an's censure. The
quarrel of the _Cid_, in which Mairet and Scudery took an embittered
part, was encouraged by Richelieu. He pressed the Academy, of which
Corneille was not a member until 1647, for a judgment upon the piece,
and at length he was partially satisfied by a pronouncement, drawn
up by Chapelain, which condemned its ethics and its violation of
dramatic proprieties, yet could not deny the author's genius.
Corneille was deeply discouraged, but prepared himself for future
victories.

Until 1640 he remained silent. In that illustrious year _Horace_ and
_Cinna_ were presented in rapid succession. From Spain, the land of
chivalric honour, the dramatist passed to antique Rome, the mother
and the nurse of heroic virtue. In the _Cid_ the dramatic conflict
is between love and filial duty; in _Horace_ it is between love, on
the one side, united with the domestic affections, and, on the other,
devotion to country. In both plays the inviolable will is arbiter
of the contention. The story of the Horatii and Curiatii, as told
by Livy, is complicated by the union of the families through love
and marriage; but patriotism requires the sacrifice of the tenderer
passions. It must be admitted that the interest declines after the
third act, and that our sympathies are alienated from the younger
Horace by the murder of a sister; we are required to feel that a private
crime, the offence of overstrained patriotism, is obliterated in the
glory of the country. In _Cinna_ we pass from regal to imperial Rome;
the commonwealth is represented by Augustus; a great monarchy is
glorified, but in the noblest way, for the highest act of empire is
to wield supreme power under the sway of magnanimity, and to remain
the master of all self-regarding passions. The conspiracy of Cinna
is discovered; it is a prince's part to pardon, and Augustus rises
to a higher empire than that of Rome by the conquest of himself. In
both _Horace_ and _Cinna_ there are at times a certain overstrain,
an excess of emphasis, a resolve to pursue heroism to all extremities;
but the conception of moral grandeur is genuine and lofty; the error
of Corneille was the error of an imagination enamoured of the sublime.

But are there not heroisms of religion as pure as those of patriotism?
And must we go back to pagan days to find the highest virtue? Or can
divine grace effect no miracles above those of the natural will?
Corneille gives his answer to such a challenge in the tra