opened his lips in the chamber of deputies, of which he was a member from the year 1832, yet such was the popularity of his political pamphlets, that four different departments returned him to the constituent assembly. Louis Philippe had, unhappily for himself, become open to the suspicion of thinking more of family interests than of those of the nation. Timon accordingly directed his attacks against the civil list, to the great delight of the people, who rejoiced in seeing a king castigated for daring to imitate the virtuous economy of their own private lives. A king had no business with domestic prudence, and so they hallooed on Timon against the royal Harpagon. When, in 1840, the king obliged his ministry to present a bill for allowing a dotation to his second son, the duc de Nemours, it was a pamphlet from Timon which upset the cabinet and the scheme together. Yet Timon was neither a Junius nor a Sydney Smith. He had not the scalding declamation of the one, nor the playful pleasantry and wit which corruscated over the strong common sense of the other. Like most French political writers, Timon was professedly logical, and aimed at convicting the accused of guilt by closely-drawn deductions from well established premises. This apparently scientific profundity was clothed with sharp, pungent, terse assertions, like the body of a porcupine. As he had always voted with the extreme left of the chamber of deputies, Cormenin was thought to be so thorough a republican, that he was actually named president of the committee charged with the drawing up of the constitution. Yet, so little resentment did he seem to bear towards the destroyer of a work for which he might be considered sponsor, that he was one of the first to, accept Louis Napoleon's offer of a place in the council of state. It is not for us to settle the doubts which so extraordinary an instance of versatility in the person of so remarkable a censor of the care of self-interests gave rise to. We have only to add that the day M. de Cormenin abandoned his party, the works of Timon sank into contempt—J. F. C.
CORNEILLE, Michael, a painter of merit, apparently no relation to the illustrious poet. He was born at Paris in 1642. His father, also a painter, was his first instructor in the art. The young Michael, having gained a prize at the Academy of Painting, was sent to study at Rome as one of the government pupils. On his return in 1663, he was admitted into the Academy of Painting, where in course of time he became a professor. Many of Corneille's pictures have been engraved. He himself etched the plates of several. He died at Paris in 1708.—He had a brother, Jean Corneille, who was also a painter of considerable celebrity, and a member of the Académie des Beaux Arts. —B. de B.
CORNEILLE, Pierre, a sublime genius, the founder of the French drama, was born at Rouen in Normandy, 6th June, 1606. He was the eldest son of Pierre Corneille, advocate-general of Rouen. Having adopted the legal profession, he practised for some time in his native city, without exhibiting any indication of the talent which was in a few years to blaze forth, and astonish the world. His first dramatic production, a comedy called "Melite," appeared in 1629, when he was only twenty-three years of age. The extraordinary success of this piece encouraged the author to follow the natural bent of his genius. Six comedies followed each other in quick succession, and laid the basis of his future reputation. In the year 1634 Louis XIII., and his minister Richelieu, visited Rouen; and the archbishop of that diocese, M. de Harlay, engaged Corneille to compose some complimentary Latin verses in honour of the occasion. These brought their author more closely within the favourable notice of the great cardinal, whose discernment had already remarked this rising genius. Richelieu, it is well known, retained certain authors in his pay, and employed them in composing plays under his own superintendence. He accorded to each a pension; and those who were most happy in pleasing him received still more substantial marks of his satisfaction. Into this corps, sometimes called the cardinal's five authors, Corneille was admitted—a great honour! for he was looked upon as the least important of the set. Quarrelling, however, with his overbearing patron, he withdrew to his private life and occupations at Rouen, where he soon produced his first attempt at tragedy—"Medea." About this time Corneille turned his attention to Spanish literature, and out of Guillen da Castro's obscure drama, grew the glories of "The Cid," represented in 1636. Voltaire remarks that the appearance of, this tragedy forms an era in the dramatic poetry of France. Its triumph was immediate and complete. "Beau comme le Cid" (As fine as the Cid), became a phrase in common usage to denote literary excellence. The cardinal, however, stood aloof, and refused to join in the general approbation; but after a time again took the poet into favour. A year or two later, we find Richelieu intervening to remove the obstacles in the way of Corneille's marriage with Marie Lamperière, whose father, the lieutenant-general of Andely, averse to the match, opposed it with all his power. The "Cid" was followed by "Horace" (which the actors, after Corneille's death, corrupted into "Les Horaces"), by "Cinna," by "Polyeucte"—all masterpieces, and crowned, immediately on their appearance, with public applause. The French Academy, after twice closing their doors against the poet, now elected him in 1647 a member of their body, of which he lived long enough to become the senior. Some years earlier, Corneille, resuming for a moment the pen of the comic muse, and once more borrowing a subject from the Spanish dramatists, produced the "Menteur," "The Liar"—the first real comedy, as "The Cid" was the first perfect tragedy, the French theatre had possessed. Molière declared himself indebted to the "Menteur" for some of his best inspirations. At length, after seventeen years of triumph, the success of Corneille encountered a check. The tragedy of "Pertharise," represented in 1653, was a complete failure. During the next six years he occupied himself in translating into French verse The Imitation of Jesus Christ (begun some years before), and other devotional pieces. At the end of this period his friends, and chiefly Fouquet—Louis XIV.'s famous prime minister—persuaded him to resume the drama. He did so, with the tragedy of "Œdipe," the subject proposed to him by Fouquet himself, and which was attended with his former success. Between 1659 and 1667, Corneille's prolific genius produced a tragedy every year, but symptoms of his declining power began to appear. These later works are greatly below his former masterpieces, and were received with increasing coldness by the public.
Solidity, good sense, and nobleness of sentiment, were the foundation of Corneille's character as of his poetry. A good husband and father, a sincere and tender friend, his enjoyments were centred in his domestic circle, and in a few friends whom his upright and loyal nature firmly attached to him. The several pensions which had been conferred on him by the three ministers, Richelieu, Fouquet, and Colbert, expired with the donors. For some time before his death, Corneille suffered the evils of poverty. The generous interference of Boileau, who offered to resign his own pension, provided Corneille's might be restored, obtained a grant of two hundred louis for the sick poet; but it reached him only two days before his death, too late to do him much good.
The house at Rouen in which he was born still exists, and the antique furniture and arrangements of the chamber where he first drew breath are scrupulously preserved. An inscription on a marble slab over the house announces, that "Here in 1606 Pierre Corneille was born." This inscription, and that in the Rue d' Argenteuil in Paris, at the house where he died, were until recently the only memorials extant of the great poet, except, indeed, the imperishable monument of his works. After the death of his mother in 1662, Corneille fixed his residence in Paris, where he passed the remainder of his days. He died on the 1st October, 1684, in the seventy-ninth year of his age.
Pierre Corneille was undoubtedly one of the greatest geniuses the world has seen. Emancipating himself by the vigour of his own understanding and judgment from the licentious dulness and wretched affectations of the dramatists who preceded him, he sought his inspirations from truth and nature, and thus created a style for himself, both of thought and diction. His language was noble, because his conceptions were elevated. His characteristics are, unaffected dignity and force of sentiment—profound thought, uttered with energetic conciseness—and a striking power of delineating the great passions which agitate the human mind. No writer ever better understood the art of investing his personages with suitable language. He excels in the portraiture of his Romans, the artificial grandeur of whose sentiments he had well studied in their historians. His versification is admirable in his best passages, but the French classicists complain that it is unequal and without system. The historians of the time ascribe to the decency and dignity with which Corneille endowed the stage, the tolerance shown to players by the ascetic Louis XIII., and his edict in favour of theatrical amusements. "Tragedy," said Napoleon at St. Helena, "elevates
