CORNARO CORNEILLE. 



459 



average sales in certain specified places for a given 

 time ; and, when it rises above a certain other fixed 



Erice, the importation is permitted. By Mr Burke's 

 ill, wheat might be exported when the price was 

 under 44 shillings the quarter, and imported when it 

 was over 48 shillings. The home grower is, there- 

 fore, sure to be free from foreign competition at any 

 price under 48 shillings, and this gives him confidence 

 in pursuing this species of cultivation. The rates or 

 prices at which exportation and importation have 

 since been allowed, have varied, from time to time 

 very materially ; but the principles of the laws and 

 their effect are the same. This system is allowed 

 by Mr Malthus and many others, who are, in gene- 

 ral, opposed to restrictions and encouragements of 

 trade, to be the best system by which the home 

 supply could be secured; and they further think, 

 that Great Britain could not safely open its ports to 

 a perfectly free trade in so essential an article, since 

 the fluctuations of price and the occasional scarcity, 

 in consequence of wars or other interruptions of trade, 

 with the countries depended upon for a supply, would 

 produce great distress, and tend to breed disturbances 

 and riots in the kingdom. 



CORNARO, LUDOVICO, was descended from a 

 Venetian family which had given beveral doges to 

 Venice, and, in the 15th century, a queen to the 

 island of Cyprus, who left that kingdom to the 

 Venetian republic. He died at Padua, in 1566, aged 

 104 years, without pain or struggle. From the 25th 

 to the 40th year of his age, he was afflicted with a 

 disordered stomach, with the gout, and with slow 

 fevers, till at length he gave up the use of medicine, 

 and accustomed himself to extreme frugality in his 

 diet. The beneficial effects of this he relates in 

 his b6ok entitled The Advantages of a temperate Life. 

 Cornaro's precepts are not, indeed, applicable, in 

 their full extent, to every constitution ; but his 

 general rules will always be correct. His diseases 

 vanished, and gave place to a vigorous health and 

 tranquillity of spirits, to which he had hitherto been 

 an entire stranger. He wrote three additional 

 treatises on the same subject. In his work upon the 

 Birth and Death of Man, which he composed in his 

 95th year, he says of himself, " I am now as 

 healthy as any person of twenty-five years of age. 

 I write daily seven or eight hours, and the rest of 

 the time I occupy in walking, conversing, and occa- 

 sionally in attending concerts. I am happy, and 

 relish everything tliat I eat. My Pagination is 

 lively, my memory tenacious ; my judgment good ; 

 and, what is most remarkable, in a person of my 

 advanced age, my voice is strong and harmonious." 

 CORNEILLE, PETER, the founder of French 

 tragedy, and the first, in point of time, among tlie 

 great authors of the age of Louis XIV., was born at 

 Kouen, June 6, 1606, at which place his father was 

 advocate-general. In his later and more finished 

 works, he showed how much the court intrigues, and 

 the troubles which prevailed during the first years of 

 the reign of Louis XIII., had influenced the forma- 

 tion of his character. A somewhat equivocal success 

 with the mistress of his friend, to whom he was unsus- 

 pectingly introduced by her lover, lirst made him a 

 comic writer. He related this adventure in verse, 

 and brought it on the stage, under the name of 

 Melite, in the year 1629. Its great success encour- 

 aged him to persevere, and he sooy produced 

 Clitandre, La f'euve, and La Galerie du Palais, La 

 Suivante and La Place Royale, the last of which 

 appeared in 1635. The success of these pieces was 

 so great, and the applause so universal, that a par- 

 ticular company of actors was established for their 

 performance, and many of them, modernized in some 

 respects, retain their place on the stage to this day. 



The neglect of nature was common to Corneille with 

 his contemporaries. His Medea, produced in 1635, 

 was imitated from Seneca, and written in the decla- 

 matory style of that author. At that time, cardinal 

 Richelieu retained several poets in his pay, who 

 were obliged to write comedies from plots furnished 

 by him. Corneille was about to place himself in 

 the same, situation ; but a change, which he took 

 the liberty of making, in a plot submitted to him, 

 offended the cardinal, and prevented the execution of 

 this plan. He then withdrew to Rouen, where he 

 met monsieur de Chalon, the former secretary of 

 Mary of Medici, who advised him to turn his atten- 

 tion to tragedy, and recommended the Spanish 

 writers as models. Upon this, Corneille learned the 

 Spanish language, and, in 1636, produced the del, 

 which confirmed the predictions of his intelligent 

 friend. Cardinal Richelieu was the only person who 

 did not join in the general admiration, and, mortified 

 by the poet's open rejection of his offered patronage, 

 induced the newly-established academy to decry the 

 merits of the Cid. Chapelain, by whom the criticism 

 was written, attempted to satisfy the founder, with- 

 out too much offending the general opinion. The 

 Sentiment de ['Academic Francais sur la Tragi come die 

 du Cid is, therefore, more creditable to the learning 

 than to the taste of the French literati. Others 

 hoped, by decrying the poet, to obtain the favour of 

 the minister. 



But the works . of Corneille were a sufficient 

 answer to their attacks. In 1639, his Horaces made 

 its appearance (the earlier editions had the title 

 Horace, but the later ones have Horaces), whereby 

 he refuted the reproach of a deficiency of invention; 

 which wns, however, repeated, when he brought out 

 his Heraciius, in 1647, imitated from Calderon, and 

 the Menteur, in 1642, after Pedro de Roxas. This 

 objection, perhaps, was the cause of the poet's leav- 

 ing modern subjects ; for henceforward, he applied 

 himself almost exclusively to the Roman ; and the 

 strict patriotism of the ancient, with the artful 

 politics of the more modern Romans, as an ingenious 

 critic says, now took the place of that chivalric 

 honour and faith, the representation of which in the 

 Cid shows him to participate in the spirit of the 

 Spanish dramatic writers. The French critics are 

 inclined to consider China, which appeared in 1639, 

 as his masterpiece ; 1 ut foreigners will not place it 

 above Polyeucte. The happy blending of the pathe- 

 tic with the dignified gravity to which Corneille so 

 much inclines, makes this piece more attractive than 

 the others. In the Mart de Pompee, which appeared 

 in 1641, the nnble dignity of the piece cannot excuse 

 its bombast. In his Menteur, nature and truth of 

 description take the place of the artificial tone then 

 prevalent; and a comparison of this piece with the 

 Spanish original (La Sospechosa Per Had) may be in- 

 structive to the friends of dramatic literature. At 

 length, the genius of this prolific poet seemed to have 

 been exhausted. Rhodtigwne, the favourite ot 

 Corneille, produced in 1646, leaves a painful impres- 

 sion, and the artful combination of the accumulated 

 terrors of the piece cannot redeem it. 



The latter works of Corneille (e. g., Heraciius, 

 which appeared in 1647, Don Sanche d'Arragon, 

 Andromede, a piece with music, processions, and 

 dancing), are less known, and, according to the 

 opinion of the French, less worthy of being so, with 

 the exception of Kicomede, which appeared in 1652, 

 and which was revived by Talma, and still maintains 

 its place upon the stage. The disdainful scorn of 

 fate, in the hero of this piece, is susceptible of very 

 great effect ; but that rhetorical antithesis prevails 

 in it which is found in many of Corneille's pieces. 

 Pertharite, in 1653, failed entirely. Becoming dis- 



