Part 80

In 1675 he terminated his career. In the last year of his life his mind became so enfeebled as to be incapable of thinking, and he died in extreme poverty. It is true that his uncommon genius had been amply rewarded; but amongst his talents that of preserving the favours of fortune he had not acquired.

Fontenelle, his nephew, presents a minute and interesting description of this great man. Vigneul Marville says, that when he saw Corneille he had the appearance of a country tradesman, and he could not conceive how a man of so rustic an appearance could put into the mouths of his Romans such heroic sentiments. Corneille was sufficiently large and full in his person; his air simple and vulgar; always negligent; and very little solicitous of pleasing by his exterior. His face had something agreeable, his nose large, his mouth not unhandsome, his eyes full of fire, his physiognomy lively, with strong features, well adapted to be transmitted to posterity on a medal or bust. His pronunciation was not very distinct: and he read his verses with force, but without grace.

He was acquainted with polite literature, with history, and politics; but he generally knew them best as they related to the stage. For other knowledge he had neither leisure, curiosity, nor much esteem. He spoke little, even on subjects which he perfectly understood. He did not embellish what he said, and to discover the great Corneille it became necessary to read him.

He was of a melancholy disposition, had something blunt in his manner, and sometimes he appeared rude; but in fact he was no disagreeable companion, and made a good father and husband. He was tender, and his soul was very susceptible of friendship. His constitution was very favourable to love, but never to debauchery, and rarely to violent attachment. His soul was fierce and independent: it could never be managed, for it would never bend. This, indeed, rendered him very capable of portraying Roman virtue, but incapable of improving his fortune. Nothing equalled his incapacity for business but his aversion: the slightest troubles of this kind occasioned him alarm and terror. He was never satiated with praise, although he was continually receiving it; but if he was sensible to fame, he was far removed from vanity.

What Fontenelle observes of Corneille's love of fame is strongly proved by our great poet himself, in an epistle to a friend, in which we find the following remarkable description of himself; an instance that what the world calls vanity, at least interests in a great genius.

Nous nous aimons un peu, c'est notre foible à tous; Le prix que nous valons que le sçait mieux que nous? Et puis la mode en est, et la cour l'autorise, Nous parlons de nous-mêmes avec toute franchise, La fausse humilité ne met plus en credit. Je sçais ce que je vaux, et crois ce qu'on m'en dit, Pour me faire admirer je ne fais point de ligue; J'ai peu de voix pour moi, mais je les ai sans brigue; Et mon ambition, pour faire plus de bruit Ne les va point quêter de réduit en réduit. Mon travail sans appui monte sur le theâtre, Chacun en liberté l'y blame ou idolâtre; Là, sans que mes amis prêchent leurs sentimens, J'arrache quelquefois leurs applaudissemens; Là, content da succès que le mérite donne, Par d'illustres avis je n'éblouis personne; Je satisfais ensemble et peuple et courtisans; Et mes vers en tous lieux sent mes seuls partisans; Par leur seule beauté ma plume est estimée; Je ne dois qu'à moi seul toute ma renommée; Et pense toutefois n'avoir point de rival, A qui je fasse tort, en le traitant d'égal.

I give his sentiments in English verse.

Self-love prevails too much in every state; Who, like ourselves, our secret worth can rate? Since 'tis a fashion authorised at court, Frankly our merits we ourselves report. A proud humility will not deceive; I know my worth; what others say, believe. To be admired I form no petty league; Few are my friends, but gain'd without intrigue. My bold ambition, destitute of grace, Scorns still to beg their votes from place to place. On the fair stage my scenic toils I raise, While each is free to censure or to praise; And there, unaided by inferior arts, I snatch the applause that rushes from their hearts. Content by Merit still to win the crown, With no illustrious names I cheat the town. The galleries thunder, and the pit commends; My verses, everywhere, my only friends! 'Tis from their charms alone my praise I claim; 'Tis to myself alone, I owe my fame; And know no rival whom I fear to meet, Or injure, when I grant an equal seat.

Voltaire censures Corneille for making his heroes say continually they are great men. But in drawing the character of a hero he draws his own. All his heroes are only so many Corneilles in different situations.

Thomas Corneille attempted the same career as his brother; perhaps his name was unfortunate, for it naturally excited a comparison which could not be favourable to him. Gaçon, the Dennis of his day, wrote the following smart impromptu under his portrait:--

Voyant le portrait de Corneille, Gardez-vous de crier merveille; Et dans vos transports n'allez pas Prendre ici Pierre pour Thomas.

POETS.

In all ages there has existed an anti-poetical party. This faction consists of those frigid intellects incapable of that glowing expansion so necessary to feel the charms of an art, which only addresses itself to the imagination; or of writers who, having proved unsuccessful in their court to the muses, revenge themselves by reviling them; and also of those religious minds who consider the ardent effusions of poetry as dangerous to the morals and peace of society.

Plato, amongst the ancients, is the model of those moderns who profess themselves to be ANTI-POETICAL.

This writer, in his ideal republic, characterises a man who occupies himself with composing verses as a very dangerous member of society, from the inflammatory tendency of his writings. It is by arguing from its abuse, that he decries this enchanting talent. At the same time it is to be recollected, that no head was more finely organised for the visions of the muse than Plato's: he was a true poet, and had addicted himself in his prime of life to the cultivation of the art, but perceiving that he could not surpass his inimitable original, Homer, he employed this insidious manner of depreciating his works. In the Phædon he describes the feelings of a genuine Poet. To become such, he says, it will never be sufficient to be guided by the rules of art, unless we also feel the ecstasies of that furor, almost divine, which in this kind of composition is the most palpable and least ambiguous character of a true inspiration. Cold minds, ever tranquil and ever in possession of themselves, are incapable of producing exalted poetry; their verses must always be feeble, diffusive, and leave no impression; the verses of those who are endowed with a strong and lively imagination, and who, like Homer's personification of Discord, have their heads incessantly in the skies, and their feet on the earth, will agitate you, burn in your heart, and drag you along with them; breaking like an impetuous torrent, and swelling your breast with that enthusiasm with which they are themselves possessed.

Such is the character of a poet in a poetical age!--The tuneful race have many corporate bodies of mechanics; Pontypool manufacturers, inlayers, burnishers, gilders, and filers!

Men of taste are sometimes disgusted in turning over the works of the anti-poetical, by meeting with gross railleries and false judgments concerning poetry and poets. Locke has expressed a marked contempt of poets; but we see what ideas he formed of poetry by his warm panegyric of one of Blackmore's epics! and besides he was himself a most unhappy poet! Selden, a scholar of profound erudition, has given us his opinion concerning poets. "It is ridiculous for a lord to print verses; he may make them to please himself. If a man in a private chamber twirls his band-strings, or plays with a rush to please himself, it is well enough; but if he should go into Fleet-street, and sit upon a stall and twirl a band-string, or play with a rush, then all the boys in the street would laugh at him."--As if "the sublime and the beautiful" can endure a comparison with the twirling of a band-string or playing with a rush!--A poet, related to an illustrious family, and who did not write unpoetically, entertained a far different notion concerning poets. So persuaded was he that to be a true poet required an elevated mind, that it was a maxim with him that no writer could be an excellent poet who was not descended from a noble family. This opinion is as absurd as that of Selden:--but when one party will not grant enough, the other always assumes too much. The great Pascal, whose extraordinary genius was discovered in the sciences, knew little of the nature of poetical beauty. He said "Poetry has no settled object." This was the decision of a geometrician, not of a poet. "Why should he speak of what he did not understand?" asked the lively Voltaire. Poetry is not an object which comes under the cognizance of philosophy or wit.

Longuerue had profound erudition; but he decided on poetry in the same manner as those learned men. Nothing so strongly characterises such literary men as the following observations in the Longueruana, p. 170.

"There are two books on Homer, which I prefer to Homer himself. The first is Antiquitates Homericæ of Feithius, where he has extracted everything relative to the usages and customs of the Greeks; the other is, Homeri Gnomologia per Duportum, printed at Cambridge. In these two books is found everything valuable in Homer, without being obliged to get through his Contes à dormir debout!" Thus men of science decide on men of taste! There are who study Homer and Virgil as the blind travel through a fine country, merely to get to the end of their journey. It was observed at the death of Longuerue that in his immense library not a volume of poetry was to be found. He had formerly read poetry, for indeed he had read everything. Racine tells us, that when young he paid him a visit; the conversation turned on poets; our erudit reviewed them all with the most ineffable contempt of the poetical talent, from which he said we learn nothing. He seemed a little charitable towards Ariosto.--"As for that madman," said he, "he has amused me sometimes." Dacier, a poetical pedant after all, was asked who was the greater poet, Homer or Virgil? he honestly answered, "Homer by a thousand years!"

But it is mortifying to find among the anti-poetical even poets themselves! Malherbe, the first poet in France in his day, appears little to have esteemed the art. He used to say that "a good poet was not more useful to the state than a skilful player of nine-pins!" Malherbe wrote with costive labour. When a poem was shown to him which had been highly commended, he sarcastically asked if it would "lower the price of bread?" In these instances he maliciously confounded the useful with the agreeable arts. Be it remembered, that Malherbe had a cynical heart, cold and unfeeling; his character may be traced in his poetry; labour and correctness, without one ray of enthusiasm.

Le Clerc was a scholar not entirely unworthy to be ranked amongst the Lockes, the Seldens, and the Longuerues; and his opinions are as just concerning poets. In the Parhasiana he has written a treatise on poets in a very unpoetical manner. I shall notice his coarse railleries relating to what he calls "the personal defects of poets." In vol. i. p. 33, he says, "In the Scaligerana we have Joseph Scaliger's opinion concerning poets. 'There never was a man who was a poet, or addicted to the study of poetry, but his heart was puffed up with his greatness.'--This is very true. The poetical enthusiasm persuades those gentlemen that they have something in them superior to others, because they employ a language peculiar to themselves. When the poetic furor seizes them, its traces frequently remain on their faces, which make connoisseurs say with Horace,

Aut insanit homo, ant versus facit.

There goes a madman or a bard!

"Their thoughtful air and melancholy gait make them appear insane; for, accustomed to versify while they walk, and to bite their nails in apparent agonies, their steps are measured and slow, and they look as if they were reflecting on something of consequence, although they are only thinking, as the phrase runs, of nothing!" I have only transcribed the above description of our jocular scholar, with an intention of describing those exterior marks of that fine enthusiasm, of which the poet is peculiarly susceptible, and which have exposed many an elevated genius to the ridicule of the vulgar.

I find this admirably defended by Charpentier: "Men may ridicule as much as they please those gesticulations and contortions which poets are apt to make in the act of composing; it is certain, however, that they greatly assist in putting the imagination into motion. These kinds of agitation do not always show a mind which labours with its sterility; they frequently proceed from a mind which excites and animates itself. Quintilian has nobly compared them to those lashings of his tail which a lion gives himself when he is preparing to combat. Persius, when he would give us an idea of a cold and languishing oration, says that its author did not strike his desk nor bite his nails."

Nec pluteum cædit, nec demorsos sapit ungues.

These exterior marks of enthusiasm may be illustrated by the following curious anecdote:--Domenichino, the painter, was accustomed to act the characters of all the figures he would represent on his canvas, and to speak aloud whatever the passion he meant to describe could prompt. Painting the martyrdom of St. Andrew, Carracci one day caught him in a violent passion, speaking in a terrible and menacing tone. He was at that moment employed on a soldier who was threatening the saint. When this fit of enthusiastic abstraction had passed, Carracci ran and embraced him, acknowledging that Domenichino had been that day his master; and that he had learnt from him the true manner to succeed in catching the expression--that great pride of the painter's art.

Thus different are the sentiments of the intelligent and the unintelligent on the same subject. A Carracci embraced a kindred genius for what a Le Clerc or a Selden would have ridiculed.