and Langdale. In the
inland exposures in Yorkshire it is difficult to follow on account
of its thinness, and the fact that it passes up into dark shales
in many places—the so-called “clays of the Cornbrash,” with Avicula echinata.
The Cornbrash is a very fossiliferous formation; the fauna indicates a transition from the Lower to the Middle Oolites, though it is probably more nearly related to that of the beds above than to those below. Good localities for fossils are Radipole near Weymouth, Closworth, Wincanton, Trowbridge, Cirencester, Witney, Peterborough and Sudbrook Park near Lincoln. A few of the important fossils are: Waldheimia lagenalis, Pecten levis, Avicula echinata, Ostrea flabelloides, Myacites decurtatus, Echinobrissus clunicularis; Macrocephalites macrocephalus is abundant in the midland counties but rarer in the south; belemnites are not known. The remains of saurians (Steneosaurus) are occasionally found. The Cornbrash is of little value for building or road-making, although it is used locally; in the south of England it is not oolitic, but in Yorkshire it is a rubbly, marly, frequently ironshot oolitic limestone. In Bedfordshire it has been termed the Bedford limestone.
See Jurassic; also H. B. Woodward, “The Jurassic Rocks of Britain,” vol. iv. (1894); and C. Fox Strangways, vol. i.; both Memoirs of the Geological Survey. (J. A. H.)
CORNEILLE, PIERRE (1606–1684), French dramatist and poet, was born at Rouen, in the rue de la Pie, on the 6th of June 1606. The house, which was long preserved, was destroyed not many years ago. His father, whose Christian name was the same, was avocat du roi à la Table de Marbre du Palais, and also held the position of maître des eaux et forêts in the vicomté
(or bailliage, as some say) of Rouen. In this latter office he is
said to have shown himself a vigorous magistrate, suppressing
brigandage and plunder without regard to his personal safety.
He was ennobled in 1637 (it is said not without regard to his
son’s distinction), and the honour was renewed in favour of his
sons Pierre and Thomas in 1669, when a general repeal of the
letters of nobility recently granted had taken place. There
appears, however, to be no instance on record of the poet himself
assuming the “de” of nobility. His mother’s name was Marthe
le Pesant.
After being educated by the Jesuits of Rouen, Corneille at the age of eighteen was entered as avocat, and in 1624 took the oaths, as we are told, four years before the regular time, a dispensation having been procured. He was afterwards appointed advocate to the admiralty, and to the “waters and forests,” but both these posts must have been of small value, as we find him parting with them in 1650 for the insignificant sum of 6000 livres. In that year and the next he was procureur-syndic des États de Normandie. His first play, Mélite, was acted in 1629. It is said by B. le B. de Fontenelle (his nephew) to have been inspired by personal experiences, and was extremely popular, either because or in spite of its remarkable difference from the popular plays of the day, those of A. Hardy. In 1632 Clitandre, a tragedy, was printed (it may have been acted in 1631); in 1633 La Veuve and the Galerie du palais, in 1634 La Suivante and La Place Royale, all the last-named plays being comedies, saw the stage. In 1634 also, having been selected as the composer of a Latin elegy to Richelieu on the occasion of the cardinal visiting Rouen, he was introduced to the subject of his verses, and was soon after enrolled among the “five poets.” These officers (the others being G. Colletet, Boisrobert and C. de l’Étoile, who in no way merited the title, and J. de Rotrou, who was no unworthy yokefellow even of Corneille) had for task the more profitable than dignified occupation of working up Richelieu’s ideas into dramatic form. No one could be less suited for such work than Corneille, and he soon (it is said) incurred his employer’s displeasure by altering the plan of the third act of Les Thuileries, which had been entrusted to him.
Meanwhile the year 1635 saw the production of Médée, a grand but unequal tragedy. In the next year the singular extravaganza entitled L’Illusion comique followed, and was succeeded about the end of November by the Cid, based on the Mocedades del Cid of Guillem de Castro. The triumphant success of this, perhaps the most “epoch-making” play in all literature, the jealousy of Richelieu and the Academy, the open attacks of Georges de Scudéry and J. de Mairet and others, and the pamphlet-war which followed, are among the best-known incidents in the history of letters. The trimming verdict of the Academy, which we have in J. Chapelain’s Sentiments de l’Académie française sur la tragi-comédie du Cid (1638), when its arbitration was demanded by Richelieu, and not openly repudiated by Corneille, was virtually unimportant; but it is worth remembering that no less a writer than Georges de Scudéry, in his Observations sur le Cid (1637), gravely and apparently sincerely asserted and maintained of this great play that the subject was utterly bad, that all the rules of dramatic composition were violated, that the action was badly conducted, the versification constantly faulty, and the beauties as a rule stolen! Corneille himself was awkwardly situated in this dispute. The esprit bourru by which he was at all times distinguished, and which he now displayed in his rather arrogant Excuse à Ariste, unfitted him for controversy, and it was of vital importance to him that he should not lose the outward marks of favour which Richelieu continued to show him. Perhaps the pleasantest feature in the whole matter is the unshaken and generous admiration with which Rotrou, the only contemporary whose genius entitled him to criticise Corneille, continued to regard his friend, rival, and in some sense (though Rotrou was the younger of the two) pupil. Finding it impossible to make himself fairly heard in the matter, Corneille (who had retired from his position among the “five poets”) withdrew to Rouen and passed nearly three years in quiet there, perhaps revolving the opinions afterwards expressed in his three Discours and in the Examens of his plays, where he bows, somewhat as in the house of Rimmon, to “the rules.” In 1639,
