translated "Les Plaideurs," a title which has a
legal, and not an amorous, meaning. This play, after it had at first
failed, Louis XIV. laughed into court favor. It became thenceforward a
great success. It still keeps its place on the stage. It is, however, a
farce, rather than a comedy.

We pass over now one or two of the subsequent productions of Racine, to
mention next a play of his which had a singular history. It was a fancy
of the brilliant Princess Henriette (that same daughter of English
Charles I., Bossuet's funeral oration on whom, presently to be spoken
of, is so celebrated) to engage the two great tragedists, Corneille and
Racine, both at once, in labor, without their mutual knowledge, upon the
same subject,--a subject which she herself, drawing it from the history
of Tacitus, conceived to be eminently fit for tragical treatment.
Corneille produced his "Berenice," and Racine his "Titus and Berenice."
The princess died before the two plays which she had inspired were
produced; but, when they were produced, Racine's work won the palm. The
rivalry created a bitterness between the two authors, of which,
naturally, the defeated one tasted the more deeply. An ill-considered
pleasantry, too, of Racine's, in making, out of one of Corneille's
tragic lines in his "Cid," a comic line in "The Suitors," hurt the old
man's pride. That pride suffered a worse hurt still. The chief Parisian
theatre, completely occupied with the works of his victorious rival,
rejected tragedies offered by Corneille.

Still, Racine did not have things all his own way. Some good critics
considered the rage for this younger dramatist a mere passing whim of
fashion. These--Madame de Sevigne was of them--stood by their "old
admiration," and were true to Corneille.

A memorable mortification and chagrin for our poet was now prepared by
his enemies--he seems never to have lacked enemies--with lavish and
elaborate malice. Racine had produced a play from Euripides, the
"Phaedra," on which he had unstintingly bestowed his best genius and his
best art. It was contrived that another poet, one Pradon, should, at the
self-same moment, have a play represented on the self-same subject. At a
cost of many thousands of dollars, the best seats at Racine's theatre
were all bought by his enemies, and left solidly vacant. The best seats
at Pradon's theatre were all bought by the same interested parties, and
duly occupied with industrious and zealous applauders.