mselves in mere 'humours.' It is the fault of
French literature to give the type only without differentiation. An
ill-natured critic constantly feels inclined to alter the lists of
Racine's dramatis personae, and instead of the proper names to
substitute 'a lover,' 'a mother,' 'a tyrant,' and so forth. So great an
artist and so careful a worker as Racine could not, of course, escape
giving some individuality to his creations. Hermione, Phedre, Achille,
Berenice, Athalie, are all individual enough of their class. But the
class is the class of types rather than of individuals. After long
debate this difference has been admitted by most reasonable French
critics, and they now confine themselves to the argument that the two
processes, the illustration of the universal by means of the particular,
and the indication of the particular by means of the universal, are
processes equally legitimate and equally important. The difficulty
remains that, by common consent of mankind--Frenchmen not
excluded--Hamlet, Othello, Falstaff, Rosalind, are fictitious persons
far more interesting to their fellow-creatures who are not fictitious
than any personages of the French stage. There is, moreover, a simple
test which can be applied. No one can doubt that, if Shakespeare had
chosen to adopt the style, and had accepted the censorship of a Boileau,
he could easily have written _Phedre_. It would be a bold man who should
say that Racine could, with altered circumstances but unaltered powers,
have written _Othello_.

[Sidenote: Minor Tragedians.]

The style of tragedy which was likely to be successful in France had
been pointed out so clearly by Corneille and by Racine that it could not
fail to find imitators. As usual, the weakness of the style was more
fully manifested by these imitators than its strength. The best of them
was Thomas Corneille, the younger brother of Pierre. A much more facile
versifier than his brother, he produced a large number of plays, of
which _Camma_, _Laodice_, _Ariane_, _Le Comte d'Essex_, have
considerable merit. Thomas Corneille succeeded his brother in the
Academy, and died at a great old age. He was an active journalist and
miscellaneous writer as well as a dramatist, and his principal
misfortune was that he had a brother of greater genius than himself.
Pradon, whose success against _Phedre_ so bitterly annoyed Racine, was a
dramatist of the third, or even the fourth class, though he enjoyed some
temporary popu