of Achille and Bajazet. But these
are all the defects which can be fairly urged against him; and in a
dramatist bound to a less strict service they would hardly have been
even remarked. They certainly neither require, nor are palliated by,
theories of his "megalomania," of his excessive attention to conflicts
of will and the like. On the English stage the liberty of unrestricted
incident and complicated action, the power of multiplying characters and
introducing prose scenes, would have exactly suited his somewhat
intermittent genius, 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. "Admiration" may or may not
properly be excited by tragedy, and until this important question is
settled the name of tragedian may be at pleasure given to or withheld
from the author of _Rodogune_. But 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.

_The Plays._--It was, however, some time before his genius came to
perfection. It is undeniable that the first six or seven of his plays
are of no very striking intrinsic merit. On the other hand, it requires
only a very slight acquaintance with the state of the drama in France at
the time to see that these works, poor as they may now seem, must have
struck the spectators as something new and surprising. The language and
dialogue of _Melite_ are on the whole simple and natural, and though the
construction is not very artful (the fifth act being, as is not unusual
in Corneille, superfluous and clumsy), it is still passable. The fact