ed and for a long time
presided at the celebrated Monday concerts in the palace of Cardinal
Ottoboni. Corelli died possessed of a sum of 120,000 marks and a
valuable collection of pictures, the only luxury in which he had
indulged. He left both to his benefactor and friend, who, however,
generously made over the money to Corelli's relations. Corelli's
compositions are distinguished by a beautiful flow of melody and by a
masterly treatment of the accompanying parts, which he is justly said to
have liberated from the strict rules of counterpoint. Six collections of
concerti, sonatas and minor pieces for violin, with accompaniment of
other instruments, besides several concerted pieces for strings, are
authentically ascribed to this composer. The most important of these is
the XII. _Suonati a violino e violone o cimbalo_ (Rome, 1700).

CORELLI, MARIE (1864- ), English novelist, was the daughter of an
Italian father and a Scottish mother, but in infancy was adopted by
Charles Mackay (q.v.), the song-writer and journalist, whose son Eric,
at his death, became her guardian. She was sent to be educated in a
French convent with the object of training her for the musical
profession, and while still a girl composed various pieces of music. But
her journalistic connexion proved a stronger stimulus to expression, and
editors who were friends of her adopted father printed some of her early
poetry. Then she produced what was at least a clever, if not a
remarkably well written, romantic story, on the theme of a
self-revelation connecting the Christian Deity with a world force in the
form of electricity, which was published in 1886 under the title of _A
Romance of Two Worlds_. It had an immediate and large sale, which
resulted, naturally, in her devoting her inventive faculty to satisfy
the public demand for similar work. Thus she wrote in succession a
series of melodramatic romantic novels, original in some aspects of
their treatment, daring in others, but all combining a readable plot
with enough _au fond_ of what the majority demanded in ethical and
religious correctness to suit a widespread contemporary taste; these
were _Vendetta_ (1886), _Thelma_ (1887), _Ardath_ (1889), _The Soul of
Lilith_ (1892), _Barabbas_ (1893), _The Sorrows of Satan_ (1895),--the
very titles were catching,--_The Mighty Atom_ (1896),--which appealed to
all who knew enough of modern science to wish to think it wicked,--and
others, down to _The Master