a piece written only for
children, as it was performed by the young scholars of St. Cyr, and
received it so coldly that Racine was astonished and disgusted.[A]
He earnestly requested Boileau's opinion, who maintained it was his
capital work. "I understand these things," said he, "and the public _y
reviendra_." The prediction was a true one, but it was accomplished too
late, long after the death of the author; it was never appreciated till it
was publicly performed.

[Footnote A: They were written at the request of Madame de Maintenon, for
the pupils of her favourite establishment at St. Cyr; she was anxious that
they should be perfect in declamation, and she tried them with the poet's
_Andromaque_, but they recited it with so much passion and feeling that
they alarmed their patroness, who told Racine "it was so well done that
she would be careful they should never act that drama again," and urged
him to write plays on sacred subjects expressly for their use. He had not
written a play for upwards of ten years; he now composed his _Esther_,
making that character a flattering reflection of Maintenon's career.--ED.]

Boileau and Racine derived little or no profit from the booksellers.
Boileau particularly, though fond of money, was so delicate on this point
that he gave all his works away. It was this that made him so bold in
railing at those authors _qui mettent leur Apollon aux gages d'un
libraire_, and he declared that he had only inserted these verses,

Je sai qu'un noble esprit peut sans honte et sans crime
Tirer de son travail un tribut legitime,

to console Racine, who had received some profits from the printing of his
tragedies. Those profits were, however, inconsiderable; the truth is, the
king remunerated the poets.

Racine's first royal mark of favour was an order signed by Colbert for six
hundred livres, _to give him the means of continuing his studies of the
belles-lettres_. He received, by an account found among his papers, above
forty thousand livres from the cassette of the king, by the hand of the
first valet-de-chambre. Besides these gifts, Racine had a pension of four
thousand livres as historiographer, and another pension as a man of
letters.

Which is the more honourable? to crouch for a salary brought by the hand
of the first valet-de-chambre, or to exult in the tribute offered by the
public to an author?

* * * * *

OF STERNE.

Cervantes is immortal--Rab