e uses might well have been
exchanged for his own language, it must be remembered that even when
Malherbe and Corneille, Racine and Boileau, were writing French, the
older language kept a firm hold on such men as de Thou, Descartes,
Bossuet, Arnauld, and Nicole, who desired to appeal to European
audiences. "Victurus Latium debet habere liber" was their motto; and
by Jesuits and Oratorians, University dignitaries and ecclesiastics,
lawyers and doctors, the same language was used as that in which
Hercule Grisel has preserved the life of the town from 1615 to 1657.

[Illustration: PIERRE CORNEILLE, FROM THE ENGRAVING BY LASNE]

The greatest name of seventeenth-century Rouen is Pierre
Corneille,[73] "ce vieux Romain parmi les francais" as Voltaire called
him; and we may be grateful that after getting the second prize for
Latin verses in the third class of the Jesuit College,[74] he gave up
stilted affectations for the vigorous phrases of his mother-tongue.
Though his brother Thomas passes over the little episode in silence,
his nephew Fontenelle lets us into a literary secret which reveals
Corneille's first love affair in Rouen. In the comedy of "Melite," the
heroine is Catherine the daughter of the Receveur des Aides, Eraste is
the poet himself. In real life, Thomas du Pont, the Tircis of the
play, supplanted his friend and married the lady. It was to another
Rouen acquaintance that Corneille owed the advice to study Spanish
plays, which resulted in his imitations of de Castro, and no doubt the
many Spanish families then settled, for commercial reasons, in the Rue
des Espagnols and elsewhere, helped to turn the young poet's thoughts
in the same direction. His evident knowledge of the details of legal
procedure, when it cannot be ascribed to the natural Norman turn for
lawsuits, is accounted for by his position as Avocat du Roi and one of
the Admiralty Court (called the "Marble Table") of Rouen. Though in
the "Cid" his law is Spanish, and in "Horace" it is a paraphrase of
Livy, yet Corneille was the first to realise that the speeches of
lawyers, which were then little known to the general public, would
form a very interesting scene upon the stage. His immediate success
proved the worth of the idea. But that such success was possible at
all is even more extraordinary than any particular form it may have
taken. He created types for well-nigh every kind of dramatic
literature in France, in the midst of his work as an advocate