specimen of his kind. Some of his friends
remonstrated with him, and tried to rouse him from his sluggishness in
society. He always replied, "I am not the less Pierre Corneille."

La Bruyere says of him, "He is simple and timid; tiresome in
conversation--using one word for another--he knows not how to recite his
own verses." It is strange that he came to Paris, for he loved the
country better, and many attribute the remove to his brother, who was
also winning success as a dramatist.

It had been well if after this Corneille had been content to write no
more plays, for everyone he now produced only proved that his genius
had decayed. The old cunning was gone. A young rival sprung up, the
graceful Racine, and for awhile the old favorite was forgotten, or
laughed at.

Racine took a line from one of his pieces and used it in such a manner
as to excite laughter. Corneille said: "It ill becomes a young man to
make game of other people's verses." Unfortunately he was tempted into a
duel with Racine. The latter triumphed as a writer for the time, and
Corneille stopped his pen, as he should have done a long time before.
But often he had the pleasure of seeing some of his best pieces enacted
upon the stage, and they always excited great enthusiasm. He also knew
that the refined and critical loved his best plays--the better the more
they read them.

The conduct of the poet through his whole life was, in the main, such
as to excite great admiration in after generations. He was no sycophant
in that age of fawning courtiers. He was simple and manly. He was always
melancholy and cared little for the vanities of life. Though poor in
early life, he cared but little about money. The king gave him a pension
of two thousand francs, which at that time was a good income. He was
generous and died utterly poor. One evening when age had bowed his form
he entered a Paris theater. The great _Conde_ was present, and prince
and people as one man rose in honor of the great dramatist. He died in
his seventy-ninth year, and Racine pronounced a high eulogy upon him,
before the academy. Such was its beauty that the king caused it to be
recited before him. In it he extolled the genius of the man who had at
one time been his rival, and he taught his children to revere his
memory.

In France, much more in Paris, the name of Corneille is to-day half
sacred. The house he lived and died in has many visitors, and to his
tomb many a pilgrim comes. And it