low out without swerving and without
suffering themselves to be shackled by the notions of a morality which
is still far from fixed and often in conflict with the interests and
obligations of parties, thus remaining perfectly of his own time and his
own country, all the while that he is describing Greeks, or Romans, or
Spaniards.

[Illustration: Corneille reading to Louis XIV.----642]

There is no pleasure in tracing the decadence of a great genius.
Corneille wrote for a long while without success, attributing his
repeated rebuffs to his old age, the influence of fashion, the capricious
taste of the generation for young people; he thought himself neglected,
appealing to the king himself, who had ordered _Cinna_ and _Pompee_ to be
played at court:--

"Go on; the latest born have naught degenerate,
Naught have they which would stamp them illegitimate
They, miserable fate! were smothered at the birth,
And one kind glance of yours would bring them back to earth;
The people and the court, I grant you, cry them down;
I have, or else they think I have, too feeble grown;
I've written far too long to write so well again;
The wrinkles on the brow reach even to the brain;
But counter to this vote how many could I raise,
If to my latest works you should vouchsafe your praise!
How soon so kind a grace, so potent to constrain,
Would court and people both win back to me again!
'So Sophocles of yore at Athens was the rage,
So boiled his ancient blood at five-score years of age,'
Would they to Envy cry, 'when OEdipus at bay
Before his judges stood, and bore the votes away.'"

Posterity has done for Corneille more than Louis XIV. could have done: it
has left in oblivion _Agesilas, Attila, Titus,_ and _Pulcherie;_ it
preserved the memory of the triumphs only. The poet was accustomed to
say with a smile, when he was reproached with his slowness and emptiness
in conversation, "I am Peter Corneille all the same." The world has
passed similar judgment on his works; in spite of the rebuffs of his
latter years, he has remained "the great Corneille."

When he died, in 1684, Racine, elected by the Academy in 1673, found
himself on the point of becoming its director; he claimed the honor of
presiding at the obsequies of Corneille. The latter had not been
admitted to the body until 1641, after having undergone two rebuffs.
Corneille had died in the night. Th