e characteristics of this great dramatist are perhaps more uniform
than those of any writer of equal rank, and there can be little doubt
that this uniformity, which, considering the great bulk of his work,
amounts almost to monotony, was the cause of his gradual loss of
popularity. We shall not here notice the points which he has in common
with Racine, as a writer of the French classical drama. These will come
in more suitably when Racine himself has been dealt with. In Corneille
the academic criticism of the time found the fault that he rather
excited admiration than pity and terror, and it held that admiration
was 'not a tragic passion.' The criticism was clumsy, and to a great
extent futile, but it has a certain basis of truth. It is comparatively
rare for Corneille to attempt, after his earliest period, to interest
his hearers or readers in the fortunes of his characters. It is rather
in the way that they bear their fortunes, and particularly in a kind of
haughty disdain for fortune itself, that these characters impress us.
Sometimes, as in the Cleopatre of _Rodogune_, this masterful temper is
engaged on the side of evil, more frequently it is combined with amiable
or at least respectable characteristics. But there is always something
'remote and afar' about it, and the application by La Bruyere of the
famous comparison between the Greek tragedians is in the main strictly
accurate. It follows that Corneille's demand upon his hearers or readers
is a somewhat severe one, and one with which many men are neither
disposed nor able to comply. It was a greater misfortune for him than
for almost any one else that the French and not the English drama was
the Sparta which it fell to his lot to decorate. His powers were not in
reality limited. The _Menteur_ shows an excellent comic faculty, and the
strokes of irony in his serious plays have more of true humour in them
than appears in almost any other French dramatist. Had the licence of
the English stage been his, he would probably have been able to impart a
greater interest to his plays than they already possess, without
sacrificing his peculiar faculty of sublime moral portraiture, and
certainly without losing the credit of the magnificent single lines and
isolated passages which abound in his work. The friendly criticism of
Moliere on these sudden flashes is well known. 'My friend Corneille,' he
said, 'has a familiar who comes now and then and whispers in his ear the
finest v