CORNEILLE, PIERRE (1606-1684), French dramatist and poet, was born at Rouen, in the rue de la Pie, on June 6, 16o6. His father, Pierre Corneille, a magistrate of Rouen, was ennobled in 1637, and the honour was renewed in favour of his sons Pierre and Thomas in 166g, though the poet himself did not assume the "de" of nobility. His mother's name was Marthe le Pesant.
Corneille was educated by the Jesuits at Rouen, was entered as avocat, and in 1624 took the oaths. He was afterwards ap pointed advocate to the admiralty, and to the "waters and for ests," posts which he disposed of in 165o for the insignificant sum of 6,000 livres. In that year and the next he was procureur syndic des Etats de Normandie. His first play, Melite, was acted in 1629. In 1632 Clitandre, a tragedy, was printed (it may have been acted in 1631) ; in 1633 La ti'euve and the Galerie du palais, in 1634 La Suivante and La Place Royale, all the last-named plays being comedies, saw the stage. Having composed a Latin elegy to Richelieu on the occasion of the cardinal's visit to Rouen he was enrolled among the "five poets." These officers (the others being G. Colletet, Boisrobert, C. de 1'Etoile and J. de Rotrou), had the task of working up Richelieu's ideas into dramatic form. No one could be less suited for such work than Corneille, and he soon (it is said) incurred his employer's displeasure by altering the plan of a play which had been entrusted to him.
In 1643 appeared Polyeucte, the memorable comedy of Le Menteur, which though adapted from the Spanish stood in rela tion to French comedy very much as Le Cid, which owed less to Spain, stood to French tragedy; its less popular and far less good Suite,—and perhaps La Mort de Pompee. Rodogune (1644) was a brilliant success; Theodore (1645), a tragedy on a somewhat perilous subject, was the first of Corneille's plays which was defi nitely damned. On Jan. 22, 1647 the Academy at last (it had twice rejected him on frivolous pleas) admitted the greatest of living French writers. Heraclius (1646), Andromede (1650), a spectacle-opera rather than a play, Don Sanche d'Aragon (1650) and Nicomede (1651) were the products of the next few years' work; but in 1652 Pertharite was received with decided disfavour, and the poet in disgust resolved, like Ben Jonson, to quit the loathed stage. In this resolution he persevered for six years, during which he worked at a verse translation of the Imitation of Christ (finished in 1656), at his three Discourses on Dramatic Poetry, and at the Examens which are usually printed at the end of his plays. In 1659 Fouquet, the Maecenas of the time, per suaded him to alter his resolve, and Oedipe, a play which became a great favourite with Louis XIV., was the result. It was followed by La Toison d'or (166o), Sertorius (1662) and Sophonisbe (1663) . In this latter year Corneille (who had at last removed his residence from Rouen to Paris in 1662) was included among the list of men of letters pensioned at the proposal of Colbert. He received 2,000 livres. Othon (1664), Agesilas (1666), Attila (1667), and Tite et Berenice (1670), were generally considered as proofs of failing powers,—the cruel quatrain of Boileau Apres l'Agesilas Helas ! Mais apres l'Attila Hole. ! in the case of these two plays, and the unlucky comparison with Racine in the Berenice, telling heavily against them. In 1665 and 167o some versifications of devotional words addressed to the Virgin had appeared. The part which Corneille took in Psyche (1671), Moliere and P. Quinault being his coadjutors, showed signs of renewed vigour; but Pulcherie (16 7 2) and Surena (16 74 ) were allowed even by his faithful followers to be failures. He lived for ten years after the appearance of Surena, but was almost silent save for the publication, in 1676, of some beautiful verses thanking Louis XIV. for ordering the revival of his plays. He died at his house in the rue d'Argenteuil on Sept. 30, 1684.
Corneille was buried in the church of St. Roch, where no monu ment marked his grave until 1821. He had six children, of whom four survived him. Pierre, the eldest son, a cavalry officer who died before his father, left posterity in whom the name has con tinued; Marie, the eldest daughter, was twice married, and by her second husband, M. de Farcy, became the ancestress of Charlotte Corday.
The portraits of Corneille (the best and most trustworthy of which is from the burin of M. Lasne, an engraver of Caen), repre sent him as a man of serious, almost of stern countenance, and this agrees well enough with such descriptions as we have of his appearance, and with the idea of him which we should form from his writings and conduct. His nephew Fontenelle admits that his general address and manner were by no means prepossessing. Others use stronger language, and it seems to be confessed that either from shyness, from pride, or from physical defects of utter ance, probably from all three combined, he did not attract stran gers. Racine is said to have assured his son that Corneille made verses "cent fois plus beaux" than his own, but that his own greater popularity was owing to the fact that he took some trouble to make himself personally agreeable. Almost all the anecdotes which have been recorded concerning him testify to a rugged and somewhat unamiable self-contentment. "Je n'ai pas le merite de ce pays-ci," he said of the court. "Je n'en suis pas moins Pierre Corneille," he is said to have replied to his friends as often as they dared to suggest certain shortcomings in his be haviour, manner or speech. "Je suis saoul de gloire et affame d'argent" was his reply to the compliments of Boileau. Yet tradi tion is unanimous as to his affection for his family; and as to the harmony in which he lived with his brother Thomas who had mar ried Marguerite de Lamperiere, younger sister of Marie, and whose household both at Rouen and at Paris was practically one with that of his brother. No story about Corneille is better known than that which tells of the trap between the two houses, and how Pierre, whose facility of versification was much inferior to his brother's, would lift it when hard bestead, and call out "Sans-souci, une rime !" Notwithstanding this domestic felicity, an impression is left on the reader of Corneille's biographies of a certain natural melancholy of temperament.
Although his actual poverty has been denied, he cannot have been affluent. His pensions covered but a small part of his long life and were most irregularly paid. Thomas Corneille himself, who to his undoubted talents united wonderful facility, untiring industry, and (gift valuable above all others to the playwright) an extraordinary knack of hitting the public fancy, died, notwith standing his simple tastes, "as poor as Job." We know that Pierre received for two of his later pieces 2,000 livres each, and we do not know that he ever received more.
But his reward in fame was not stinted. Corneille, unlike many of the great writers of the world, was not driven to wait for "the next age" to do him justice. The cabal or clique which attacked the Cid had no effect whatever on the judgment of the public. All his subsequent masterpieces were received with the same un grudging applause, and the rising star of Racine, even in con junction with the manifest inferiority of Corneille's last five or six plays, with difficulty prevailed against the older poet's towering reputation. The great men of his time—Conde, Turenne, the marechal de Grammont, the knight-errant duc de Guise—were his fervent admirers. Balzac did him justice ; Rotrou, as we have seen, never failed in generous appreciation; Moliere in con versation and in print recognized him as his own master and the foremost of dramatists. Racine, in discharge of his duty as respondent at the Academical reception of Thomas Corneille, pro nounced upon the memory of Pierre perhaps the noblest and most just tribute of eulogy that ever issued from the lips of a rival.
His Plays.—Producing, as he certainly has produced, work which classes him with the greatest names in literature, Corneille also signed an extraordinary quantity of verse which has not merely the defects of genius, irregularity, extravagance, bizarrete, but the faults which we are apt to regard as exclusively belonging to those who lack genius, to wit, the dulness and tediousness of mediocrity. Moliere's manner of accounting for this is famous in literary history or legend. "My friend Corneille," he said, "has a familiar who inspires him with the finest verses in the world. But sometimes the familiar leaves him to shift for himself, and then he fares very badly." That Corneille was by no means destitute of the critical faculty his Discourses and the Examen of his plays (often admirably acute, and, with Dryden's subsequent prefaces, the originals to a great extent of specially modern criticism) show well enough. But an enemy might certainly contend that a poet's critical faculty should be of the Promethean, not the Epimethean order. The fact seems to be that the form in which Corneille's work was cast, and which by an odd irony of fate he did so much to originate and make popular, was very partially suited to his talents. He could imagine admirable situations, and he could write verses of incomparable grandeur—verses that reverberate again and again in the memory, but he could not, with the patient docility of Racine, labour at proportioning the action of a tragedy strictly, at maintaining a uniform rate of interest in the course of the plot and of excellence in the fashion of the verse. On the Eng lish stage the liberty of unrestricted incident and complicated ac tion, the power of multiplying characters and introducing prose scenes, would have exactly suited his somewhat intermittent gen ius, both by covering defects and by giving greater scope for the exhibition of power.
How great that power is can escape no one. The splendid soliloquies of Medea which, as Voltaire happily says, "annoncent Corneille," the entire parts of Rodogune and Chimene, the final speech of Camille in Horace, the discovery scene of Cinna, the dialogues of Pauline and Severe in Polyeucte, the magnificently contrasted conception and exhibition of the best and worst forms of feminine dignity in the Cornelie of Pompee and the Cleopatre of Rodogune, the singularly fine contrast in Don Sanche d' Aragon, between the haughtiness of the Spanish nobles and the unshaken dignity of the supposed adventurer Carlos, and the characters of Aristie, Viriate and Sertorius himself, in the play named after the latter, are not to be surpassed in grandeur of thought, felicity of design or appropriateness of language. Therefore his rank among the greatest of dramatic poets is not a matter of question.
For a poet is to be judged by his best things, and the best things of Corneille are second to none.
We have seen it said of the Cid that it is difficult to understand the enthusiasm it excited. But the difficulty can only exist for persons who are insensible to dramatic excellence, or who so strongly object to the forms of the French drama that they cannot relish anything so presented. Rodrigue, Chimene, Don Diegue are not of any age, but of all time. The conflicting passions of love, honour, duty, are here represented as they never had been on a French stage, and in the "strong style" which was Corneille's own. Of the many objections urged against the play, perhaps the weightiest is that which condemns the frigid and superfluous part of the Infanta. Horace, though more skilfully constructed, is per haps less satisfactory. There is a hardness about the younger Horace which might have been, but is not made, imposing, and Sabine's effect on the action is quite out of proportion to the space she occupies. The splendid declamation of Camille, and the excellent part of the elder Horace, do not altogether atone for these defects. Cinna is perhaps generally considered the poet's masterpiece, and it undoubtedly contains one of the finest scenes in all French tragedy. The blot on it is certainly the character of Emilie, who is spiteful and thankless, not heroic. Polyeucte has sometimes been elevated to the same position. There is, however, a certain coolness about the hero's affection for his wife which somewhat detracts from the merit of his sacrifice; while the Christian part of the matter is scarcely so well treated as in the Saint Genest of Rotrou or the Virgin Martyr of Massinger. On the other hand, the entire parts of Pauline and Severe are beyond praise, and the manner in which the former reconciles her duty as a wife with her affection for her lover is an astonishing suc cess. In Pompee (for La Mort de Porpee, though the more ap propriate, was not the original title) the splendid declamation of Cornelie is the chief thing to be remarked. Le Menteur fully de serves the honour which Moliere paid to it. In Sertorius we have one of Corneille's finest plays.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.—The subject of the bibliography of Corneille was Bibliography.—The subject of the bibliography of Corneille was treated in the most exhaustive manner by M. E. Picot in his Biblio graphie Cornelienne (1875-76) . Less elaborate, but still ample in formation may be found in J. A. Taschereau's Vie and in M. Marty Laveaux's edition of the Works. The individual plays were usually printed a year or two after their first appearance ; but these dates have been subjected to confusion and to controversy. The chief collected editions in the poet's lifetime were those of 5644, 1648, 1652, 1660 (with important corrections) , 1664 and 1682, which gives the definitive text. In 1692 T. Corneille published a complete Theatre in 5 vols. Numerous editions appeared in the early part of the 28th century, that of 1740 (6 vols., Amsterdam) containing the Oeuvres diverses as well as the plays. Several editions are recorded between this and that of Voltaire (12 vols., Geneva, 1764 ; 8 vols., 1776), whose Commentaires have often been reprinted separately. In the year IX. (18o1) appeared an edition of the Works with Voltaire's commentary and criticisms thereon by Palissot (12 vols.) . Of the numerous editions published since that date that of Ch. Marty Laveaux in Regnier's Grands Ecrivains de la France (12 vols., 1862 68) is still the standard. It contains the entire works, a lexicon, full bibliographical information, and an album of illustrations of the poet's places of residence, his arms, some title-pages of his plays, facsimiles of his writings, etc. Nothing is wanting but variorum comments, which Lefevre's edition supplies. Fontenelle's life of his uncle is the chief original authority on that subject, but Taschereau's Histoire de la vie et des ouvrages de P. Corneille (1st ed. 1829, 2nd in the Bibl. elzevirienne, 1855) is the standard work. Of the exceed ingly numerous writings relative to Corneille we may mention the Recueil de dissertations sur plusieurs tragedies de Corneille et de Racine of the abbe Granet (174o) , the criticisms already alluded to of Voltaire, La Harpe and Palissot, the well-known work of Guizot, first published as Vie de Corneille in 1813 and revised as Corneille et son temps in 1852, and the essays, repeated in his Portraits litteraires, in Port-Royal, and in the Nouveaux Lundis of Sainte-Beuve. More recent, besides essays by MM. Brunetiere, Faguet and Lemaitre and the pertinent part of M. E. Rigal's work on 16th century drama in France, see Gustave Lanson, Corneille in the Grands Ecrivains francais (1898) ; F. Bouquet, Points obscurs et nouveaux de la vie de Pierre Corneille (1888) ; J. Levallois, Corneille inconnu (1876) ; J. Lemaitre, Corneille et la poetique d'Aristote (1888) ; J. B. Segall, Corneille and the Spanish Drama (19o2) ; and the recently discovered and printed Fragments sur Pierre et Thomas Corneille of Alfred de Vigny 0905). On the Cid quarrel E. H. Chardon's Vie de Rotrou (1884) bears mainly on a whole series of documents which appeared at Rouen in the proceedings of the Societe des bibliophiles normands during the years 1891-94. See also Benedetto Croce, Scritti di storia letteraria (XIV. Ariosto, Shakespeare e Corneille 1911 ; Eng. trans., 1921) ; Abbe Renault, Une fille inconnue de Pierre Corneille (1922) ; E. de Saint-Auban, Maitre Pierre Corneille, avocat etc. (1923) ; L. M. Riddle, The Genesis and Sources of Pierre Corneille's Tragedies from Medee to Partherite (1926, Johns Hopkins Studies in Romance Literatures and Languages, vol. 3) ; R. Bray, La Tragedie Cornelienne devant la critique classique, d'apres la querelle de Sophonisbe, 1663