or at the beginning of 1640, appeared Horace with a dedication to
Richelieu. The good offices of Madame de Combalet, to whom
the Cid had been dedicated, and perhaps the satisfaction of the
cardinal’s literary jealousy, had healed what breach there may
have been, and indeed the poet was in no position to quarrel
with his patron. Richelieu not only allowed him 500 crowns a
year, but soon afterwards, it is said, though on no certain
authority, employed his omnipotence in reconciling the father
of the poet’s mistress, Marie de Lampérière, to the marriage
of the lovers (1640). In this year also Cinna appeared. A
brief but very serious illness attacked him, and the death of his
father the year before had increased his family anxieties by
leaving his mother in very indifferent circumstances. It has,
however, been recently denied that he himself was at any time
poor, as older traditions asserted.
In the following year Corneille figured as a contributor to the Guirlande de Julie, a famous album which the marquis de Montausier, assisted by all the literary men of the day, offered to his lady-love, Julie d’Angennes. 1643 was, according to the latest authorities (for Cornelian dates have often been altered), a very great year in the dramatist’s life. Therein appeared Polyeucte, the memorable comedy of Le Menteur, which though adapted from the Spanish stood in relation to French comedy very much as Le Cid, which owed less to Spain, stood to French tragedy; its less popular and far less good Suite,—and perhaps La Mort de Pompée. Rodogune (1644) was a brilliant success; Théodore (1645), a tragedy on a somewhat perilous subject, was the first of Corneille’s plays which was definitely damned. Some amends may have been made to him by the commission which he received next year to write verses for the Triomphes poétiques de Louis XIII. Soon after (22nd of January 1647) the Academy at last (it had twice rejected him on frivolous pleas) admitted the greatest of living French writers. Héraclius (1646), Andromède (1650), a spectacle-opera rather than a play, Don Sanche d’Aragon (1650) and Nicomède (1651) were the products of the next few years’ work; but in 1652 Pertharite was received with decided disfavour, and the poet in disgust resolved, like Ben Jonson, to quit the loathed stage. In this resolution he persevered for six years, during which he worked at a verse translation of the Imitation of Christ (finished in 1656), at his three Discourses on Dramatic Poetry, and at the Examens which are usually printed at the end of his plays. In 1659 Fouquet, the Maecenas of the time, persuaded him to alter his resolve, and Œdipe, a play which became a great favourite with Louis XIV., was the result. It was followed by La Toison d’or (1660), Sertorius (1662) and Sophonisbe (1663). In this latter year Corneille (who had at last removed his residence from Rouen to Paris in 1662) was included among the list of men of letters pensioned at the proposal of Colbert. He received 2000 livres. Othon (1664), Agésilas (1666), Attila (1667), and Tite et Bérénice (1670), were generally considered as proofs of failing powers,—the cruel quatrain of Boileau—
| “Après l’Agésilas |
in the case of these two plays, and the unlucky comparison with Racine in the Bérénice, telling heavily against them. In 1665 and 1670 some versifications of devotional works addressed to the Virgin had appeared. The part which Corneille took in Psyché (1671), Molière and P. Quinault being his coadjutors, showed signs of renewed vigour; but Pulchérie (1672) and Suréna (1674) were allowed even by his faithful followers to be failures. He lived for ten years after the appearance of Suréna, but was almost silent save for the publication, in 1676, of some beautiful verses thanking Louis XIV. for ordering the revival of his plays. He died at his house in the rue d’Argenteuil on the 30th of September 1684. For nine years (1674–1681), and again in 1683, his pension had, for what reason is unknown, been suspended. It used to be said that he was in great straits, and the story went (though, as far as Boileau is concerned, it has been invalidated), that at last Boileau, hearing of this, went to the king and offered to resign his own pension if there were not money enough for Corneille, and that Louis sent the aged poet two hundred pistoles. He might, had it actually been so, have said, with a great English poet in like case, “I have no time to spend them.” Two days afterwards he was dead.
Corneille was buried in the church of St Roch, where no monument marked his grave until 1821. He had six children, of whom four survived him. Pierre, the eldest son, a cavalry officer who died before his father, left posterity in whom the name has continued; Marie, the eldest daughter, was twice married, and by her second husband, M. de Farcy, became the ancestress of Charlotte Corday. Repeated efforts have been made for the benefit of the poet’s descendants, Voltaire, Charles X. and the Comédie française having all borne part therein.
The portraits of Corneille (the best and most trustworthy of which is from the burin of M. Lasne, an engraver of Caen), represent him as a man of serious, almost of stern countenance, and this agrees well enough with such descriptions as we have of his appearance, and with the idea of him which we should form from his writings and conduct. His nephew Fontenelle admits that his general address and manner were by no means prepossessing. Others use stronger language, and it seems to be confessed that either from shyness, from pride, or from physical defects of utterance, probably from all three combined, he did not attract strangers. Racine is said to have assured his son that Corneille made verses “cent fois plus beaux” than his own, but that his own greater popularity was owing to the fact that he took some trouble to make himself personally agreeable. Almost all the anecdotes which have been recorded concerning him testify to a rugged and somewhat unamiable self-contentment. “Je n’ai pas le mérite de ce pays-ci,” he said of the court, “Je n’en suis pas moins Pierre Corneille,” he is said to have replied to his friends as often as they dared to suggest certain shortcomings in his behaviour, manner or speech, “Je suis saoul de gloire et affamé d’argent” was his reply to the compliments of Boileau. Yet tradition is unanimous as to his affection for his family, and as to the harmony in which he lived with his brother Thomas who had married Marguerite de Lampérière, younger sister of Marie, and whose household both at Rouen and at Paris was practically one with that of his brother. No story about Corneille is better known than that which tells of the trap between the two houses, and how Pierre, whose facility of versification was much inferior to his brother’s, would lift it when hard bestead, and call out “Sans-souci, une rime!” Notwithstanding this domestic felicity, an impression is left on the reader of Corneille’s biographies that he was by no means a happy man. Melancholy of temperament will partially explain this, but there were other reasons. He appears to have been quite free from envy properly so called, and to have been always ready to acknowledge the excellences of his contemporaries. But, as was the case with a very different man—Goldsmith—praise bestowed on others always made him uncomfortable unless it were accompanied by praise bestowed on himself. As Guizot has excellently said, “Sa jalousie fut celle d’un enfant qui veut qu’un sourire le rassure contre les caresses que reçoit son frère.”
Although his actual poverty has been recently denied, he cannot have been affluent. His pensions covered but a small part of his long life and were most irregularly paid. He was no “dedicator,” and the occasional presents of rich men, such as Montauron (who gave him a thousand, others say two hundred, pistoles for the dedication of Cinna), and Fouquet (who commissioned Œdipe), were few and far between, though they have exposed him to reflections which show great ignorance of the manners of the age. Of his professional earnings, the small sum for which, as we have seen, he gave up his offices, and the expression of Fontenelle that he practised “sans goût et sans succès,” are sufficient proof. His patrimony and his wife’s dowry must both have been trifling. On the other hand, it was during the early and middle part of his career impossible, and during the later part very difficult, for a dramatist to live decently by his pieces. It was not till the middle of the century that the custom
