"Corneille" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... noise of whispering voices or of slamming doors. "I saw you, Mr. Easy Chair," she said, "on the evening of Rachel's first performance in this country. What would you have thought if she had stopped short in the play—it was Corneille's Les Horaces, you remember—because she was annoyed by the rustling of the leaves of a thousand books of the play which the audience turned over at the ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... a centre of their plundering raids. There were no soldiers to guard it, and the peasants of the vicinity, Jacques Bonhomme (Jack Goodfellow) as they were called, undertook its defence. This was no unauthorized action. The lord-regent of France and the abbot of the monastery of St. Corneille-de-Compiegne, near by, gave them permission, glad, doubtless, to have even their poor aid, in the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... rule. This influence was continued by the taste and liberality of Margaret of Austria, who, being appointed "Governor" of the Low Countries in 1507, seems to have introduced Italian artists and to have encouraged native craftsmen. We are told that Corneille Floris introduced Italian ornamentation and grotesque borders; that Pierre Coech, architect and painter, adopted and popularised the designs of Vitruvius and Serlio. Wood carvers multiplied and embellished churches and palaces, the houses of the ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... excel in delineations and expressions of this order of emotion, while in the utterance of tenderness, whether in love or sorrow, she appears comparatively less successful; I am not, however, perhaps competent to pronounce upon this point, for Hermione and Emilie, in Corneille's "Cinna," are not characters abounding in tenderness. Lady M—— saw her the other day in "Marie Stuart," and cried her eyes almost out, so she must have some pathetic power. —— was so enchanted with her, both on and off the stage, that he took me ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... students: it was founded by Charles VII., and Pope Eugene IV., and was in great esteem in spite of the jests of Rabelais and others at its expense. One old author speaks somewhat irreverently of the learned town; calling its students "the flute-players and professors of the jeu de paume of Poitiers." Corneille makes his Menteur a pupil of the college of Poitiers; but Menot, a preacher of the period of the League, has a passage in one of his sermons which is sufficiently complimentary: in relating the Judgment of Solomon, he makes him say to one of ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... Theatre Dance: its Origin. Introduced into France from Italy. Under Henry III., IV., Louis XIII., XIV. Influence of Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin. Foundation of the Academic de Danse et de Musique. The Court Ballet. Moliere. Corneille. Lalli, &c. The Theatre Ballet. The Influence of Noverre. Its introduction into and its Present Condition in England, &c. Illustrations of Mlles. de Camargo, Duvernay, Taglioni. Fanny Ellsler. Ferraris, Carlotta Grisi. Adeline Genee. Anna Pavlova. ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... lines as these Corneille received six thousand livres, and the admiration of the French court and people during the Augustan age of French literature. But an Italian is not content with killing by halves. Here is a man from Italy who goes on fighting, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... superiority is fugitive! how little in the whole dramatic development takes permanent hold upon popular sympathy! Much of its significance is purely local, and of its interest altogether temporary. Scholars and the higher classes can talk eloquently of Corneille and Racine; the beaux and spirituelle women of the day can repeat and enjoy the last hit of Scribe, or the new bon-mot of the theatre: but contrast these results with the national love and appreciation of Shakspeare,—with the permanent reflection of Spanish ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... respects, Charles had modelled his court very much on the plan of that of Louis XIV., which he had admired for its gaiety and spirit. Corneille, Racine, Moliere, Boileau, were encouraged by le Grand Monarque. Wycherley and Dryden were attracted by Charles to celebrate the festivities, and to amuse the great and the gay. In various points De Grammont found a resemblance. The queen-consort, Catherine of ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... think, though, of my new career. Books were sent to me from all quarters: Racine, Corneille, Moliere, Casimir Delavigne, &c. I opened them, but, as I did not understand them at all, I quickly closed them again, and read my little Lafontaine, which I loved passionately. I knew all his fables, and one of my delights ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... are a poor student come to study the humanities, or the pleasant art of amputation, cross the water forthwith, and proceed to the "Hotel Corneille," near the Odeon, or others of its species; there are many where you can live royally (until you economize by going into lodgings) on four francs a day; and where, if by any strange chance you are desirous for a ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... group of nicknames is that of which we may take Shakespeare as the type. Incidentally we should be thankful that our greatest poet bore a name so much more picturesque than Corneille, crow, or Racine, root. It is agreed among all competent scholars that in compounds of this formation the verb was originally an imperative. This is shown by the form; cf. ne'er-do-well, Fr. vaurien, Ger. Taugenichts, good-for-naught. ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... name, Jupenet, appears to me, nevertheless, a fine name, and quite as worthy of being known as those of MM. Corneille, or Rotrou, or Garnier. I hope, monsieur, you will have the goodness to repeat to me a part of your tragedy presently, by way of dessert, for instance. That will be sugared roast meat,—mordioux! Ah! pardon me, monsieur, that was a little oath which escaped me, because it is ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the writer of 'The Physician of His Own Honor,' is unjust to Calderon; and it is as futile as are the ecstasies of Schultze to the coldness of Sismondi. Schultze compares Dante with him, and the French critics have only recently forgiven him for being less classical in form than Corneille, who in 'Le Cid' gave them all the Spanish poetry they wanted! Fortunately the student of Calderon need not take opinions. Good editions of Calderon are easily attainable. The best known are Heil's (Leipzig, 1827), and that by Harzenbusch ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... and punish pride; Ambition, interest, avarice, accuse: These are the province of a tragic Muse. 30 These hast thou chosen; and the public voice Has equall'd thy performance with thy choice. Time, action, place, are so preserved by thee, That even Corneille might with envy see The alliance of his tripled Unity. Thy incidents, perhaps, too thick are sown; But too much plenty is thy fault alone. At least but two can that good crime commit, Thou in design, and Wycherly ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Petrarch and Tasso. These were followed, in France, by Racine, Corneille, Boileau, Voltaire, La Fontaine and Delille; in England, by Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Thomson, Young, Collins, Gray, Byron, Coleridge, &c; in Scotland, by Sir Walter Scott; in Ireland, by Thomas Moore; in ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... as the Cid, many marvellous tales have been told, and it is a matter for regret that so many of them are purely legendary. According to one of the traditions, which was followed by the French dramatic poet Pierre Corneille when he wrote his famous play, Le Cid, in 1636, Ximena is given a much more prominent place in the story than that accorded to her in history. According to this version, Don Diego, father of Don Rodrigo, is given a mortal insult by the braggart Don Gomez, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... which Aristotle contends, and the Grecian stage has practised). Some longer space on some occasions, I think, may be allowed, especially for the English theatre, which requires more variety of incidents than the French. Corneille himself, after long practice, was inclined to think that the time allotted by the ancients was too short to raise and finish a great action; and better a mechanic rule were stretched or broken than a great beauty were omitted. To raise, and afterwards to calm, the passions; to purge the soul ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... poet himself, but he was fond of the poets, and had perused Milton, Shakspeare, Beattie, Cowper, and Keats with real pleasure, to say nothing of having read Corneille and Racine in the original. The steward, therefore, was prepared to appreciate the poet's sentiment, "Oft from apparent ills our blessings rise." His impatient gesture and his petulant exclamation when the board scratched his head, indicated that ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... approved as good, unless they are admitted as inventive, if they mix him with the herd he has shunned, not separate him in fame as he has been separated in soul. Some Frenchman, the oracle of his circle, said of the poet of the 'Phedre,' 'Racine and the other imitators of Corneille;' and Racine, in his wrath, nearly forswore tragedy forever. It is in vain to tell the author that the public is the judge of his works. The author believes himself above the public, or he would never have written; and," continued Trevylyan, ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... The long majestic march, and energy divine. Though still some traces of our rustic vein, And splay-foot verse, remained, and will remain. Late, very late, correctness grew our care, When the tired nation breathed from civil war. Exact Racine, and Corneille's noble fire, Showed us that France had something to admire. Not but the tragic spirit was our own, And full in Shakespeare, fair in Otway shone: But Otway failed to polish or refine, And fluent Shakespeare scarce effaced ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... and Juliet appeared, and J. C. Gottsched severely criticized Shakespeare's art. In 1759, in a journal, "Litteraturbriefe," Lessing began a warm defense of Shakespeare and declared his superiority to Racine and Corneille. His Hamburgische Dramaturgie (1767) went far in directing the change of taste from French classicism and in establishing Shakespeare in German thought as the greatest of poets, whether ancient or modern. A prose translation was begun by Wieland in 1762 ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... do justice to the volume. Let old English books, as More's "Utopia," have a cover of stamped and blazoned calf. Let the binder clothe an early Rabelais or Marot in the style favoured by Grolier, in leather tooled with geometrical patterns. Let a Moliere or Corneille be bound in the graceful contemporary style of Le Gascon, where the lace-like pattern of the gilding resembles the Venetian point-lace, for which La Fontaine liked to ruin himself. Let a binding, a la fanfare, in the style of Thouvenin, denote a novelist of the last century, let panelled ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... German public, on that exalted pedestal which it has not ceased to occupy. It was in 1759, in a journal entitled 'Litteraturbriefe,' that Lessing first claimed for Shakespeare superiority, not only to the French dramatists Racine and Corneille, who hitherto had dominated European taste, but to all ancient or modern poets. Lessing's doctrine, which he developed in his 'Hamburgische Dramaturgie' (Hamburg, 1767, 2 vols. 8vo), was at once accepted by the poet Johann ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... of statecraft, this creator of despotic monarchy, had one unsatisfied ambition. He would have exchanged all his honors for the ability to write one play like those of Corneille. Hungering for literary distinction, he could not have gotten into his own Academy had he not created it. And jealous of his laurels, he hated Corneille as much as he did the ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... like a reminiscence of a tragedy of Corneille, so truly does it recall the energetic diction of the father of our modern theatre. Yet the poet was forced to sacrifice it to the essentially vaudevillist ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... English to some purpose; she could speak Spanish—her grandfather had taught her that; she understood Italian fairly—she had read it aloud on Sunday evenings with the Chevalier. Then there were Corneille, Shakespeare, Petrarch, Cervantes—she had read them all; and even Wace, the old Norman trouvere, whose Roman de Rou she knew almost by heart. Was she ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... have before us the task of describing one of the most sumptuous courts that has ever existed, and of reviewing splendors all the more brilliant for their brevity. To this court of Napoleon and Josephine, to this majestic court, resplendent with glory, wealth, and fame, may well be applied Corneille's lines:— ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... people justly complained that I did not possess learning enough. "You have really no mythology" said she; "in all your poems there appears no single God. You must pursue mythology; you must read Racine and Corneille." That she called learning; and in like manner every one had something peculiar to recommend. For my poem of Ahasuerus I had read much and noted much, but yet not enough; in Greece, I thought, the whole will collect itself into clearness. The poem is not yet ready, ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... place. Besides he was always so good, and no matter what they say, so simple. People will recognize later (if they ever return seriously to literature), that he was a great poet. Meanwhile he is an absolutely unknown author. So indeed is Pierre Corneille. ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... immediate relish of a lighter vintage of delicate fragrance. Admiration did not here fall upon one with lightning speed; it was slowly, irresistibly that one grew charmed. And the contrast was like that of Racine beside Corneille, Lamartine beside Hugo, the eternal pair, the masculine and feminine genius coupled through centuries of glory. With Raffaelle it is nobility, grace, exquisiteness, and correctness of line, and divineness of harmony that triumph. You do not find in him merely the materialist symbolism ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... insensible to the charms of poetic harmony. He had not even sufficient ear to feel the rhythm, of poetry, and he never could recite a verse without violating the metre; yet the grand ideas of poetry charmed him. He absolutely worshipped Corneille; and, one day, after having witnessed a performance of 'Cinna', he said to me, "If a man like Corneille were living in my time I would make him my Prime Minister. It is not his poetry that I most admire; it is his powerful ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... reading was forbidden to her, and she had never been to any theatre, not even the Theatre Francais. She had not read Victor Hugo, Lamartine, or Musset, had not even dared to read Paul et Virginie, only knew expurgated editions of Corneille, Racine and Moliere. She was sincerely clerical, had early been somewhat influenced by her cousin, later the well-known Roman Catholic author, Ernest Hello, and in our conversations was always ready to take the part of the Jesuits against Pascal; ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... out of him, and he died of grief. Faithful after death, his wife had his body embalmed and carried to his native place, on the high altar of which it lay enthroned for 10 years; his real name was Don Rodrigo Diaz of Bivar, and the story of his love for Ximena is the subject of Corneille's ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... earlier gemeau, still used by Corneille, and earlier still gemel, Lat. gemellus, diminutive of geminus, twin. From one form we have the gimbals, or twin pivots, which keep the compass horizontal. Shakespeare ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... Corneille le Bruyn,[571] in his Voyages, relates that he saw at Damietta, in Egypt, a Turk whom they called the Dead Child, because when his mother was with child with him, she fell ill, and as they believed she was dead, they buried her pretty quickly, ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... audacity to speak of the golden era of literature which bloomed in the time of my grandfather, Frederick I., in Germany, and he was so foolhardy as to mention some German scribblers of that time, whose barbarous names no one knows, as the equals of Racine, and Corneille, and even of Virgil. Repeat to me, once more, the names of those departed geniuses, that I may know the rivals of the great writers of ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... Paris, identified themselves once for all with its crowds, and added whatever prestige might attend their own names through future ages to the already overshadowing prestige of that wonderful city. They point you there to the house where the great Corneille breathed his last; it is hard by the metropolitan church of St. Roche, and scarcely more than a bow-shot from the Tuilleries, as if the poet of Cinna and Polyeucte could not render up his breath in peace except in the neighborhood of those high dignitaries, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... can take upon himself to decide which is the right or wrong side. Everything is bi-lateral in the domain of thought. Ideas are binary. Janus is a fable signifying criticism and the symbol of Genius. The Almighty alone is triform. What raises Moliere and Corneille above the rest of us but the faculty of saying one thing with an Alceste or an Octave, and another with a Philinte or a Cinna? Rousseau wrote a letter against dueling in the Nouvelle Heloise, and another in favor of it. Which of the ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... pack'd audience from their posts retir'd, And Julius in a general hiss expir'd, Sage Booth to Cibber cried, "Compute your gains; These Egypt dogs, and their old dowdy queens, But ill requite these habits and these scenes! To rob Corneille for such a motley piece— His geese were swans, but, zounds, thy swans are geese." Rubbing his firm, invulnerable brow, The bard replied, "The critics must allow, 'Twas ne'er in Caesar's destiny to run." Wils bow'd, and bless'd the gay, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... it is difficult for us to believe that the hero ever suffers, for he explains the state of his soul, as the coolest man would do, and always thinking of the effect he is making on others, he never lets nature pour forth freely. The kings, the princesses, and the heroes of Corneille or Voltaire never forget their rank even in the most violent excess of passion; and they part with their humanity much sooner than with their dignity. They are like those kings and emperors of our old picture-books, who go to bed with ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... gesture to them. But yet, had they only possessed some fragment of Antigone's strength—the Antigone of Sophocles—would they not then have transformed the destinies of Hamlet and Faust as well as their own? And if Othello had taken Corneille's Pauline to wife and not Desdemona, would Desdemona's destiny then, all else remaining unchanged, have dared to come within reach of the enlightened love of Pauline? Where was it, in body or soul, that grim fatality lurked? And though the body may often be powerless to add to its strength, ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... comedy by the American stage superior to the German and French?—for the whole endeavour in this country has been toward a closer adherence to nature. In France and in Germany the ancient method of declamation still prevails, and the great speeches of Goethe and Schiller and Racine and Corneille are to all intents and purposes intoned. No doubt this sounds very fine in German and French, but how would you ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... know fully the vanity of man has only to consider the causes and effects of love. The cause is a je ne sais quoi (Corneille),[76] and the effects are dreadful. This je ne sais quoi, so small an object that we cannot recognise it, agitates a whole country, princes, armies, ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... probably contributed to it indirectly. Had Shakespeare been a classical scholar, he would almost certainly have modelled his plays on Seneca or Aeschylus, and the results would have been devastating. Addison's Cato, Johnson's Irene, and the dramas of Racine and Corneille are among the abysmal dullnesses mankind owes to its excessive estimation of the past. Men have always been too ready to forget that we inherit our ancestors' bad points as well as their good ones. Ancestor-worship ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... Malherbes, saying with a smile and a sigh as he looked at her radiant youth: 'Et rose, elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses, l'espace d'un matin; for,' he said, 'the flowers of the world fade quickly, and thou art surely a flower, my little one.' He read her the works of Racine, Corneille, Moliere, all of which learning she assimilated rapidly, and with an accuracy which delighted the old scholar. Sometimes, of an evening, he would keep her with him long after school hours, and one winter he took it into his head that she must learn to dance. He tied an inky tablecloth to her shoulders ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... successful villany and rampant vice, but few listened to their warnings. They were jeered at by the vulgar, fined, imprisoned, or banished by Ministers and Magistrates. All that was good, noble, and generous in the nation withered in the uncongenial atmosphere. The language of Pascal and of Corneille became the medium of corrupting the minds of millions. The events of the day were some actress who had discovered a new way to outrage decency, or some new play which deified a prostitute or an adulteress. Paris became the world's fair, to which ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... bridge of Sartrouville, Michel ordered his coachman to drive to the corner of the Avenue Corneille, where he alighted in the shadow of a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the great hall of this building the members of the Academy hold their sittings; the vestibules are adorned by marble statues of men whose intellectual powers have rendered their names renowned throughout the world, as Montesquieu, Moliere, Corneille, Racine, Sully, etc., etc. The Mazarine library is attached to this institution and contains 120,000 printed volumes besides 4,500 manuscripts. There is also under the same establishment the library of the Institute, which includes 115,000 volumes; ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... nearer ancient than the modern Rome. Nor fear I mention of the court of France, When I the British genius would advance; There too has Shrewsbury improv'd his taste; Yet still we dare invite him to our feast: For Corneille's sake I shall my thoughts suppress Of Oroonoko, and presume him less: What though we wrong him? Isabella's woe Waters those bays that shall for ever grow. Our foes confess, nor we the praise refuse, The drama glories in the British muse. The ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... principles, measures not men, breathing and acting in his divine atmosphere. It is strange and marvelous that he never wrote a line about the great men that lived and wrote in his day and age, although Cervantes, Rubens, Camoens, Bruno, Drake, Raleigh, Calderon, Corneille, Rembrandt, Kepler, Galileo, Montaigne, Beaumont and Fletcher, Sidney, Marlowe, Bacon and Ben Jonson were contemporaneous authors, poets, dramatists, ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... nothing figured save his relations with God. This twofold training elevated his soul and fortified his will, but wrenched him violently from all communion with Nature. This is the standpoint from which we must view the heroes of Corneille, if we would understand those extraordinary souls which, always at the highest degree of tension, deny themselves, as a weakness, everything that resembles tenderness or pity. Again, thus and thus alone can we explain how Descartes, and with him all the philosophers ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... shop—backed on to a small uncultivated garden which ended in a tall brick wall, the meeting-place of all the felines in the neighbourhood, and in which there was a small postern gate, now disused. This gate gave on a narrow cul-de-sac—grandiloquently named Passage Corneille—which was flanked on the opposite side by the tall boundary wall ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Duchesse D'Aiguillon that she might adorn the sphere in which the Cardinal moved so royally. She was a beautiful woman of simple tastes, and yearned for a life of conventual seclusion as she received the homage of Corneille or visited the salon of the brilliant ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... Paris, Hyacinth. Recall the themes that pleased you at the Marais and the Hotel de Bourgogne; the stories of classic heroism, of Christian fortitude, of manhood and womanhood lifted to the sublime. You who, in your girlhood, were familiar with the austere genius of Corneille——" ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... sense of responsibility wearies many readers, and at last crushed the writer; the form became "precious," and at last pedantic; and the ethical purpose was sometimes more visible than the ethical life. In the French drama Corneille had great conceptions, noble types of character, stately verse, and tragic situations; but English readers too often find him mannered, artificial, dull. Corneille, I freely admit, is not Shakespeare: I greatly prefer ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... last out a generation, and descend to the author's blood, were they permitted to live on their father's glory, as in all other property they do on his industry.[10] Something of this nature has been instituted in France, where the descendants of Corneille and Moliere retain a claim on the theatres whenever the dramas of their great ancestors are performed. In that country, literature has ever received peculiar honours—it was there decreed, in the affair of Crebillon, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... few of them are good; but we have one book of that kind better than any of them; Selden's Table-talk. As to original literature, the French have a couple of tragick poets who go round the world, Racine and Corneille, and one comick poet, Moliere.'—BOSWELL. 'They have Fenelon.' JOHNSON. 'Why, sir, Telemachus is pretty well.' BOSWELL. 'And Voltaire, sir.' JOHNSON. 'He has not stood his trial yet And what makes Voltaire chiefly circulate is collection; such as his Universal History.' BOSWELL. 'What do ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... slow, exacter France Saw Art's fair empire o'er her shores advance: By length of toil a bright perfection knew, Correctly bold, and just in all she drew: 70 Till late Corneille, with Lucan's[58] spirit fired, Breathed the free strain, as Rome and he inspired: And classic judgment gain'd to sweet Racine The temperate strength of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... it has been the turn of "Polyeucte" and "La Morte de Pompee." Whatever one's objections may be, there is something grandiose in the style of Corneille which reconciles you at last even to his stiff, emphatic manner, and his over-ingenious rhetoric. But it is the dramatic genre which is false. His heroes are roles rather than men. They pose as magnanimity, virtue, glory, instead of realizing them before ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... materials to dramatic uses, but not as did the playwrights of the Restoration. In the Epilogue to the comedy of "An Evening's Love; or, The Mock Astrologer," borrowed from "Le Feint Astrologue" of the younger Corneille, Dryden, the adapter of the play, makes jesting defence of the system of adaptation. The critics are described as conferring together in the pit on ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... timid Much-afraid were as cheerfully received as the strong Honest and the bold Valiant-for-truth; so Poetry has inspired children, and seeming fools, and maniacs, and mendicants with the finest breath of her spirit. The 'Fable-tree' Fontaine is as immortal as Corneille; Christopher Smart's 'David' shall live as long as Milton's 'Paradise Lost;' and the rude epic of a blind wanderer, whose birth, parentage, and period of death are all alike unknown, shall continue to rank in interest with the productions of one who inherited ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Blue made use of the short, snappy English style of text-book, while Harvard pinned its faith to the more deliberate German seminar system. After the contest captains for the following year were elected. Yale chose Bridgman, who did splendid work on Corneille and the poets of the Pleiade, while Harvard's choice fell on Butterworth, probably the best intercollegiate expert on Cervantes. In the evening all the contestants attended a performance of 'The Prince and the Peach' at the Gaiety. It is reported ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... Medical School of Nantes, in his "Causerie a propos de la Circoncision," mentions that the Convent of Saint Corneille, in Compiegne, claims to possess the identical instrument with which the Holy Circumcision was performed. Such a holy relic must have been unusually ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... aristocratic instinct discerned plenty of difficulties of another kind, and he took alarm. A fine manner is not the invariable outcome of noble feeling; and while no man at court had a nobler air than Racine, Corneille looked very much like a cattle-dealer, and Descartes might have been taken for an honest Dutch merchant; and visitors to La Brede, meeting Montesquieu in a cotton nightcap, carrying a rake over his shoulder, mistook him for a gardener. A knowledge of the world, when it ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... slime and mud,—fetid and crawling, unformed and monstrous. I grant exceptions; and even in the New School, as it is called, I can admire the real genius, the vital and creative power of Victor Hugo. But oh, that a nation which has known a Corneille should ever spawn forth a ——-! And with these rickety and drivelling abortions—all having followers and adulators—your Public can still bear to be told that they have improved wonderfully on the day when they gave laws and models ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... writers of this period were strongly influenced by the contemporary literature of France, by the comedies of Moliere, the tragedies of Corneille and Racine, and the satires, epistles, and versified essays of Boileau. Many of the Restoration writers—Waller, Cowley, Davenant, Wycherley, Villiers, and others—had been in France during the ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... the poet himself has not the least doubt as to the value of his idea; and there are many admirable poets who have never hesitated, paused, or doubted. Thus it is that we find the idea of heroic duty filling so enormous a space in the tragedies of Corneille, that of absolute faith in the dramas of Calderon, that of the tyranny of destiny ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... same character placed by different poets in such different lights, that we can discover not the least sameness, or even likeness, in the features? The Sophonisba of Mairet and of Lee is a tender, passionate, amorous mistress of Massinissa: Corneille and Mr Thomson give her no other passion but the love of her country, and make her as cool in her affection to Massinissa as to Syphax. In the two latter she resembles the character of queen Elizabeth; in the two former she is the ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... been twice to the theatre since I have been here. The Salle de Spectacle is indifferent, but they have an excellent company of comedians. The representations are in French. I saw the Festin de Pierre of Corneille exceedingly well performed. The actors who did the parts of Don Juan and Sganarelle were excellent, and the scene with M. Dimanche, wherein he demands payment of his bill, was admirably given. I have also seen the Plaideurs of Racine, a very favourite piece of mine; every actor played his part ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... civilization nearly equal, and speaking languages derived from the same source, should employ characters different from each other, as well as from the rest of the world. It will be found however that the alphabet used in the neighbouring island of Java (given by Corneille Le Brun), that used by the Tagala people of the Philippines (given by Thevenot), and by the Bugis people of Celebes (given by Captain Forrest), vary at least as much from these and from each other as the Rejang from the Batta. The Sanskrit scholar will at the same time ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... by-street, not a dilapidated fountain, not a grim old college facade but had its history, or its legend. Here the voice of Abelard thundered new truths, and Rabelais jested, and Petrarch discoursed with the doctors. Here, in the Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie, walked the shades of Racine, of Moliere, of Corneille, of Voltaire. Dear, venerable, immortal old Quartier Latin! Thy streets were narrow, but they were the arteries through which, century after century, circulated all the wisdom and poetry, all the art, and science, and learning of France! ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... absolute law during his long reign of seventy-two years. His ideal was splendor, and he encouraged great men in the intellectual and artistic world to do their work, and shed their glory on the time. Conde, Turenne, Colbert, Moliere, Corneille, La Fontaine, Racine, Fenelon, Boulle, Le Brun, are a few among the long and wonderful list. He was indeed Louis ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... Theseus, Themistocles, &c.; the Travels of Anacharsis, the worthy results of thirty years' hard labour of an eminent scholar:[80] the Travels of Cyrus, Telemachus, Belisarius, and Numa Pompilius, are also, though in very different degrees, useful and interesting. The plays of Corneille and Racine, Alfieri, and Metastasio, on historical subjects, will make a double impression on your memory by the excitement of your imagination. All ought to be read about the same time that you are studying those periods ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... an opinion also from another able authority: "The drama of 'Gli Orazi' is taken from Corneille's tragedy 'Les Horaces.' The music is full of noble simplicity, beautiful melody, and strong expression. In the airs dramatic truth is never sacrificed to vocal display, and the concerted pieces are grand, broad, ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... singularly inauspicious. Under the guidance of Cardinal Richelieu it delivered a futile attack upon the one writer who stood out head and shoulders above his contemporaries, and whose works bore all the marks of unmistakable genius—the great CORNEILLE. With the production, in 1636, of Corneille's tragedy, Le Cid, modern French drama came into existence. Previous to that date, two main movements are discernible in French dramatic art—one carrying on the medieval traditions of the mystery-and miracle-play, and culminating, early ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... corrupting we corrected; what was local we generalized; what was excessive we brought down to the proportions of mankind. Have we not sometimes also lessened their grandeur and altered their purity? If Corneille has undoubtedly brought nearer to us the still somewhat barbaric heroes of Guillem de Castro, La Fontaine, when imitating the author of the Decameron, has made him more indecent than he is in his own ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... place, and Shakespeare is now generally recognized, even in France, as one of the greatest of poets. Yes, some anti-Gallican cynic will say, the French rank him with Corneille and with Victor Hugo! But let me have the pleasure of quoting a sentence about Shakespeare, which I met with by accident not long ago in the Correspondant, a French review which not a dozen English people, I suppose, look at. The writer is praising Shakespeare's ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... both the authority of tradition and the liberty of genius to such new conquests. Unfortunately, we cannot agree as to the proportions in which each of them is required. The French exaggerated the importance of tradition, and so gave us the classical drama of Racine and Corneille. Walt Whitman exaggerated the importance of liberty, and so gave us Leaves of Grass. In nearly all periods of literary energy, we find writers rushing to one or other of these extremes. Either they declare that the classics are perfect and cannot be surpassed but only imitated; or, like the ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... Andromeda followed her husband to Tiryns in Argos, and became the ancestress of the family of the Perseidae. After her death she was placed by Athena amongst the constellations in the northern sky, near Perseus and Cassiopeia. Sophocles and Euripides (and in modern times Corneille) made the story the subject of tragedies, and its incidents were represented in numerous ancient works of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... this fact is by no means so apparent as the fact itself. That the poetry of Germany is actually and intrinsically superior to that of France, may readily be admitted; but this is not enough to account for all the circumstances of the case. It does not explain why some of the very passages in Corneille and Racine, which to us appear dull and prosaic, are to the Frenchman's apprehension instinct with poetic fervour. It does not explain the undoubted fact that we, who speak English, are prone to underrate French poetry, while we are equally disposed to render to German poetry even more than ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... circles of society. Well-educated, his culture was that of a youth of the end of the last century. He had read everything, whether philosophy or belles lettres, which that age had produced in France, and loved to quote from Racine, Corneille, Boileau, Moliere, Montaigne, and Fenelon. Likewise he had gleaned much history from Segur, and much of the old classics from French translations of them; but for mathematics, natural philosophy, or contemporary literature he cared nothing whatever. However, he knew how to be silent in ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... nevertheless, a large share of the applause of the night was confessedly carried off by the veteran Joanny, who played Horace. On June 16th Rachel made her second appearance, personating Emilie in the "Cinna," of Corneille. The receipts fell to five hundred and fifty francs. She repeated her performance of Camille on the 23d; the receipts were only three hundred francs! the poorest house, perhaps, she ever played to in Paris. She afterward appeared as Hermione in "Andromaque," ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... have given a brilliance to these alleyed walks and corridors are to be recalled Corneille, Conde, Saint Vincent de Paul, Moliere, Turenne, Madame de Longueville, De Thou, Cinq-Mars, Richelieu, D'Ormesson, the Prince de Talmon, the Marquis de Tesse and the ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... purpose and value. The second class will be a large number of works that are now out of print, or which can only be procured at a very high price. The third, and perhaps more popular class, will be the works of authors of all ages, of all countries, and of all schools, such as Shakespeare, Corneille, Pascal, Chateaubriand, Sophocles, Racine, Lord Byron, etc. Ten of these volumes ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... Vice-Inquisitor and the Abbot of St. Corneille; also six others, among them that false Loyseleur. The guards were in their places, the rack was there, and by it stood the executioner and his aids in their crimson hose and doublets, meet color for their bloody trade. The ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... French engravers which appeared at this time brought the art to a splendid perfection, which many think has not been equalled since, so that Masson, Nanteuil, Edelinck, and Drevet may claim fellowship in genius with their immortal contemporaries, Corneille, Racine, La ...
— The Best Portraits in Engraving • Charles Sumner
... in the year before, Amory neglected his work, not deliberately but lazily and through a multitude of other interests. Co-ordinate geometry and the melancholy hexameters of Corneille and Racine held forth small allurements, and even psychology, which he had eagerly awaited, proved to be a dull subject full of muscular reactions and biological phrases rather than the study of personality and influence. That was a noon class, and it always sent him dozing. Having found that ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... any further uneasiness in her friend, she no more after that spoke frankly of Gerald whenever he came into her mind. And when she declined Estelle's invitation to go with her to Mlle. Durand's, where she would hear the pupils of the latter recite Corneille and Racine, she did not tell her what she had planned to do instead, fully intending, however, ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... only by comparison with himself: all other eulogies are either heterogeneous, as when they are in reference to Spenser or Milton; or they are flat truisms, as when he is gravely preferred to Corneille, Racine, or even his own immediate successors, Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger and the rest. The highest praise, or rather form of praise, of this play, which I can offer in my own mind, is the ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... was at hand. Charlotte Corday d'Armont was the granddaughter of Corneille, the great tragic poet of France. Though of noble descent, she was born in a cottage, for her father was a country gentleman so poor that he could not support his family. His daughters worked in ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... Spenser, ballads, sagas, the Arthur-Saga, the Nibelungenlied, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Herbert, Tennyson, Browning, Dante and Christina Rossetti, Whittier, Lowell, Longfellow, to say nothing of Goethe, Corneille, and the Greek, Roman, Persian, ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown |
