ghest pitch in the work of
Garnier. This pitch was on the whole well maintained by Antoine de
Montchrestien, a man of a singular history and of a singular genius. The
date of his birth is not exactly known, but he was the son of an
apothecary at Falaise, and belonged to the Huguenot party. Duels and
lawsuits succeed each other in his story, and by some means or other he
was able to assume the title of Seigneur de Vasteville. In one of his
duels he killed his man, and had to fly to England. Being pardoned, he
returned to France and took to commerce. But after the death of Henri
IV. he joined a Huguenot rising, and was killed in October 1621.
Montchrestien wrote a treatise on Political Economy (he is even said to
have been the first to introduce the term into French), some poems, and
six tragedies, _Sophonisbe_, or _La Cartaginoise_, _Les Lacenes_,
_David_, _Aman_, _Hector_, and _L'Ecossaise_. Racine availed himself not
a little of _Aman_, but _L'Ecossaise_ is Montchrestien's best piece. In
it he set the example to a long line of dramatists, from Vondel to Mr.
Swinburne, who have since treated the story of Mary Queen of Scots. It
is not part of the merit of Montchrestien to have improved on the
technical defects of the Jodelle-Garnier model. His action is still
deficient, his speeches immoderately long. But his choric odes are of
great beauty, and his _tirades_, disproportionate as they are, show a
considerable advance in the power of indicating character as well as in
style and versification. Beyond this, however, the force of the model
could no further go, and some alteration was necessary. Indeed it is by
no means certain that the later plays of this class were ever acted at
all, or were anything more than closet drama.

[Sidenote: Hardy.]

[Sidenote: Minor predecessors of Corneille.]

For a not inconsiderable time the fate of French tragedy trembled in
the balance. During the first thirty years of the seventeenth century
the most prominent dramatist was Alexandre Hardy[233]. He is the first
and not the least important example in French literary history of a
dramatic author pure and simple, a playwright who was a playwright, and
nothing else. Hardy was for years attached to the regular company of
actors who had succeeded the _Confrerie_ at the Hotel de Bourgogne, and
wrote or adapted pieces for them at the tariff (it is said) of fifty
crowns a play. His fertility was immense; and he is said to have written
some hund