"These can from decay reprieve
Eyes I take a fancy to;
Make a thousand, years believe
Whatsoe'er I please of you.

"With that new, that coming race,
Who will take my word for it,
All the warrant for your face
Will be what I may have writ."

Corneille reappeared upon the boards with a tragedy called _OEdipe,_ more
admired by his contemporaries than by posterity. On the occasion of
Louis XIV.'s marriage he wrote for the king's comedians the _Toison
d'or,_ and put into the mouth of France those prophetic words:--

"My natural force abates, from long success alone;
Triumphant blooms the state, the wretched people groan
Their shrunken bodies bend beneath my high emprise;
Whilst glory gilds the throne, the subject sinks and dies."

_Sertorius_ appeared at the commencement of the year 1662. "Pray where
did Corneille learn politics and war?" asked Turenne when he saw this
piece played. "You are the true and faithful interpreter of the mind and
courage of Rome," Balzac wrote to him; "I say further, sir, you are often
her teacher, and the reformer of olden times, if they have need of
embellishment and support. In the spots where Rome is of brick, you
rebuild it of marble; where you find a gap, you fill it with a
masterpiece, and I take it that what you lend to history is always
better than what you borrow from it. . . ." "They are grander and
more Roman in his verses than in their history," said La Bruyere. "Once
only, in the Cid, Corneille had abandoned himself unreservedly to the
reality of passion; scared at what he might find in the weaknesses of the
heart, he would no longer see aught but its strength. He sought in man
that which resists and not that which yields, thus giving his times the
sublime pleasure of an enjoyment that can belong to nought but the human
soul, a cherished proof of its noble origin and its glorious destiny, the
pleasure of admiration, the appreciation of the beautiful and the great,
the enthusiasm aroused by virtue. He moves us at sight of a masterpiece,
thrills us at the sound of a noble deed, enchants us at the bare idea of
a virtue which three thousand years have forever separated from us."
(_Corneille et son temps,_ by M. Guizot.) Every other thought, every
other prepossession, are strangers to the poet; his personages represent
heroic passions which they fol