Cid, he withdrew immediately afterwards into that personal obscurity which was most congenial to the simplicity of his manners." His life passed in literary labors, and he died at the advanced age of seventy-eight. It cannot be said of him, as of Shakspeare, that he manifested the plain substantial virtue of prudence in the management of his pecuniary affairs. A "blamable careless Corneille appears to have bent to the storm; | and whether the Cardinal was appeased by the judgment of the Academy, or by the submission of the poet, he continued to extend to him his patronage and protection. The Cid was formally dedicated to the niece of the Cardinal, the Duchess d'Aiguillon; Horace to the Cardinal himself, to whom, it appears, he read his pieces before giving them to the public-a wise precaution, it is suggested, to secure his approbation. But there is an incident mentioned in his life which, if true, proves that the poet had been entirely restored to favor. "Corneille," says Fontenelle, " presented himself one day more melancholy and thoughtful than usual before Cardinal Richelieu, who asked him if he were working at anything. He replied that he was far from enjoying the tranquillity necessary for composition, as his head was turned upside down by love. By and by, he came to more minute explanations, and told the Cardinal that he was passionately in love with a daughter of the LieutenantGeneral of Andely in Normandy, and that he could not obtain her in marriage from her father. The Cardinal sent orders for this obstinate father to come to Paris. He quickly arrived, in great alarm at so unexpected a summons, and returned home well satisfied Que quand je me porduis par la bouche d'au at suffering no worse punishment than giving his daughter to a man who was in such high favor. ness" on this head is attributed to him even by his panegyrists, together with a great aversion to everything that bore the shape of business. To this, as well as the fraternal affection that subsisted between them, may be referred the circumstance that the two brothers, Pierre and Thomas Corneille, never divided the property that had descended to them or that they earned, but continued to live together, uniting their families into one. The great French dramatist was a dull conversationalist. We hear of no "encounters of wit." He is described as heavy and commonplace in his appearance, and tiresome in conversation, not even speaking his native language with correctness. He says, of himself, in his letter to Pellison : "Eh! l'on peut rarement m'écouter sans ennui. trui." We have quoted a passage from ShaksIt is certain that Corneille mar-peare and his Times, in which M. Guizot ried Marie de Lampérière, daughter of the characterizes the great English dramatist. Lieutenant-General of Andely; and M. Gui- We have seen him do justice to that fine senzot is disposed, on the whole, to give cre- sibility and wide impartial observrtion which dence to the anecdote, although it rests only enabled him to represent human life. We on the somewhat doubtful authority of Fon- will now endeavor to select from the comtenelle. panion work some parallel passage in which he characterizes those great ideals which Corneille delighted to draw; which at times. seem rather the representatives of a principle and of sentiment than portraitures of living men. We must be pardoned for very unmercifully abridging the following extract : With the public the triumph of Corneille was complete. When Horace appeared, the attack was not renewed. "Armed at all points." says M. Guizot, "Corneille firmly awaited the enemy, but none appeared; the outburst of truth had imposed silence upon envy, and it dared not hope to renew, with equal advantage, a warfare, the ridicule attendant upon which had been more easily borne by Richelieu than by Scudéry. The universal cry of admiration is all that has reached us. From that time forth, for many years, master-pieces followed one another in quick succession, without obstacle, and almost without interruption. Until the advent of Racine the history of the stage is contained in the life of Corneille; and the biography of Corneille is wholly written in his works. Though forced for a time to stand forward in defence of the "All the vigor of his noble genius was requisite to discover a sufficient source of interest in those singular characters which he alone could awakening our uncertainty and curiosity by this very inflexibility, which, as it is announced at the outset, does not permit them to yield to the slightest weakness, and multiplies successively around them embarrassments which ceaselessly necessitate greater and more extraordinary efforts. create and sustain. He alone has succeeded in In order to attain to this invincible power, which will make all around it bend to its influence, a man must absolutely have separated himself from all that otherwise enters into the composition of human nature. He must have coupletely ceased to flick of a flat, in real life, ↑ sist of reasonings animated by strong convictors writer the fo ime of that ideal grandeur and pressing logic-" of welen the imagination can conceive no powalbly, even when, indsting two to speak, from all the other affect ons, it forgete that which renders ja realization ko d Soult and wo unfrequent, The imagination of Come..e had no c feulty in lending helf to the ablation. The softness of bie inventions was sueta ted by his inexperience in the common affairs of life. As he introduced into his own ord nary actions none of those ideas which he employed in the creation of his heroes, so, in the conception of his heroes, he introduced none of the ideas of which he made use in ordinary life. He did not place Corneile himself in their position: the observation of nature did not occupy his attention a happy inspiration frequently led him to dream it. Corneille has formed all his characters in conformity with the principle expressed in the following lines from Nicon ède : Prusias. 'Je veux mettre d'accord l'amour et la nature, Eire pere et mari dans cette conjoncture. Nicomède. Seigneur, voulez vous bien vous en fier à moi? Prusias. E, que dois-je être ? Nicomède. Reprenez hautement ce noble caractère; We had intended, when we commenset this paper, to enter into some filer comparison between Cornelle and Sukkspert than we fnd we have spree to accom pist. Perhaps, after what has beer said, the situHHIT might become fatiguing to the reader, and we shall be held to have exercised & WISE discretion in leaving it here in the ther hands of M. Guizot. In justice to the French poet, there is one topic which ought not to be forgonen, and M. Guizot has treated it very sky Corneille lived in what is deezed a more civilized age and country than Shakspeare's; but nevertheless, what we find unnatural in his writings derives a partial excuse from the modes of thought and feeling prevalent in his time. The terrible boasting that £lls His drama was not much greater than what be might have heard from living lords and gentlemen about him; and the strange representation he has sometimes given of the passion of love, was thought by the ladies of that period to be a very faithful delineation. "At the present day, in order to judge the loves of Cæsar and Cleopatra, of Antiochus and Rodogune, as they were judged by the most talented Roi. and sensible men of the seventeenth century, we "Thus it is that Corneille could never describe a mixed feeling, composed of two opposite feelings, without leaning too much sometimes on one side, and sometimes on the other. In the early acts, Cina execrates Augustus, and in the latter he adores him. Though Polyeucte and the Cid are the pieces in which Corneille has most ably mingled the various affections of the heart. it is very clear that, in the division which he makes between love and duty, when he sets himself to delineate one of these feelings, he cannot help falling into too complete forgetfulness of the other. To the same cause must also be ascribed the variableness of Corneille's maxims, though they are always expressed with the most absolute confidence; and in this way we must explain how it is that his morality is sometimes so severe, and sometimes so lax-that he sometimes enunciates principles of the sternest republicanism, and sometimes of the most servile obedience. The fact is, that, whether Corneille be contemplating the republican or the subject of a king-the hero or the politician-- he abandons himself without reserve to the system, the position, and the character which he is describing. Corneille's heroes most frequently give expression to ideas, and almost to doctrines; their speeches generally con must transport ourselves into the system of love generally adopted at that period, with which Corneille's characters-as it becomes well-educated persons-act in strict conformity. We must resign ourselves to behold in love neither liberty of choice nor suitability of tastes, characters, and habits, nor any of those bonds which become all the more dear as we better appreciate them, and better understand their true motives. To the fashionable world of Corneille's time, love was nothing but an ordinance of Heaven, an influence of the stars, a fatality as inexplicable as it was inevitable. "Perhaps these sudden effects, these sun-strokes of love, which are now the exclusive property of our worst romance-writers, were then able to obtain the belief of a philosopher." [Is not our philosopher of the nineteenth century verging somewhat to the other extreme, and becoming here a little too incredulous ?] "Men and women whose worldly life was carelessly occupied with ideas and intrigues of love, were naturally always susceptible of its influence; and if, as La Rochefoucauld observes, there are some people who would never have fallen in love, if they had not heard love mentioned,' many persons, through hearing it talked of wherever they went, fancied they had found it where it did not exist. Surprised at these effects of the imagination, some men endeavored to explain them by other causes than the influence of the stars; and these causes were generally of a most ridiculous character In order to prove that the seat of love is in the blood, Ségrais relates a story of a German gentleman, whose faithless mistress, desiring to get rid of him, ran him twice through the body with a sword. He did not die of his wounds, bat, strange to say, when he had recovered, says Ségrais, he felt as much indifference for the princess as if he had never loved her, and he attributed this to his loss of blood."" A considerable portion of this volume is occupied by biographical notices of three of the contemporaries of Corneille-Chapelain, Rotrou, and Scarron. The account of Scarron will be found very amusing, and all are good. The companion volume, Shakspeare and his Times, is filled out to the due proportion of a respectable octavo, by reprinting from the Revue Francaise an article on Shakspeare's "Othello," written by the Duke de Broglie, and published here under the title of Shakspeare in France. It is a sprightly paper, full of vivacity and good sense; but it would bear a better appearance in its original garb and place than it does here. There are also separate brief notices of the principal dramas of Shakspeare from the pen of M. Guizot. They contain many excellent remarks on the use Shakspeare made of the materials at his disposal, and on the substantial elements of the character he has introduced. We trace occasionally the foreign critic where he speaks of the style and the qualities of the dialogue. The character of Faulconbridge could not be better described; but, inasmuch as Faulconbridge happens to speak as distinctly and clearly as any one of Shakspeare's heroes, who has much to say, it was not fair to describe his language, in particular, as frequently "falling into a jumble of words." Several observations, indeed, in this portion of the book, appear to us to betray, that, at the time these notices were written, M. Guizot could not have read Shakspeare with that attention which he has probably since done. For instance, Shakspeare has assigned to his Richard II. much admirable poetry; and no home critic has failed to observe, that the dramatic power of our poet is not here put forth in its full force. A king is placed in certain positions, and utters certain sentiments; but you do not even feel that it is the same king that opens the play and that closes it. There is no unity of character. In general, some portion of the beauty of a speech or a scene is lost We have observed that in this play the effect by extracting it from its place in the drama. is reversed, and the beautiful passages of Richard II. read better in the form of quotation. Those pathetic speeches the king utters on his return from Ireland are admirable in themselves: but the king who went to Ireland was a hard, selfish profligate. Mere misfortune would not work the sort of change we feel has taken place. Whether we should have the assent of all English readers to these remarks, we cannot say; but we are sure they will all be surprised to hear that M. Guizot describes "the character of Richard II." as "one of the profoundest conceptions of Shakspeare." But we must not close our notice with this murmur of dissent. The following passage from his critique upon the Tempest, which is throughout very happily written, expresses the peculiar charm that drama possesses; and we cannot better or more agreeably conclude than by presenting it to the reader, and leaving it, as it were, ringing upon his ear: "Whether this be, or be not, I'll not swear,' says old Gonzalo at the conclusion of the Tempest,' when utterly confounded by the marvels which have surrounded him ever since his arrival on the island. It seems as though through the mouth of the honest man of the drrma, Shakspeare desired to express the general effect of this charming and singular work. As brilliant, light, and transparent, as the aerial beings with which it is filled, it scarcely allows itself to be apprehended by reflection; and hardly, through its changeful and diaphanous features, can we feel certain we perceive a subject, a dramatic contexture, and real adventures, feelings, and personages. Nevertheless, it contains all these, and all these are revealed in it; and, in rapid succession, each object in its turn moves the imagination, occupies the attention, and disappears, leaving no trace behind but a confused emotion of pleasure, and an impression of truth, to which we dare not either refuse or grant our belief. "Our revels now are ended; these our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air!" From the New Monthly Magazine. MRS. TROLLOPE. GOETHE complained that modern poets put too much water in their ink. Of many modern novel-wrights, we may similarly, or inversely, complain that they put too little ink in their water. No wonder, then, that the manuscript so soon becomes fade, colorless, illegible, and survives not the "first reading." Even a large piece of bullion will only supply a certain amount of gold-leaf, and cover a limited surface. Genius, too, has its boundaries. If it pass them, it must pay the penalty, and that is sometimes a heavy toll. Genius has no infinite mood. In trying to prove that it has, it becomes an irregular verb. Mrs. Trollope is one of those who, by over-writing, refuse to do themselves justice. At least, she writes too fast, and gives way too indulgently to the rash speed of her gray-goose quill, so that it sometimes, in the nature of things, leads her a wild-goose chase. Her gold-leaf is beaten too thin; her ink, though abounding in gall, is diluted with too much water. Not that we hold the impossibility of a prolific author being a great author, confronted as such a theory is by ancient and medieval literature, belied as such an unwise saw is by so many modern instances. But there are cases in which the fecundity proves the weakness of the offspring, as well as the vigor of the parent. The talent is too widely diffused, instead of being wisely concentrated. Three or four of Mrs. Trollope's works are marked by a more terse and compact habit of thought, and show, by their superiority to the rest of the family, what she can produce when she likes. Assuredly this lady's industry and exuberance of invention entitle her to the proverbial name she enjoys, or endures, for prolific authorship. With Virgil's rustic we may admiringly exclaim : O quoties, et quæ nobis Galatea locuta est! * In vain have reviewers tried to keep up with her. A blue-stocking who travels in seven-leagued boots may well run critics and *Bucol. III., 72. criticasters out of breath-she triumphantly ascending the hill difficulty, as fresh as a daisy, while they wallow, and struggle, and give up the race (and almost the ghost) in the Slough of Despond. Pant and puff as they will to run her home, she is in a trice miles out of sight, over the hills and far away, and wondering what those sluggard lameters are doing in the rear. It was once suggested by Tom Moore,* as an expedient to keep pace with the celeritas incredibilis of certain literary Cæsars, that they should each have a reviewer appointed expressly, auprès de sa personne, to give the earliest intelligence of his movements, and to do justice to his multifarious enterprises. But would one such officer suffice in the case of Mrs. Trollope? We trow not. Poor wight, he would "strike" ere the first year was out; and his successor, however able-bodied and conscientious a man-of-all-work, would find the accumulated arrears too much for him, protest that the place was too hard for him, and go off at a month's warning. What a Lady Bountiful hath Mrs. Trollope been to printers, Marlborough-street puff-factors, Wellington-street advertising columns, provincial paper-makers, and eke, we fear, to universal trunk-makers! The prosiest of utilitarians must be sensible to the weight of her claims in this economical aspect, and must reverence (in spite of his nil admirari temperament) the colossal scale on which she has employed national capital and labor. Nor is she ever weary in this well-doing, nor does she ever betray symptoms of fatigue. Again and again are novel-readers on the wrong scent, and have quite lost the trail, when asking one another, "Have you read Mrs. Trollope's last?" finding that what they supposed her most recent venture has been superseded by two or three others, and that the hypothetical "last" is neither the ultimate, nor penultimate, nor even antepenultimate, but quite an old story in the rationale of circulating libraries. And we have a profound * In his "Edinburgh Review" of Lord Thurl ow's Poems, September, 1814. conviction that so inveterate is this kalo or kakoethes scribendi in her constitution-and so impressed is she with the resolution not to suffer the cold oblivion implied in the adage, "Out of sight, out of mind"-that she will be found to have taken measures for many a year to come, by which her perpetual reappearance shall be ensured. Depend upon it, her literary executors will be entrusted with the supervision of a few bales of "copy," containing work for generations of compositors and readers yet unborn; so that novels of the approved Trollope fabric may, by a judiciously frugal rate of publication (say two or three per annum), be made to last some half-way into the next century. If, however, our prognostications should be disproved by the event, we shall console ourselves with the reflection that it was only because the novelist's will was wanting; and if we chance to survive her, we shall battle as stoutly as ever in behalf of her power to have worked out this paulo-post-futurum. Our faith in her potentiality is illimitable. But there are uch things as "foiled potentialities," as Mr. Carlyle so graphically shows and that fact must be our apology, if Time, the Avenger, should call us false prophets, or other bad names. But we must leave to the New Monthly critic of A. D. 1950 the duty of defending our hallowed memory on this score. Satire is, perhaps, the characteristic of Mrs. Trollope's writings-satire of a hard, poignant, persevering sort, which is little. akin to the more graceful raillery of Mrs. Gore, or to Thackeray's good-natured irony. It wears an almost vicious look-goes about seeking whom it may devour-snaps at strangers-bites as well as barks, and, when it does bite, makes its teeth meet. There is nothing reserved or indefinite in its vocables; it carries no trace of "equivocal generation ;" it beats about no bush, nor strives to break the fall of its victims, nor meditates excuse for its own hostility. To "damn with faint praise," it knows not; to "hesitate dislike," it scornfully repudiates. It is alien from all those refined equivoques and dissembling sarcasms which, to compass their ends, assent with civil leer, And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike.† grained, and do not fall on pleasant places. In anatomizing her subjects. Mrs. Trollope shows no profound psychological science; in fact, her incisions are often but skin-deep; but then she gashes to and fro after a terrible sort, and produces jagged wounds, and leaves unsightly scars, and seems to revel in diagrams of morbid pathology. Her illustrations are generally lively, not always truthful, and frequently farfetched. The absurdities and abuses of social life have had few sharper inquisitors, but many of abler discrimination and more practical judgment. Fools and villains are not to be shamed and reformed, or their ugliness to be made a warning, by unqualified expositions of their actual or their ideal excesses. Satire, by being too broad, too unconditional, too straightforward, defeats its being's end and aim. Its acute angles become obtuse, and its parallel lines never meet their object. According to Sir Walter Scott, the nicest art of satire lies in a skilful mixture of applause and blame; there must be an appearance of candor, and just so much merit allowed, even to the object of censure, as to make the picture natural. But in no case is Mrs. Trollope a friend to the media via. If she scolds, it must be vehemently; if she admires, it must be sweepingly-like the duke, with whom Railing and praising were the usual themes, In the same manner, her humorists are too often buffoons; her wit trenches on caricature; her romance goes Surrey melodramatic lengths; her comedy merges in farce. A blackguard à la Trollope is all black. In reading her fictions we are consciously en rapport with a clear-seeing and clever woman, who surprises us with the extent, the variety, and the lucidity of her visions; but we feel the while that truth and nature are sacrificed or forgotten-that the clairvoyance is a skilful delusion, the performance a makebelieve, the performer a professional artiste. Sometimes, indeed, Mrs. Trollope draws from life, and supplies the finishing touches as well as the outline from the same source. But, as a rule, she overdoes nature, or contrives to do without it-novis saltem judicibus. *Thus, Dryden's Portraiture of Shaftesbury Its lines are deeply indented and coarsely (" Absalom and Achitophel") qualifies the censure so artfully with praise of his talents, as to render his faults even more conspicuous and more hateful.— Scott's "Life of Dryden," § 5. |