"J'ai la plume féconde et la bouche stérile,
Et l'on peut rarement m'écouter sans ennui,
Que quand je me produis par la bouche d'autrui."
In truth, we must agree with Guizot, that the grand old Roman was irrevocably doomed to pass unnoticed in a crowd. And he was content that this should be. For he had his own pride, expressed in his words: "Je sais ce que je vaux." He made no clamor when Georges de Scudéry was proclaimed his superior by the popular voice, which is always the voice of the foolish. And when that shallow charlatan sneered at him in print, he left to Boileau the castigation that was so thoroughly given. His friends had to drive him to the defence of his "Cid" in the Academy, to which he had been elected in 1647. His position with regard to the "Cid" was peculiar and embarrassing; it was Richelieu, the jealous playwright, who attacked the successful tragedy, and it was Richelieu, the all-potent patron, who was to be answered and put in the wrong. The skirmish being ended, with honor to Corneille, he retired into his congenial obscurity and his beloved solitude. And there the world left him, alone with his good little brother Thomas, both contented in their comradeship. For in private life he was easy to get on with, always full of friendliness, always ready of access to those he loved, and, for all his brusque humor and his external rudeness, he was a good husband, father, brother. He shrank from the worldly and successful Racine, who reverenced him; and he was shy of the society of other pen-workers who would have made a companion of him. His independent soul was not softened by any adroitness or tact; he was clumsy in his candor, and not at home in courtier-land; there was not one fibre of the flunky in his simple, sincere, self-respecting frame; and when forced to play that unwonted rôle, he found his back not limber enough for bowing, his knees not sufficiently supple to cringe.
Pierre Corneille.
(From the portrait by Charles Lebrun.)
And in what light he was looked upon by the lazy pensioned lackeys of the court, who hardly knew his face, and not at all his worth, is shown by this extract from one of their manuscript chronicles: "Jeudi, le 15 Octobre, 1684. On apprit à Chambord la mort du bonhomme Corneille."
Jean Racine came to Paris, from his native La Ferté-Milon in the old duchy of Valois—by way of a school at Beauvais, and another near Port-Royal—in 1658, a youth of nineteen, to study in the Collége d'Harcourt. That famous school was in the midst of the Scholars' Quarter, in that part of narrow, winding Rue de la Harpe which is now widened into Boulevard Saint-Michel. On the site of the ancient college, direct heir of its functions and its fame, stands the Lycée Saint-Louis. The buildings that give on the playground behind, seem to belong to the original college, and to have been refaced.
Like Boileau-Despréaux, three years his senior here, the new student preferred poetry to the studies commonly styled serious, and his course in theology led neither to preaching nor to practising. He was a wide and eager reader in all directions, and developed an early and ardent enthusiasm for the Greeks and the Latins.