Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, March 1885

Instead of assuming these (savage) tribes to be the nearest living representatives of primeval man, we should be more safe in assuming them to represent the widest departure from that earliest condition of our race which, on the theory of development, must of necessity have been associated at first with the most highly favorable conditions of external nature.

We have thus seen that, wherever we seem to lay hold of primeval savages who are supposed to represent to us the unchanged image of the primeval man, the evidence of their having been autochthonous in the places where we now find them is very weak, the proofs that they have never changed are altogether wanting; while geographical, physical, and linguistic considerations make it probable, though no more, that they originally came from more favored countries, that they were driven in the struggle for life into inhospitable climates, and that in accommodating themselves to the requirements of their new homes they gradually descended from a higher level of civilisation, indicated by their language and religion, to that low level in which we find them now. Some of them have sunk so low that, like individual members of the noblest families in Europe, they can no longer be reclaimed. Others, however, though shaken by sudden contact with the benefits and the dangers of a higher civilisation, may regain their former health and vigor, and, from having been retrogressive savages, become once more progressive in the great struggle for existence.

But if in the cases just mentioned we feel inclined to recognise the influence of degradation, and if we class such races as the Fuegians, the Eskimos, the Bushmen and Hottentots, the Papuans and brown Polynesians, as retrogressive savages, the question arises where we can hope to find specimens of the progressive savage, or rather of the natural man, who might teach us something of what man may have been before civilisation completely changed him into an artificial being, forgetful of the essential purposes of life, and who feels at home no longer in fields and forests, on rivers or mountains, but only in that enchanted castle of custom and fashion which he has erected for himself out of the unmeaning fragments of former ages?

My answer is that after we have collected the primitive tools and weapons which lie buried beneath the abodes of civilised man, our best chance of learning some of the secrets of primitive civilisation is to study the sacred hymns and the ancient legends of India, the traditions embodied in the Homeric poems, and whatever has been preserved to us of the most ancient literature of the progressive races of the world, the Italic, Celtic, Slavonic, and Teutonic races. This of course applies to the Aryan race only. The Semitic races are represented to us in their progress from a nomadic to a more or less civilised life in the Old Testament, in the earliest ballads of the Arabs, and in passages scattered in the inscriptions of Assyrians, Babylonians, and Phœnicians. China too in its ancient literature allows us an insight into the age of a nascent society, while Egypt discloses to us the most ancient of all civilisations, which can boast of a literature at a time when the very idea of writing was as yet unknown to all other nations.

It is easy to say that all this is modern. In one sense no doubt it is. The Vedic literature, the most ancient of the whole Aryan race, presupposes a succession of intellectual strata which no chronology can measure. The language of the Veda is a work of art which it must have taken generations to build up. But is it reasonable to expect anything less modern in the history of the human race? And is there not a continuity in language and thought which allows us to see even in these literary remains, call them as modern as you like, something of the first dawn of human life. French is a very modern language, but in chien we still hear the Sanskrit ṥvan; in journal we recognise the old Vedic deity Dyaus. In the same way we can go back from what is common to Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, to what was the common language of the Aryans before they broke up in different nationalities. In that common Aryan vocabulary, again, we can distinguish between what is radical and primitive and what is formal and secondary. Thus we may go back beyond all so-called historical limits to a stage of primitive thought, represented by a small number of radical concepts, and a still smaller number of formal elements. And is not that enough? Is it not more historical and more trustworthy, at all events, than all à priori speculations? and have we not at least a right to demand this from our à priori friends, that, in running their tunnel from the other end, they should take care that when it emerges into the daylight of history it should meet the tunnel which comparative philology, mythology, and theology have carefully dug out on the opposite side through the solid rock of facts? It will never do for à priori theories to run counter to à posteriori facts. It is a fact, for instance, proved by historical evidence, that fetichism represents a secondary stage in the growth of religion, and that it presupposes an earlier stage, in which the name and the concept of something divine, the predicate of every fetich, was formed. It would be fatal, therefore, to any system of à priori reasoning if it placed fetichism before that phase in the development of human thought which is represented by the first formation of divine concepts. It would be a real hysteron-proteron.

Again, it is a fact, proved by historical evidence, that all the words of the Aryan languages are derived from definite roots, expressive of definite concepts. It would therefore be fatal, again, to any system of à priori reasoning if it attempted to derive words direct from more or less inarticulate cries or imitations of cries, and not from that small number of roots which has been proved to supply all that is really wanted in explanation of all the facts of Aryan speech.

Again, it is a fact, proved by historical evidence, that most of the ancient deities of the Aryan nations have names expressive of the great powers of nature, and it would be an insult to all historical scholarship if our à priori friends were to attempt to prove once more that the worship of Zeus was derived from a general reverence felt for a gentleman of the name of Sky, or the belief in Eos from a sentimental devotion excited by a young lady of the name of Dawn. I believe it will be admitted by all honest anthropologists that the philological identification of one single word, Dyaus in the Veda and Zeus in Homer, has done more for rectifying our ideas of the true course of ancient Aryan civilisation than all the myths and customs of savages put together.

There was a time when the students of Oriental literature were inclined to claim an extravagant antiquity for the books which they had rescued from oblivion. But that tendency has now been changed into the very opposite. There may be traces of it among Chinese, sometimes among Egyptian and Accadian scholars, but wherever we have to deal with a real literature, whether in India, Persia, or Palestine, scholars are far more anxious to point out what is modern than what is ancient, whether in the Veda the Avesta, or the Old Testament. I certainly do not feel guilty of ever having claimed an excessive antiquity for the Rig-Veda. From the very first, though I placed the whole of Vedic literature before Buddhism, say the sixth century B.C. and though, owing to the changes in language, style, and thought which are clearly perceptible in different parts of Vedic literature, owing also to certain astronomical dates, I ventured to place it between 1000 and 1500 B.C., yet I have never concealed my impression that some portions of the Veda may turn out to be of far more recent origin.[23 - Rig-Veda-Sanhita, the Sacred Hymns of the Brahmans, translated by M. M., Vol. i. p. xxxix.]

But is not that sufficient? Is it not perfectly marvellous that so much that is really old, so much that carries us back more than 3,000 years, should have been preserved to us at all? Why will people ask for what is impossible? Savages they say, do not read and write, and yet they want to have trustworthy information from literary documents composed by those very savages who cannot read and write. Among the Aryan nations, I do not believe in any written books before the sixth century B.C. In China, books may have been older, papyri are older in Egypt, and clay tablets in Babylon. But even when literature began, the very last that ancient people do is to write about themselves, about their manners and customs. What we know of the manners and customs of ancient people, when they were still passing through that phase which we call progressive savagery, comes to us from strangers only. As modern travellers give us full accounts of the life of savages who cannot speak and write for themselves, our only chance of learning something about our own ancestors, before they began to write, would be from ancient travellers who were interested in these promising savages. Now it is a piece of excessive good luck that, with regard to one of the Aryan races, with regard to our own Teutonic ancestors, we possess such a book, written by a stranger who felt deeply interested in German savages, and who has told us what they were, before they could write and tell us themselves what they were. If we want to study the progressive savage, not as he ought to have been, according to à priori philosophy, nor as he might have been, according to what we see among Fuegians of the present day, but as he really was according to the best information that could be collected by the best of historians, we must, read and read again the Germania of Tacitus.

If history means the evidence of contemporary eye-witnesses, I doubt whether history will ever enable us to see further into the natural transition of barbarism into civilisation than in the Germania of Tacitus. To divide civilisation from barbarism by a sharp line is of course impossible. There are remnants of barbarism in the most advanced state of civilisation, and there are sparks of civilisation in the most distant ages of barbarism – at least of that healthy barbarism which is represented to us in the Germania, and of which we find but scanty fragments in the ancient literature of the civilising nations of the world.

Here we may see ourselves as we were not quite two thousand years ago. Here we may see from how small beginnings the highest civilisation may be reached. Here we may study the natural man as he really was, in some respects certainly a savage, but a progressive savage, as we know from his later history, and certainly without one sign of that corruption and decay which is so plainly visible in Hottentots and Papuans.

This book, the account of the site, the manners, and the inhabitants of Germany, by Tacitus, has had various fates. To every German, to every member of the Teutonic race, it has always been a kind of national charter, a picture of a golden age, adorned with all that is considered most perfect, pure, and noble in human nature; whereas French savants have often either ridiculed the work of Tacitus as a mere romance, or so interpreted his words as to turn the ancient Germans into real Hottentots.

This controversy has been carried on during several centuries. M. Guizot, for instance, in his History of Civilisation completely ignoring the distinction between retrogressive and progressive savages, tried to show that there was little to choose between the Germans of Tacitus and the Red Indians of the present day.

This controversy became embittered by a curious circumstance. Whereas Tacitus and other Roman writers spoke in glowing terms of the Teutonic races, their remarks on the Gauls, the ancient inhabitants of France, were not only far from complimentary, but happened to touch on points on which Frenchmen are particularly sensitive. Tertullian, who was a great admirer of the Jews, was very wroth with Tacitus because he used very anti-Semitic language. He actually calls Tacitus a “brawler, and the greatest teller of lies,”[24 - Tertullian, Apolog. 16: “rabula et mendaciorum loquacissimus.”] The French do not differ much from that opinion, not so much because Tacitus spoke ill of the Jews, and likewise of the Celts of Gaul, as because he spoke so well of the paysans du Danube. The ancient classical writers dwell rather strongly on the unfavorable side of the Celtic character. It is well known how low an opinion Aristotle formed of Celtic morality. Strabo says that the Celts are simple, but proud and sensitive, fond of dress and ornaments. It is even hinted that they dyed their hair, and allowed their mustache to grow, so that it interfered with the comfort of eating and drinking.[25 - See Strabo, iv. 196; Plin. xvii. 12; Liv. xxxviii. 17.] Strabo goes on to say that they are not malicious, but reckless, changeable, fond of innovation, and never to be depended on. They are quick in their resolutions, but often inconsiderate, fond of war, brave, but intolerably conceited if victorious, and quite demoralised if defeated. Polybius confirms that their first onslaught is terrible, but both Cæsar and Livy agree as to their want of steadiness and perseverance. Other Latin authors add that they are unmanageable and inclined to revolutions, and that, owing to continual factions, many are obliged to leave the country, and to try their fortunes as adventurers elsewhere. Still darker colors were added by others to this picture of national depravity. The state of morality in Gaul was such that it was considered infamous for a father to be seen in company with his son before the latter had come of age. At the death of a nobleman his widow was, as a matter of course, subjected to a trial as to whether she had been the cause of her husband's death. Strabo affirms that it was their custom to cut off the heads of their enemies after a battle, and to hang them on the heads of their horses, or nail them over their doors. While German scholars composed this mosaic out of all the stones that classical writers had ever thrown at the inhabitants of Gaul, French writers retaliated by either throwing discredit on Tacitus, the supposed encomiast of the Germans, or by showing that the account which Tacitus gives of the ancestors of the Teutonic race proves better than anything else that, at his time, the Germans had not yet emerged from a state of the grossest barbarism, and were incapable, therefore, as yet of vices of which they maintain are the outcome of a more advanced state of civilisation.

To my mind, apart from any national idiosyncrasies, the description which Tacitus gives us of the Germans, as he had seen them, is perfectly unique and invaluable as a picture of what I should willingly call the life of progressive savages. What should we give if, besides the hymns of the Rig-Veda, we had the accounts of travellers who had actually seen the ancient Rishis of India with their flocks and families, their priests and sacrifices, their kings and battles? What should we give if, besides the Homeric poems, we had the work of an eyewitness who could describe to us the real Troy, and the real fight between Greece and Asia Minor? This is what Tacitus has done for Germany, and at a time when the ancient religion was still living, when the simple laws of a primitive society were still observed, and when the epic poems of a later time were still being sung as ballads at the feasts of half-naked warriors! In Tacitus, therefore, and not in the missionary accounts of Melanesian savages, should we study the truly primitive man, primitive in the only sense in which we shall ever know of primitive man, and primitive certainly in a far truer sense than Papuans or Fuegians are likely to be in the nineteenth century. I cannot understand how an historian like Guizot could have allowed himself to be so much misguided by national prejudice as to speak of Tacitus as a kind of Montaigne or Rousseau, who, in a fit of disgust with his own country, drew a picture of Germany as a mere satire on Roman manners, or to call the Germania “the eloquent sulking of a patriotic philosopher who wishes to see virtue where he does not find the disgraceful effeminacy and the elegant depravity of an old society.” Surely the work of Tacitus cannot have been very fresh in the memory of the great French historian when he delivered this judgment. If Tacitus, like Rousseau or Voltaire, had intended to draw the picture of an ideal barbarism, would he have mentioned the many vices of the German Utopia, the indolence of the Germans, their drunkenness, their cruelty to slaves, their passion for gambling, and their riotous revels? Besides, three-fourths of his book treat of subjects which have no bearing whatever on Roman society, nay, which are of so little interest to the general reader that I doubt whether many Romans would have taken the trouble to read them. The facts which came to the knowledge of Tacitus are so loosely strung together that his book looks more like a collection of memoranda than the compact and pointed pamphlet of a political satirist. We need only read the letters of Voltaire on England, or Montalembert's pamphlet, De l'Angleterre, in order to perceive the difference between a political satire and an historical memoir. No doubt a man of the temper of Tacitus would naturally dwell with satisfaction on the bright side of the German character, and, while holding before the eyes of his own nation the picture of a brave and simple, religious and independent race, might naturally think of what Rome once had been, and was no longer. But there is no more sarcasm or satire in his work than is inseparable from a straightforward statement of facts when addressed to ears no longer accustomed to the sound of unvarnished truth.

So little did M. Guizot perceive the unique character of the Germania of Tacitus as an historical document of the earliest stage of society, that he amused himself with collecting from various books of travel a number of facts observed among the very lowest races in America and Africa, which, as he thinks, form an exact parallel to the statements of Tacitus with regard to the good and bad qualities of the Germans. His parallel columns, which occupy nearly ten pages, are certainly amusing, but they prove nothing, least of all that there was no difference between the healthy sons of Germany and the tattooed cannibals of New Zealand. If they prove anything, it is that there is one kind of barbarism through which every nation has to pass, the childhood and wild youth of a race, to be followed by the mature vigor of a nation's manhood, and that there is another kind of barbarism which leads to nothing, but ends in mere brutality, shrinking from contact with higher civilisation and succumbing when it attempts to imitate with monkeyish delight the virtues and vices of a more advanced society. Why is it that the fresh breezes of European civilisation proved fatal to the consumptive barbarism of the wretched inhabitants of Australia, while the strong constitution of the Germans of Tacitus resisted even the poisonous vapors of Roman life? When the results are so different, surely there must be a difference in the antecedents, and though M. Guizot is successful in showing that in some respects the ancient Germans did the same things and said the same things as Ojibways and Papuans, he forgets in drawing his conclusion the old proverb, Si duo dicunt idem, non est idem.

After these remarks it will perhaps seem less surprising that students of antiquity should decline to answer the point-blank question whether man began his life on earth as a savage. Every definition that has been attempted of a savage in general, has broken down as soon as it was confronted with facts. The only characteristic of the savage which remained, and was strong enough to withstand the sharpest cross-examination, was cannibalism. But I am not aware that even the most extreme believers in the primitive savage would insist on his having been necessarily a cannibal, a kind of human Kronos, swallowing his own kith and kin.

Every attempt to place the savage who can no longer be called civilised in the place of the savage who can not yet be so-called, could only end, as it has, in utter confusion of thought.

Something, however, will be gained, or at all events some kind of mutual understanding will become possible, if in future discussions on the character of primitive man a careful distinction is made between the two kinds of savages, the progressive and the retrogressive. When that distinction has once been grasped, the question whether man began as a savage has no longer anything perplexing about it. Man certainly began as a savage, but as a progressive savage. He certainly did not begin with an innate knowledge of reading, writing and arithmetic; but, on the other hand, there is nothing to lead us to suppose that he was a being altogether foul and filthy, that when he grew up he invariably ill-treated his wife or wives, and that still later in life he passed his time in eating his children.

If we must need form theories or reason by analogy on the primitive state of man, let us go to the nearest ci-près, such as the Vedic Hindus, or the Germans as described by Cæsar and Tacitus, but not to Fuegians, who in time and probably in space also are the most widely removed from the primitive inhabitants of our globe. If we knew nothing of the manners and customs of the Saxons, when they first settled in these isles, should we imagine that they must have resembled the most depraved classes of modern English society? Let us but once see clearly that the Fuegian, whether as described by Darwin or by Parker Snow, is the most modern of human beings, and we shall pause before we see in him the image of the first ancestor of the human race. Wherever we look we can see the rise and fall of the human race. We can see it with our own eyes, if we look at the living representatives of some of our oldest and noblest families; we can read it in history if we compare ancient India with modern India, ancient Greece with modern Greece. The idea that the Fuegian was salted and preserved for us during many thousands of years, so that we might study in him the original type of man, is nothing but a poetical sentiment unsupported alike by fact, analogy, and reason.

I know full well that when I speak of the Germans of Tacitus or of the Aryans of the Veda as the ci-près of primitive man, all the indications of modern, or at all events of secondary and tertiary thought which I have pointed out myself in the hymns of the Rig-Veda, and which might easily be collected from the book of Tacitus, will be mustered against me. Must I quote the old saying again: Est quoddam prodire tenus si non datur ultra? All I maintain is that these historical documents bring us as near to the primitive man as historical documents can bring us; but that the nearest point within our reach is still very far from the cradle of the human race, no one has pointed out more often than myself.

There is, however, plenty of work still to be done in slowly following up the course of human progress and tracing it back to its earliest stages, as far as literary, monumental, and traditional documents will allow us to do so. There are many intricate windings of that historical river to be explored, many riddles to be solved, many lessons to be learnt. One thing only is quite certain – namely, that the private diary of the first man will never be discovered, least of all at Cape Horn.

I have thus tried to show how untenable is the theory which would boldly identify the modern savage with primitive man, and how cautious we ought to be whenever we take even a few hints here and there from degraded tribes of the present day in order to fill out our imaginary picture of the earliest civilisation of our race. Some lessons, and even important lessons, may be learnt from savages, if only they are studied in a truly scholarlike spirit, as they have been, for instance, by Callaway and Codrington, by Waitz and Tylor. But if the interpretation of an Homeric custom or myth requires care, that of African or Polynesian customs or myths requires ten times greater care, and if a man shrinks from writing on the Veda because he does not know Sanskrit, he should tremble whenever he writes the names of Zulus, unless he has some idea of what Bântu grammar means.

In arguing so far, I have carefully kept to the historical point of view, though I am well aware that the principal traits in the imaginary picture of primitive man are generally taken from a very different source. We are so made that for everything that comes before us we have to postulate a cause and a beginning. We therefore postulate a cause and a beginning for man. The ethnologist is not concerned with the first cause of man, but he cannot resist the craving of his mind to know at least the beginning of man.

Most ethnologists used to hold that, as each individual begins as a child, mankind also began as a child; and they imagined that a careful observation of the modern child would give them some idea of the character of the primeval child. Much ingenuity has been spent on this subject since the days of Voltaire, and many amusing books have been the result, till it was seen at last that the modern baby and the primeval baby have nothing in common but the name, not even a mother or a nurse.

It is chiefly due to Darwin and to the new impulse which he gave to the theory of evolution that this line of argument was abandoned as hopeless. Darwin boldly asked the question whose child the primeval human baby could have been, and he answered it by representing the human baby as the child of non-human parents. Admitting even the possibility of this transitio in aliud genus, which the most honest of Darwin's followers strenuously deny, what should we gain by this for our purpose – namely, for knowing the primitive state of man, the earliest glimmerings of the human intellect? Our difficulties would remain exactly the same, only pushed back a little further.

Disappointing as it may sound, the fact must be faced, nevertheless, that our reasoning faculties, wonderful as they are, break down completely before all problems concerning the origin of things. We may imagine, we may believe, anything we like about the first man; we can know absolutely nothing. If we trace him back to a primeval cell, the primeval cell that could become a man is more mysterious by far than the man that was evolved from a cell. If we trace him back to a primeval pro-anthropos, the pro-anthropos is more unintelligible to us than even the protanthropos would be. If we trace back the whole solar system to a rotating nebula, that wonderful nebula which by evolution and revolution could become an inhabitable universe is, again, far more mysterious than the universe itself.

The lesson that there are limits to our knowledge is an old lesson, but it has to be taught again and again. It was taught by Buddha, it was taught by Socrates, and it was taught for the last time in the most powerful manner by Kant. Philosophy has been called the knowledge of our knowledge; it might be called more truly the knowledge of our ignorance, or, to adopt the more moderate language of Kant, the knowledge of the limits of our knowledge. —Nineteenth Century.

LE BONHOMME CORNEILLE

BY HENRY M. TROLLOPE

The Marquis de Dangeau wrote, in his journal for the 1st of October, 1684: “Aujourd'hui est mort le bonhomme Corneille.” The illustrious dramatist was an old man, for he had been born in 1606. He was a good old fellow in his way, being always an honest and upright man, though the appellation “le bonhomme” was less frequently given to him than to La Fontaine.

Had it been as much the fashion fifty years ago as now to honor great men by anniversaries, in the year 1836 a more gracious homage might have been paid to the author of Le Cid. At Christmastime in that year this play burst upon Paris. As a bombshell carries with it destruction, the Cid gave sudden and unexpected delight to all who saw it. It is the first of French tragedies that has left a mark; no earlier tragedy is now generally remembered. Corneille woke up to find himself famous. It appears that, though he was by no means a novice, he was as much astonished as anyone at the great success of his play. The Court liked it, and the town liked it. It was at once translated into many languages. In France people learnt passages of it by heart, and for a while there was a popular saying, “Cela est beau comme le Cid.” If the good folk in Paris had only bethought themselves in 1836 of celebrating the bi-centenary of the appearance of the Cid the event would have sounded happier than of now celebrating the author's death. But fashion rules much in this world. It has not yet become fashionable to recollect the date of a great man's great work – fifty years ago it had not become fashionable to have centenaries at all; so that now, all other excuses failing, we must seize upon the bi-centenary of Corneille's death as a date upon which to honor him. Let us hope that on the 6th of June, 1906, the ter-centenary of his birth, a more joyful note may be sung.

We have said that Pierre Corneille was a good old fellow in his way, but it was his misfortune that his way was not more like that of other men. He was very poor during the last ten or twelve years of his life. He walked out one day with a friend, and went into a shop to have his shoe mended. During the operation he sat down upon a plank, his friend sitting beside him. After the cobbler had finished his job Corneille took from his purse three bits of money to pay for his shoe, and when the two gentlemen got home Corneille's friend offered him his purse, but he declined all assistance. Corneille was of a proud and independent nature. He is reported to have said of himself, “Je suis saoûl de gloire, mais affamé d'argent.” He has been accused of avarice – unjustly, we think – because he tried to get as much money as he could for his plays. If a man wants money he will try to obtain that which he thinks should belong to him. And if he wants it badly, his high notions of dignity – if it be only mock dignity – will go to the wall. No fine gentleman nowadays would think it beneath him to take £100 from a publisher or from a theatrical manager after it had been fairly earned. Some ask for their £100 before it has been earned. Two hundred years ago a poet was supposed to be paid with honor and glory, but, unfortunately for himself, Corneille wanted more solid acknowledgment. And two hundred years ago the rights of authorship were not so well understood as now. In France, as in England, very few men could have lived by their pen alone. It is true that the dramatists were among the most fortunate, but many years had elapsed since Corneille's plays had been popular at the theatre. In 1670 Molière, as theatrical manager, had given him 2,000 francs for a piece. This was considered a large sum, and it may be doubted if Molière's company ever got back their money. The play was Tite et Bérénice, and it was played alternately with Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. We may judge which of the two plays we should like to see best. Corneille had to make the most of his 2,000 francs, for his pension, supposed to be paid to him every year from the Civil List, was always delayed. The year was made to have fifteen months! Sometimes the pension was not paid at all. So that poor Corneille was hard pressed for money in the latter years of his life, from 1672 to 1684, while his years of greatest triumph had been from 1636 to 1642. And he had small resources except what had come to him from writing. His two sons went into the army, and he had to provide for them at a time when his payments from the theatre were diminishing. There is no evidence which should make us think he was avaricious or greedy for money.

In his manner Corneille was apt to be awkward and ungainly. A contemporary says that when he first saw him he took him for a tradesman at Rouen. Rouen was his birthplace, and there he lived until his avocations compelled him, against his will, to live in Paris. Like La Fontaine, he made a poor figure in society. He did not talk well. He was not good company, and his friends were bound to confess that he was rather a bore. Those who knew him well enough would hint to him his defects, at which he would smile, and say, “I am none the less Pierre Corneille.” But his physiognomy, when observed, was far from commonplace. His nephew, Fontenelle, says of him: “His face was pleasant enough; a large nose, a good mouth, his expression lively, and his features strongly marked and fit to be transmitted to posterity in a medal or in a bust.” Corneille begins a letter to Pellisson with the following verses, describing himself:

En matière d'amour je suis fort inégal,
Je l'écris assez bien, je le fais assez mal;
J'ai la plume féconde et la bouche stérile,
Bon galant au théâtre et fort mauvais en ville;
Et l'on peut rarement m'écouter sans ennui
Que quand je me produis par la bouche d'autrui.

This is a charming little bit of autobiography. And in the same letter, after the verses, the old poet says, “My poetry left me at the same time as my teeth.”

All this he writes, laughing in his sleeve. But often enough he was melancholy and depressed. Again we quote from Fontenelle: “Corneille was of a melancholy temperament. He required stronger emotions to make him hopeful and happy than to make him mournful or despondent. His manner was brusque, and sometimes rude in appearance, but at bottom he was very easy to live with, and he was affectionate and full of friendliness.” When he heard of large sums of money being given to other men for their plays, for pieces that the world liked perhaps better than his own, he got unhappy, for he felt that his glory was departing from him. Need we go back two hundred years to find instances of men who have become unhappy from similar causes? There are many such in London and in Paris at this moment. Early in his career, before the days of the Cid, he was proud of his calling. He gloried in being one of the dramatic authors of his time. He says: —

Le théâtre est un fief dont les rentes sont bonnes.

And also: —

Mon travail sans appui monte sur le théâtre,
Chacun en liberté l'y blâme ou l'idolâtre.

Then he had the ball at his feet, and all the world was before him. He had just made his name, and was honored by Richelieu – being appointed one of his five paid authors. But minister and poet did not like each other. The autocrat was in something of the same position towards his inferior as is the big boy towards the little boy who gets above him at school. The big boy wanted to thrash the little boy, and the little boy wouldn't have it; but at last he had to suffer for his precociousness. The big boy summoned other little boys to his assistance, and made them administer chastisement to the offender. This was the examination of the Cid by the Academy.

“En vain, contre le Cid un ministre se ligue,
Tout Paris pour Chimène a les yeux de Rodrigue;
L'Académie en corps a beau le censurer,
Le public révolté s'obstine à l'admirer.”

Corneille was a voluminous writer. He wrote nearly as many plays as Shakespeare, but his later ones are not equal to those of his best days. And he wrote a translation in verse of the Imitatione Christi. This was a pecuniary success. The book was bought and eagerly read, though now it is rarely taken down from the shelf. But his prose, unlike Racine's, which charms by its grace, is insignificant. And, unlike Racine, his speech when he was received into the French Academy was dull, and disappointed everybody. An Academical reception is one of the occasions in which Frenchmen have always expected that the recipient of honor should distinguish himself. But it was not in Corneille's power to please his audience by making a speech. We need not be too heavy upon him because his glory was not universal. As he said of himself, he was none the less Pierre Corneille. Readers have generally extolled Corneille too highly, or have not given him his due praise. This is partly from the fact that after his great success he wrote much that was unworthy of his former self; and partly, we believe at least, that even in his best plays he is too spasmodic. His fine lines come out too much by starts, amidst much that is uninteresting. The famous “Qu'il mourût” (Horace, Act III., sc. 6) is very grand, and the next line, though not English in sentiment, is fine. But the four succeeding lines are washy, and take away from the dignity of what has just gone before. Instinctively Corneille was a dramatist, and had it not been for the laws of the unities which bound him down to conventional and unwise rules, he would in all probability have risen higher in the world's esteem. He was also a poet, having the gift of poetical expression more at his command than the larger measure of composition in prose. His lines are often sweet and very stirring, for he was moved towards his subject with a true feeling of poetic chivalry. None of his lines is more quoted than one in which he proudly spoke of himself: —

Je ne dois qu'à moi seul toute ma renommée.

    – Gentleman's Magazine.