velian policy, by which the poetry of Corneille was entirely disfigured at an after period, and which is not only repulsive, but also for the most part both clumsy and unsuitable. He flattered himself, that in knowledge of men and the world, in an acquaintance with courts and politics, he surpassed the most clear seeing. With a mind naturally alive to honour, he conceived that he had made himself master "of the murderous doctrine of Machavel ;" and he displays, in a broad and didactic manner, all the knowledge which he had acquired of these arts. He had no suspicion that an unconscientious and selfish policy goes smoothly to work, and always appears under a borrowed guise. If he had been capable of any thing of this kind, he might have taken a lesson from Richelieu.

Of the remaining pieces in which Corneille has painted the Roman freedom and love of dominion, the Death of Pompey is the most prominent. It is full, however, of a grandeur which is more dazzling than genuine; and, indeed, we could expect nothing else from a cento of hyperbolical antitheses from Lucan. These bravura flourishes of rhetoric are strung together on the thread of a clumsy plot. The intrigues of Ptolemy, and the ambitious coquetry of his sister Cleopatra, have a miserable appearance by the side of the description of the fate of the great Pompey, the ragebreathing sorrow of his wife, and the magnanimous compassion of Cæsar.-Scarcely has the conqueror performed the last duty to the reluctant shade of his

rival, when he pours out his homage at the feet of the beautiful Queen: he is not only in love, but in love with sighs and flames. Cleopatra, on her part, according to the poet's own expression, is desirous, by her love-ogling, of gaining possession of the sceptre of her brother. Cæsar certainly made love, in his own way, to a number of women : but these cynical loves, if represented with any thing like truth, would be most unfit for the stage. Who can refrain from laughing, when Rome, in the speech of Cæsar, implores the chaste love of Cleopatra for young Cæsar?

In Sertorius, a much later work, Corneille has contrived to make the great Pompey appear little, and the hero ridiculous. Sertorius, on one occasion, exclaims,

Que c'est un sort cruel d'aimer par politique!

This may be applied to the whole of the persons in the piece. They are not in the least in love with one another but they allow a pretended love to be subservient to political ends. Sertorius, a hardened and grey-haired warrior, acts the lover with the Spanish Queen, Viriata: he puts forward, however, another person, and offers himself to Aristia; as Viriata presses him to marry her on the spot, he begs anxiously for a short delay; Viriata, along with her other elegant phrases, says roundly, that she neither knows love nor hatred; Aristia, the repudiated wife of Pompey, says to him, "Take me back again, or I will marry another;"

Pompey beseeches her to wait only till the death of Sylla, whom he dares not offend, without mentioning any thing of the low scoundrel Perpenna. The disposition to this frigidity of soul was perceptible in Corneille, even at an early period; but it increased in an incredible degree in the works of his age.

In Polyeucte, Christian sentiments are not unworthily expressed; yet we find in it more superstitious reverence, than fervent enthusiasm for religion: the wonders of grace are rather affirmed, than conceived with mysterious illumination. Both the tone and the situations, in the first acts, incline very much to comedy, as has already been observed by Voltaire. A female, who has married against her inclinations from obedience to her father, who declares both to her lover, who returns when too late, and to her husband, that she still entertains a tenderness for the former, but that she will keep within the bounds of virtue; a vulgar and selfish father, who is sorry that the first suitor, who has now become the favourite of the Emperor, was not preferred by him as his son-in-law ;-all this promises no very high tragical determinations. The divided heart of Paulina is in nature, and consequently does not detract from the interest of the piece. It is generally agreed, that her situation, and the character of Severus, constitute the principal charm of this drama. But the practical magnanimity of this Roman, who has to conquer his passion, throws the renunciation of Polyeucte, which appears to cost him nothing, very much into

the shade. A conclusion has been attempted to be drawn from this, that martyrdom is, in general, an unfavourable subject for tragedy. But nothing can be more unjust. The gladness with which martyrs embraced pain and death did not proceed from want of feeling, but from the heroism of the highest love : they must previously, in struggles painful beyond expression, have obtained the victory over every earthly tie; and by the exhibition of these struggles, these sufferings of our mortal nature, while the seraph takes its flight to heaven, the poet may awaken in us the most fervent emotion. The means by which the catastrophe is brought about in Polyeucte, namely, the dull and low artifice of Felix, by which the endeavours of Severus to save his rival contribute to his destruction, are contemptible beyond expression.

How much Corneille delighted in the symmetrical play of antitheses in his intrigues, we may easily see, from his declaring Rodogune his favourite work. I shall content myself with referring to Lessing, who has pleasantly enough exhibited the ridiculous appearance which the two distressed princes cut, with a mother who says, "He who murders his mistress I shall name heir to the throne," and a mistress who says,

"He

who murders his mother shall be chosen by me for a husband." The best and shortest way of going to work would have been to have locked up the two furies together. Voltaire returns always to the mention of the fifth act, which he declares to be one of the most noble

productions of the French stage. This singular way of judging works of art, by which the parts are praised in opposition to the whole, without which it is impossible for them to exist, is altogether foreign to our way of thinking.

With respect to Heraclius, Voltaire gives himself the unnecessary labour to show that Calderon did not imitate Corneille; and, on the other hand, he labours, with little success, to deny that the latter had the Spanish author before him, and availed himself of his labours. Corneille, it is true, gives the whole out as his own invention; but we must recollect, that it was only when hard pressed that he acknowledged what he owed to the author of the Spanish Cid. The chief circumstance of the plot, namely, the uncertainty of the tyrant Phocas which of the two youths is his own son, or the son of his murdered predecessor, bears great resemblance to that of a drama of Calderon, and nothing of the kind is to be found in history; in other respects the plot is, it is true, altogether different. However this may be, in Calderon the ingenious boldness of extravagant invention corresponds always with the heightening of the tragical colouring of poetry; whereas in Corneille, after our head has become giddy in endeavouring to disentangle a complicated and illcontrived intrigue, we are only recompensed by a suc cession of tragical epigrams, without the least enjoyment for the fancy.

Nicomedes is a political comedy, the dryness of