THE

MIRROR OF TASTE

IT was not till the beginning of the seventeenth century that the dramatic genius of France was warmed into full and exuberant production by the sun of its poetical hemisphere. At that era, the great luminary, CORNEILLE, rose above the clouded horizon, surrounded by a host of satellites, his precursors, his contemporaries, and his followers in the career of glory. Nature, as if she were disposed to atone to France for her former parsimony, poured) upon that country, in one half century, a greater number of eminent dramatic poets than any other country could boast the possession of in a much longer period. High raised, in proud preeminence above the rest, stood PETER CORNEILLE, who has always held, and in all likelihood will for ever hold, in that country, the same superiority that Shakspeare holds in Great Britain. This great man was born at Rouen, in Normandy, in the year 1606. He was brought up to the bar, which he abandoned, either as unpleasing to his taste or unsuitable to his talents. At the time of his birth DESMARETS and CHAPELAIN were eleven years each, and COLLETET VOL. III. 2 C.

was in his eighth year; BOISROBERT was fourteen years of age; the renowned GEORGE SCUDERY, of whom mention has already been made as the panegyrist of Hardy, and the no less celebrated FRANCIS TRISTAN, surnamed "The Hermit," were each in the fifth year of their age; MAIRET was two years of age; and DU RYER one. On the other hand, speaking in chronological order of their births, Corneille was followed in three years after by ROTKOU. Thus we see that great luminary accompanied, as he rose to his meridian height, by a constellation of inferior yet brilliant planets, who moved in various orbits around him. As the history of this era contains circumstances of a singular nature, it may be expedient to give a short sketch of the life and character of each of those persons.

FRANCOIS LE METEL DE BOISROBERT was, as well as Corneille, a Norman by birth, being born at Caen. At an early age he was distinguished for the brilliance of his wit, the facetiousness of his humour, and the vivid flashes of a lively sportive fancy. These happy mental endowments, aided by a comprehensive, vigorous and retentive memory, and enriched not only by classical erudition but by all the treasures of Boccace and the Florentine school, rendered his conversation singularly attractive, and raised him to the favour of cardinal Richelieu, then prime minister of France.

DESMARETS was a man of some wit; and he too enjoyed the favour of Richelieu, which he is said to have acquired more by cunning and servility than by any superiority of talents: he published several dramas, none of which were very remarkable for any thing but their being supposed to be in part written by the cardinal, who, in requital for the pleasure of this poetical copartnership, conferred on Desmarets several lucrative offices in the state; while CHAPELAIN, Whose genius fell short of that of Desmarets, was the great man's drudge of all works-a kind of common bail who stood the brunt of those things which the others thought disgrace. ful to them, and fathered all the contemptible passages in the writings of the proud, mean cardinal.

COLLETET was a counsellor, and a member of the French academy, who also enjoyed the patronage of Richelieu; but, wanting the cunning of Desmarets, died in such poverty that he left not wherewith to bury him when he died.

SCUDERY was descended of a noble family. He too was a Norman, being born at Havre de Grace in 1601. He served with honour

in the army, in which he obtained high rank, and was admitted of the French academy.

TRISTAN was born in the province of Le Manche in the year 1601. His fortunes, like his descent, were singular and marked with the stamp of romance. Lineally descended from the celebrated Pierre Le Hermite, or Peter the Hermit, the original author of the crusades, whether it lurked in his blood or was derived from a constant retrospection of his ancestor's example, he seems to have been as chivalrous and as little fitted for the world, as the pious and sanguinary Peter himself: for being placed near the person of the Marquis de Verneuil, a natural son of Henry the Fourth, he quarrelled with an officer, fought and killed him. To save himself from the ignominious death, which would have inevitably followed the perpetration of honourable murder, he fled to England, and there he imbibed, for the first time, a taste for literature and poetry. Through the interest of Marshal de Heunieres, he obtained a full pardon from Lewis the Thirteenth; and returning to Paris, was taken into the service, as one of the gentlemen in ordinary, of the celebrated Gaston de Orleans, the king's brother. But the emoluments of his office, together with all that he could glean from his pen, as a poet, were very inadequate to the expenditure of a man devoted to women and gambling. His merit as a writer was very considerable. As a dramatic poet he very much excelled Scudery. Eight dramas are known to be his, and two more are ascribed, but with less certainty, to his pen. His tragedy of Mariamne has great merit and, as well as some other pieces of his composition, has been made use of advantageously by after writers of more celebrity.

It has been said, and not without reason, that a remarkable congeniality of character, as well as similarity of fortune and of fate, subsists between Tristan and our ill-starred poet, Savage, whose life by Dr. Johnson may be ranked among the very highest specimens of biographical composition of this or indeed of any age or country. Endowed with nearly equal genius, and oppressed with equal miseries arising from similar causes, he lived long in poverty and died in disgrace. Like Savage, he abused fine talents, and frustrated every effort to save him; trifled with his character; neglected, irritated, or tired out his friends, till the most grinding indigence reduced him to hunger and to rags; being reduced, as Boileau informs us, to go without a shirt in summer, and in winter to be destitute of a coat. And as Savage, in his admirable

poem of "The Bastard," has left to the world a detail of his low condition, so Tristan has left an account of many of the leading circumstances of his turbulent and eventful life in a romance intitled "The Disgraced Page."

It was on the writings of Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, who had been some time dead when Tristan arrived in England, that this poet formed his dramatic taste. With Massinger too, then living, he enriched his mind. This is an incontestable proof not only of the priority of England to France in the perfecting of their respective dramas, but of the improvement which the latter derived from the former: for it is evident, that at this precise era the productions of the French theatre, till then dull, frigid, and inanimate, began to catch a spark from the muse of fire of Shakspeare, and to glow with a fervour and a lustre reAlected from the bard of Avon.

MAIRET, who was born two years before and died two years after Corneille, was of high connexions, and was created a nobleman for the valour he displayed when serving under admiral Montmorency. Beside other works, he wrote twelve plays, most of which are tragicomedies, and very indecent; so much was it the fashion of the time to imitate the faults as well as to aspire to the excellencies of the British writers. Du RYER was a writer of greater genius; but being much embarrassed in his circumstances, and wanting the splendid connexions by which, much more than by genius, the reputation of Mairet was kept alive, he never received justice, or even common fair play, till death rendered him insensible to all things of this earth. He wrote four and twenty pieces, of which some have extraordinary merit. One of his plays has received the concurrent eulogies of some of the greatest personages and most enlightened critics of Europe. Alcione is said by D'Aubigne to be replete with beauty and grandeur; Menage sets it down as a chef d'œuvre; and it so entirely attracted the admiration of Christina, Queen of Sweden, that she had it frequently read to her.

Lastly, and certainly nearest in merit to Corneille, of all the poets of that day, came ROUTROU, whose productions are thickly set with rich poetic beauties, and whose praise it is to have devoted his labours to the improvement of the drama, and to the rendering of tragedy more natural and at the same time more interesting. Whatever either faulty or inferior to the level of his genius appears in his writings, may be ascribed to haste: being devoted to the vice

of gambling, he was often hard set for means, and his overspurred muse had often to repair the breaches made in his affairs by the mischances of the gaming table. Tragicomedy being then the prevailing taste, (a taste imported from England) Routrou, in common with all the dramatic poets of the day, had recourse to the Greek, Roman, Italian, Spanish and English dramatic poets for subjects all of them originally taken from romance, and which, with their fantastic extravagancies, had more the semblance of knight errantry than of nature. He however did only as others did. Even Corneille was not wholly exempt from the same faults and errors; and there is reason to apprehend that if he had not suffered himself to be hurried along by the tide of the times and indulged too much in the extravagant taste then in fashion, Routrou would have been but little inferior to his gigantic cotemporary Corneille.

In the long history of human infirmity few spectacles are to be found which to the moral eye are more curious, or indeed much more contemptible, or mortifying to the pride of the species, than that which the intrigues of the cardinal Richelieu with his poetical dependents, to bolster up his literary fame and indulge his vanity, present. As such the history of this period of the French stage deserves particular attention, and more than ordinary care in the management of its details.

It would seem as if the same spirit of intrigue and turbulence, which actuated the cardinal in his capacity of a statesman, informed him in all the other departments of his life; and that the temper, which rendered him intolerant of peace in the former, made him incapable of rest in the latter. His munificence to institutions of learning and science, and his patronage of men of letters, would have immortalized him as the Mæcenas of his age and country, if the former were not tarnished by inordinate pride and ostentation, and the latter were not justly liable to the imputation of being founded in selfishness, and a puerile, pitiful ambition to obtain credit for works that did not belong to him, and to reduce those whom he patronized to the disgraceful condition of pandars to his vanity, his jealousy, and his revenge. With much of the ability and more of the ambition of a great man, but little of the virtues of a good one, Richelieu patronized the arts and sciences merely to have the reputation of being surrounded by men whose works and gratitude could confer upon him immortality. His natural vanity being inflamed by the adulation of dependent poets, he fondly