484 



CORNEILLE 



CORNELIUS 



self-reliance which seems more than human, and 

 therefore moves us the less. His heroines, his 

 'adorable furies,' resemble one another closely. 

 ' Their love,' says Sainte-Beuve, 'springs from the 

 head rather than the heart. We feel that Corneille 

 knew little of women." Where he excels his rivals 

 is in the grandeur of his morality, in the eloquence 

 and passion of certain scenes and speeches, in the 

 splendid flashes of poetry with which he illumines 

 the pale world of classic tragedy, in the power and 

 music of his verse. Victor Hugo alone has made 

 the Alexandrine move with the same swelling har- 

 mony and variety of cadence. The monotony which 

 so often weighs on Corneille's readers was not due 

 to any coldness or narrowness inherent in his 

 genius. To be convinced of this it is enough to 

 recall the brilliant comedy of the Menteur, the 

 martial stir and glowing passion of the Cid, the 

 lyric grace and chastened ardour of the central love- 

 scene in Psych6. But his powers were in a measure 

 misdirected. His place in literature must always 

 be a very high one ; but readers other than French 

 readers, at least can hardly doubt that it would 

 have been still higher had he been free to select 

 and develop his characters at will, to exercise his 

 humorous faculty and give full scope to his tragic 

 powers in the fields of romantic drama. 



See Guizot's Corneille ct son Temps ( 1852 ; Eng. trans. 

 1857 ) ; Jules Taschereau's Histoire de P. Corneille (1828 ; 

 new ed. 1855) ; Sainte-Beuve's Portraits Litteraires (tome 

 i.) and Port Royal (tome i.); Bouquet, Points obscurs 

 de la Vie de Corneille (1888); Trollope, Corneille and 

 Racine ( 1881 ) ; and Prof. Lodge, A Study in Corneille 

 ( Bait. 1891 ). The best editions are those by Lef evre ( 12 

 vols. 1854), and Marty -Laveaux (12 vols. 1862-67). See 

 M. E. Picot's Bibliographie Cornelicnne ( 1875 1. 



Corneille* THOMAS, younger brother of the 

 great Corneille, was born at Rouen on August 20, 

 1625. He was a dramatist of considerable merit, 

 was made a member of the Academy in 1685, and 

 died at Andelys on December 17, 1709. His trage- 

 dies, Gamma, Laodice, Pyrrhus, Berenice, Timocrate, 

 Ariane, Bradamante, &c., are in general superior 

 to his comedies. He also wrote a verse -translation 

 of Ovid's Metamorphoses. 



Cornel, or CORNELIAN CHERRY (Cornus mas), 

 the Cornus of the ancients, a small tree of the 

 order Cornacese, is a native of the middle and south 

 of Europe, and of great part of Asia. It is not 

 found wild in Britain, although it is common in 

 shrubberies, and was formerly much cultivated as 

 a fruit-tree, as it still is in Germany and other parts 

 of Europe. It has oval leaves, and small yellow 

 heads of flowers, which appear before the leaves in 

 spring, and which are much frequented by bees. 

 The fruit is oblong, a little larger than a sloe, 

 shining, red, or rarely yellow or white. It is late 

 in ripening, and until quite ripe is very austere ; 

 but when perfectly mellow has an agreeable vinous 

 acid taste ; it is also made into a preserve, or 

 gathered unripe and pickled like olives. It was 

 formerly also fermented for a beverage. In Turkey 

 it is much used in making sherbet. The wood of 

 the cornel is extremely hard and tough, and was 

 used by the ancient Greeks for lance-shafts ; it is 

 still valued by joiners, turners, and instrument- 

 makers. Dwarf Cornel (C. suecica), a native 

 of mountain-pastures and bogs throughout the 

 north of Europe and in Britain, is a herb about 6 

 inches high, \y^i its umbels surrounded by four 

 white bracts. jflwuall sweetish red fruit is tonic, 

 and is said t<^VRBise the appetite, whence the 

 Gaelic name ^mn^of Gluttony. Dogwood (q.v. ) 

 belongs to the same genus. 



Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi. See GRACCHUS. 



Cornelian. See CARNELIAN. 



Cornelisz, LUCAS, a Dutch subject and por- 

 trait-painter, was born at Leyden in 1495, the son 



of Cornelis Engelbrechtsen, the master of Lucas 

 van Leyden. He was instructed in art by his 

 father, but found little patronage in his own 

 country, and was obliged, for the support of his 

 large family, to act as a cook, whence his usual 

 sobriquet of Kok ( ' the cook ' ). He visited Eng- 

 land, probably in 1527, and was appointed by 

 Henry VIII. royal painter. There is ground 

 for believing that, after remaining some five years 

 in England, Cornelisz passed to Italy, and between 

 1535-47 was employed by the court of Ferrara. 

 He is stated to have died in 1552. Several of his 

 works are in England. 



Cornelius Nepos. See NEPOS. 



Cornelius, PETER VON, one of the first masters 

 of the modern German school of painting, was born 

 at Diisseldorf, 23d September 1783, and studied 

 in the academy of his native town. When only 

 nineteen years of age, he painted some remarkable 

 frescoes for the old church of Neuss. Four years 

 later he gave still more unmistakable proofs of 

 a creative fancy in his illustrations of Goethe's 

 Faust and the Nibelungen Lied. In 1811 he 

 went to Rome, and joined the group of Veit, 

 Schadow, and other Germans who were there 

 at work, Overbeck being his chosen friend. 

 This journey exercised a profound influence on 

 the whole of his future career. The great im- 

 portance of the early masters became ever clearer 

 to him as he studied their choicest productions. 

 While at Rome he aided in the decoration of the 

 Casa Bartoldi, and gained wide reputation by two 

 cartoons, ' Joseph's Interpretation of the Dream ' 

 and ' Joseph's Recognition of his Brethren.' From 

 Rome he passed to Diisseldorf, where he became 

 director of the academy, which he remodelled ; in 

 1819 he was called to Munich, and entered the 

 service of the then crown-prince of Bavaria. Here 

 he remained till 1841, and executed those grand 

 works on which his fame mainly rests, and which 

 may be divided into two classes, Pagan and 

 Christian, the former of which comprises the large 

 frescoes in the saloon of the Glyptothek, all illus- 

 trating stories of the Greek gods and heroes ; while 

 the latter, or Christian series, begun after the com- 

 pletion of the former in 1830, consists of frescoes of 

 New Testament scenes, extending from the ' Incar- 

 nation ' to the 'Judgment,' and decorates the 'Lud- 

 wig's Church ' in Munich, which was built for the 

 purpose of affording scope for the genius of 

 Cornelius. The ' Judgment ' is the largest fresco 

 in the world, larger even than Michael Angelo's 

 ' Judgment ' in the Sistine Chapel. In 1841 

 Cornelius was invited by the king of Prussia to 

 Berlin, where he was appointed director of the 

 Berlin Academy. Among his productions in the 

 Prussian capital are the frescoes for the Campo 

 Santo, or royal burial-place, where his ' Four 

 Riders of the Apocalypse ' display an impetuous 

 and daring power which he had not hitherto 

 evinced. Opinion is divided regarding the merits 

 of Cornelius. By his own countrymen he is 

 much admired ; and certainly the importance 

 of the impetus which he gave to mural decora- 

 tion in Germany cannot be overestimated. French 

 critics, on the other hand, regard him as more 

 a thinker than an artist. He is admitted to 

 have been a profoundly creative genius, but with- 

 out mastery in manipulation or great power as a 

 colourist. He formed, however, a school, from 

 which have gone forth many illustrious pupils ; but 

 he lived to see it losing hold on public sympathy. 

 A series of his cartoons is preserved in the National 

 Gallery, Berlin, and his works have been repro- 

 duced by Amsler, Schoefer, Eberle, and the best 

 German engravers. He died in Berlin, 6th March 

 1867. See his Life by Forster (2 vols. Berlin, 1874). 



