COR 



231 



COR 



ille. 



-laws weighed little more than a third, and the oxen con- 

 siderably less than half of what they weigh at present. 

 It is not generally known that the city of London con- 

 structed granaries first at Leadenhall, and afterwards 

 in Bridewell; the former in the beginning of the 15th 

 century, the latter in the course of the 16th. Such 

 deposits may now be safely left to the care of indivi- 

 duals ; and one of the greatest blessings attendant on 

 the increased intercourse of nations, in recent ages, is 

 the prevention, as it may be termed, of the occurrence 

 of famine. The stock of one quarter of the world is 

 now so readily transferred to another, that " scarcity 

 and high prices" constitute the extent of an evil, which 

 in former days went the length of absolute privation. 

 Amid all the complicated disadvantages of war and de- 

 ficient crops, the present age has seen no distress equal 

 to that which afflicted the kingdom in the latter years 

 of Elizabeth. 



Among the writers on the side of the corn law sys- 

 tem, Mr Dirom, author of the " Inquiry into the Corn 

 Laws and Corn Trade," occupies a prominent place. 

 He has been indefatigable in collecting the substance 

 of our various statutes, and in bringing forward the 

 arguments which appear to him to support the plan of 

 bounty on the export of our own, and of a duty on 

 the import of foreign corn. A similar policy is recom- 

 mended throughout the voluminous labours of Arthur 

 Young. A later writer, on the same side of the ques- 

 tion, Mr Mackie, author of " Letters on the Corn 

 Lams," directing his attention to the depreciation of 

 money, maintains, that it has been so rapid, that agri- 

 culture has derived little protection from the limits pre- 

 scribed in our late parliamentary regulations. His op- 

 ponents, on the other hand, would be apt to argue that 

 this fall in money has been the cause of preventing mis- 

 chief from government interference. 



The tenets of the political economists in respect to 

 the corn trade, were distinctly brought forward by Dr 

 Smith; and, in the present day, repeatedly enforced 

 in periodical publications. One of the few practi- 

 cal men who has followed, though not completely, the 

 same course, is Mr Comber, a corn merchant, and au- 

 thor of a late " Inquiry into the State of National Sub- 

 siste?ice." A small, but very argumentative tract, on the 

 same side, was published in London in 1 804, under the 

 title of " An Essay on the Impolicy of a Bounty on the 

 Expnrtation of Corn." (%) 



CORNEA. See Eye, Optics, and Surgery. 



CORNEILLE, Pierre, an eminent poet, to whom 

 France is indebted for the first and most essential im- 

 provements of her drama. This celebrated name creates 

 more interest in British minds than that of any other 

 foreign poet, because it has been more connected with 

 the rivalship which, in arts as well as arms, has so long 

 subsisted between France and England. In the struggle 

 for predominance which adjoining nations never fail to 

 maintain, the people of each are naturally disposed to 

 prefer the genius which their countrymen have dis- 

 played ; and by defending their preference on the prin- 

 ciples of general taste, to resolve that of their oppo- 

 nents into local prejudice. In this manner, the dis- 

 pute respecting the comparative superiority of their 

 national dramatists, has been conducted by French and 

 English authors ; and whenever an appeal is made by 

 the latter to the productions of Shakespeare, as decisive 

 of victory, those of Corneille are uniformly selected by 

 the former, as supplying more than a counterpoise. In 

 this department, therefore, the contest is, in some mea- 

 sure, reduced to a single combat of the leaders, and 



the triumph of either champion appears, by a tacit co- Cornell!?. 

 venant, to secure the dramatic pre-eminence of Lis na- s — -y~^" / 

 tion. 



Corneille was born at Rouen, on the 6th of June 

 160G, eleven years before the death of Shakespeare, 

 and thirty-three before the birth of Racine. His father 

 held the office of warden of the rivers and forests in 

 the vicounty of Rouen, and as a recompence for the 

 services which he had rendered to the crown, received 

 letters of nobility from Louis XIII. Peter, his eldest 

 son, was educated by the Jesuits, and a sense of the 

 benefits which he had derived from the care of that 

 learned and laborious society, inspired him, through 

 life, with the warmest gratitude and reverence for its 

 members. Being called to the bar, he began to prac- 

 tise with little satisfaction or success, and acted for 

 some time as advocate-general in one of the courts of 

 his native city. But though his outset was misdirect- 

 ed, the first impulse of his tender passions turned his 

 genius into its natural path. Perceiving that he had 

 captivated the affections of a young woman, when in- 

 troduced to her by one of his companions, who was 

 her lover, the incident dwelt so strongly on his mind, 

 that he made it the ground-work of a dramatic essay, 

 which was represented under the title of Melite, in 

 1625, when the writer was only nineteen. Part of the 

 profits which it produced are said to have been received 

 by Hardy, the immediate predecessor of Corneille in 

 dramatic poetry, according to a contract with the ma- 

 nagers, by which Hardy engaged to furnish them with 

 new pieces, on condition that he shared the produce of 

 all which were accepted for representation from the pen 

 of others Though this early attempt of Corneille was 

 much inferior to the productions of his ripe and prac- 

 tised genius, its success with the public, which was so 

 great as to occasion- the formation of a new company of 

 comedians, and the delight he had felt in its composi- 

 tion, induced him to persevere in writing for the stage. 

 Corneille was prevented, by the diffidence of youth, 

 from the boldness of forming a style for himself in his 

 first performance. He contented himself with imita- 

 ting the dramatic practice which then prevailed ; and 

 Melite, therefore, originally contained many of those 

 indelicacies of sentiment, and even of action, which his 

 predecessors had thought requisite to the popularity oi* 

 a play, but which he afterwards corrected. This piece 

 being chiefly censured for want of incident, in the next, 

 which was Clitandre, he erred in the opposite extreme, 

 but settled at a proper medium in his subsequent at- 

 tempts. The earliest of these were principally come- 

 dies, by which he gained considerable reputation ; but 

 having gone to visit M. de Chalon at Rouen, the latter, 

 after a compliment to his genius, told him that in co- 

 medy he could expect only a slight and temporary fame, 

 and exhorted him to study the Spanish drama, where 

 he would find subjects which, under management like 

 his, might in tragedy produce the most signal effects. 

 His friend undertook to teach him the Spanish lan- 

 guage, and in the mean time to translate for him some 

 passages of Guillelmo de Castro, with which Corneille 

 was so much delighted, that he soon after began his 

 celebrated Le Cid, the plot of which that author sup- 

 plied. The appearance of this piece in 1637 formed . 

 an epoch in the history of the French drama, and car- 

 ried it forward by one of those instantaneous advances . 

 to excellence, which are accomplished only by genius 

 of the highest order. The instant and universal suc- 

 cess of Le Cid, and its superiority to all former speci-> 

 mens of the French drama, inflamed the jealousy o€^ 



