ho gave him a
thousand, others say two hundred, pistoles for the dedication of
_Cinna_), and Fouquet (who commissioned _OEdipe_), 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 gout et sans succes,"
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 of allowing the author two shares
in the profits during the first run of the piece was observed, and even
then revivals profited him nothing. Thomas Corneille himself, who to his
undoubted talents united wonderful facility, untiring industry, and
(gift valuable above all others to the playwright) an extraordinary
knack of hitting the public fancy, died, notwithstanding his simple
tastes, "as poor as Job." We know that Pierre received for two of his
later pieces two thousand livres each, and we do not know that he ever
received more.

But his reward in fame was not stinted. Corneille, unlike many of the
great writers of the world, was not driven to wait for "the next age" to
do him justice. The cabal or clique which attacked the _Cid_ had no
effect whatever on the judgment of the public. All his subsequent
masterpieces were received with the same ungrudging applause, and the
rising star of Racine, even in conjunction with the manifest inferiority
of Corneille's last five or six plays, with difficulty prevailed against
the older poet's towering reputation. The great men of his time--Conde,
Turenne, the marechal de Grammont, the knight-errant duc de Guise--were
his fervent admirers. Nor had he less justice done him by a class from
whom less justice might have been expected, the brother men of letters
whose criticisms he treated with such scant courtesy. The respectable
mediocrity of Chapelain might misapprehend him; the lesser geniuses of
Scudery and Mairet might feel alarm at his advent; the envious Claverets
and D'Aubignacs might snarl and scribble. But Balzac did him justice;
Rotrou, as we have seen, never failed in generous appreciation; Moliere
in conversation and in print recognized