k assists its effect not a little. The
inveterate habit which exists in England of comparing all dramatists
with Shakespeare has been prejudicial to the fame of Corneille with us.
But he is certainly the greatest tragic dramatist of France on the
classical model, and as a fashioner of dramatic verse of a truly
poetical kind he has at his best few equals in the literature of Europe.

[Sidenote: Racine.]

The character, career, and work of Racine were curiously different from
those of Corneille. Jean Racine[238] was more than thirty years younger
than his greater rival, having been born at La Ferte Milon, at no great
distance from Soissons, in 1639. His father held an official position at
this place, but he died, as Racine's mother had previously died, in the
boy's infancy, leaving him without any fortune. His grandparents,
however, were alive, and able to take care of him, and they, with other
relatives, willingly undertook the task. He was well educated, going to
school at Beauvais, from 1650 (probably) to 1655, and then spending
three years under the care of the celebrated Port Royalists, where he
made considerable progress. A year at the College d'Harcourt, where he
should have studied law, completed his regular education; but he was
always studious, and had on the whole greater advantages of culture than
most men of letters of his time and country. For some years he led a
somewhat undecided life. His relations did their best to obtain a
benefice for him, and in other ways endeavoured to put him in the way of
a professional livelihood; but ill-luck and probably disinclination on
his part stood in the way. He wrote at least two plays at a
comparatively early age which were refused, and are not known to exist,
and he produced divers pieces of miscellaneous poetry, especially the
'Nymphe de la Seine,' which brought him to the notice of Chapelain. At
last, in 1664, he obtained a pension of six hundred livres for an ode on
the king's recovery from sickness, and the same year _La Thebaide_ was
accepted and produced. For the next thirteen years plays followed in
rapid, but not too rapid succession. Racine was the favourite of the
king, and consequently of all those who had no taste of their own, as
well as of some who had, though the best critics inclined to Corneille,
between whom and Racine rivalry was industriously fostered. The somewhat
indecent antagonism which Racine had shown towards a man who had won
renown ten year