th Racine, and as
to-day, everyone who shows signs of rising is stoned with Corneille,
Racine and Voltaire. These tactics, as will be seen, are well-worn;
but they must be effective as they are still in use. However, the poor
devil of a great man still breathed. Here we cannot help but admire
the way in which Scuderi, the bully of this tragic-comedy, forced to
the wall, blackguards and maltreats him, how pitilessly he unmasks
his classical artillery, how he shows the author of _Le Cid_ "what the
episodes should be, according to Aristotle, who tells us in the tenth
and sixteenth chapters of his _Poetics";_ how he crushes Corneille, in
the name of the same Aristotle "in the eleventh chapter of his _Art of
Poetry_, wherein we find the condemnation of _Le Cid_"; in the name
of Plato, "in the tenth book of his _Republic_"; in the name of
Marcellinus, "as may be seen in the twenty-seventh book"; in the name
of "the tragedies of Niobe and Jephthah"; in the name of the "_Ajax_
of Sophocles"; in the name of "the example of Euripides"; in the name
of "Heinsius, chapter six of the _Constitution_ of _Tragedy_; and
the younger Scaliger in his poems"; and finally, in the name of the
Canonists and Jurisconsults, under the title "Nuptials." The first
arguments were addressed to the Academy, the last one was aimed at
the Cardinal. After the pin-pricks the blow with a club. A judge was
needed to decide the question. Chapelain gave judgment. Corneille saw
that he was doomed; the lion was muzzled, or, as was said at the time,
the crow (_Corneille_) was plucked. Now comes the painful side of this
grotesque performance: after he had been thus quenched at his first
flash, this genius, thoroughly modern, fed upon the Middle Ages and
Spain, being compelled to lie to himself and to hark back to ancient
times, drew for us that Castilian Rome, which is sublime beyond
question, but in which, except perhaps in _Nicomede_, which was so
ridiculed by the eighteenth century for its dignified and simple
colouring, we find neither the real Rome nor the true Corneille.

Racine was treated to the same persecution, but did not make the same
resistance. Neither in his genius nor in his character was there any
of Corneille's lofty asperity. He submitted in silence and sacrificed
to the scorn of his time his enchanting elegy of _Esther_, his
magnificent epic, _Athalie_. So that we can but believe that, if he
had not been paralyzed as he was by the prejudices of