Chapter VIII: Part 8

In 1646 he was sent to Oxford, and entered as a gentleman commoner at Wadham College. Of his academical life we can say little more than that it confirmed the promise of his early proficiency. He was especially distinguished by his mathematical acquirements, and gained the notice and acquaintance of many of the most learned and influential persons belonging to the university. Several short treatises and mechanical inventions are assigned to this period of his life: but as these have long ceased to interest any but curious inquirers into the history of literature or science, we can only indicate their existence, and refer to other and more comprehensive works. In 1650 Wren graduated as Bachelor of Arts. He was elected Fellow of All Souls on the 2d of November, 1653, and took the degree of Master of Arts on the 12th of December in the same year. Of the subjects which engaged his active and versatile mind at this time, one of the chief was the science of Anatomy; and he is, on apparently good grounds, thought to have first suggested and tried the interesting experiment of injecting liquids of various kinds into the veins of living animals,—a process of surgery, which, applied to the transfusion of healthy blood into a morbid or deficient circulation, has been revived, not without some promise of important results, in our own day. Another subject which attracted much of his attention was the Barometer; but he has no claim whatever, either to the invention of that instrument, or to the detection of the great principle of physics, of which it is an exemplification. The notion which has been taken up of his right to supplant the illustrious Torricelli here, has arisen merely from mistaking the question with regard to the causes of the fluctuations in the height of the barometrical column, while the instrument continues in the same place, for the entirely different question as to the cause why the fluid remains suspended at all; about which, since the celebrated experiments of Pascal, published in 1647, there never has been any controversy. It was the former phenomenon only which was attributed by some to the influence of the moon, and which Wren and many of his contemporaries exercised their ingenuity, as many of their successors have done, in endeavouring to explain.

In carrying on these investigations and experiments, Wren’s diligence was stimulated and assisted by his having been admitted a member, about this period, of that celebrated association of philosophical inquirers, out of whose meetings, begun some years before, eventually arose the Royal Society. But, like several others of the more eminent members, he was soon removed from the comparative retirement of Oxford. On the 7th of August, 1657, being then only in his twenty-fifth year, he was chosen to the Professorship of Astronomy in Gresham College. This chair he held till the 8th of March, 1661, when he resigned it in consequence of having, on the 31st of January preceding, received the appointment of Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford. On the 12th of September, 1661, he took his degree of Doctor of Civil Law at Oxford, and was soon after admitted _ad eundem_ by the sister university. During all this time he had continued to cultivate assiduously the various branches of mathematical and physical science, and to extend his reputation both by his lectures and by his communications to the “Philosophical Club,” as it was called, which, in 1658, had been transferred to London, and usually met on the Wednesday of every week at Gresham College, in Wren’s class-room, and, on the Thursday, in that of his associate Rooke, the Professor of Geometry. The longitude, the calculation of solar eclipses, and the examination and delineation of insects and animalcula by means of the microscope, may be enumerated among the subjects to which he is known to have devoted his attention. On the 15th of July, 1662[3], he and his associates were incorporated under the title of the Royal Society; and Wren, who drew out the preamble of the charter, bore a chief part in the effecting of this arrangement.

Footnote 3:

In the Life of Boyle this event is stated to have occurred in 1663. A
_second_ charter was granted to the Society, in that year, on the 22d
of April.

The future architect of St. Paul’s had already been called upon to devote a portion of his time to the professional exercise of that art from which he was destined to derive his greatest and most lasting distinction. Sir John Denham, the poet, had on the Restoration been rewarded for his services by the place of Surveyor of the Royal Works; but although, in his own words, he then gave over poetical lines, and made it his business to draw such others as might be more serviceable to his Majesty, and he hoped more lasting, it soon became apparent that his genius was much better suited to “build the lofty rhyme” than to construct more substantial edifices. In these circumstances Wren, who was known among his other accomplishments to be well acquainted with the principles of architecture, was sent for, and engaged to do the duties of the office in the capacity of Denham’s assistant or deputy. This was in the year 1661. It does not appear that for some time he was employed in any work of consequence in his new character; and in 1663 it was proposed to send him out to Africa, to superintend the construction of a new harbour and fortifications at the town of Tangier, which had been recently made over by Portugal to the English Crown, on the marriage of Charles with the Infanta Catherine. This employment he wisely declined, alleging the injury he apprehended to his health from a residence in Africa. Meanwhile, the situation which he held, and his scientific reputation, began to bring him something to do at home. Sheldon, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was Chancellor of the University of Oxford, had resolved to erect at his own expense a new theatre, or hall, for the public meetings of the University; and this building Wren was commissioned to design. The Sheldonian Theatre, celebrated for its unrivalled roof of eighty feet in length by seventy in breadth, supported without either arch or pillar, was Wren’s first public work, having been begun this year, although it was not finished till 1668. About the same time he was employed to erect a new chapel for Pembroke College, in the University of Cambridge, to be built at the charge of his uncle, the Bishop of Ely.

But, while he was about to commence these buildings, he was appointed to take a leading part in another work, which ultimately became the principal occupation of the best years of his life, and enabled him to afford to his contemporaries and to posterity by far the most magnificent display of his architectural skill and genius. Ever since the Restoration, the repair of the Metropolitan Cathedral of St. Paul’s, which during the time of the Commonwealth had been surrendered to the most deplorable desecration and outrage, had been anxiously contemplated; and on the 18th of April, 1663, letters patent were at length issued by the King, appointing a number of Commissioners, among whom Wren was one, to superintend the undertaking. Under their direction a survey of the state of the building was taken, and some progress was made in the reparation of its most material injuries, when, after the sum of between three and four thousand pounds had been expended, the great fire, which broke out on the night of Sunday, the 2d of September, 1666, on the following day reduced the whole pile to a heap of ruins.

A considerable part of the year before this Wren had spent in Paris, having proceeded thither, it would seem, about Midsummer, 1665, and remained till the following spring. The object of his visit was to improve himself in the profession in which he had embarked, by the inspection and study of the various public buildings which adorned the French capital, where the celebrated Bernini was at this time employed on the Louvre, with a thousand workmen under him, occupied in all the various departments of the art, and forming altogether, in Wren’s opinion, probably the best school of architecture to be then found in Europe. He appears accordingly to have employed his time, with his characteristic activity, in examining everything deserving of attention in the city and its neighbourhood; and lost no opportunity either of making sketches of remarkable edifices himself, or of procuring them from others, so that, as he writes to one of his correspondents, he hoped to bring home with him almost all France on paper. The terrible visitation, which a few months after his return laid half the metropolis of his native country in ashes, opened to him a much wider field whereon to exercise the talent which he had been thus eager to cultivate and strengthen by enlarged knowledge, than he could, while so engaged, have expected ever to possess. He was not slow to seize the opportunity; and while the ashes of the city were yet alive, drew up a plan for its restoration, the leading features of which were a broad street running from Aldgate to Temple Bar, with a large square for the reception of the new cathedral of St. Paul; and a range of handsome quays along the river. The paramount necessity of speed in restoring the dwellings of a houseless multitude, prevented the adoption of this project; and the new streets were in general formed nearly on the line of the old ones. But they were widened and straightened, and the houses were built of brick instead of wood.

Soon after the fire, Wren was appointed Surveyor-General and principal Architect for rebuilding the parish churches; and on the 28th of March, 1669, a few days after the death of Sir John Denham, he was made Surveyor-General of the Royal Works, the office which he had for some time executed as deputy. On the 30th of July he was unanimously chosen Surveyor-General of the repairs of St. Paul’s (another office which Denham had also held) by the commissioners appointed to superintend that work, of whom he was himself one. At first it was still thought possible to repair the cathedral; and a part of it was actually fitted up as a temporary choir, and service performed in it. After some time, however, it became evident that the only way in which it could ever be restored was by rebuilding the whole from the foundation. Before the close of the year 1672 Wren had prepared and submitted to the King different plans for the new church; and his Majesty having fixed upon the one which he preferred, a commission for commencing the work was issued on the 12th of November, 1673. On the 20th of the same month, Wren, who had been re-appointed architect for the work, and also one of the commissioners, was knighted at Whitehall, having resigned his professorship at Oxford in the preceding April.

During the space of time which had elapsed since the fire, the Surveyor-General of Public Works had begun or finished various minor buildings connected with the restoration of the city, and also some in other parts of the kingdom. Among the former may be mentioned the fine column called the Monument; the church of St. Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside, the spire of which is considered the most beautiful he ever constructed, and a masterpiece of science, both begun in 1671, and finished in 1677; and the church of St. Stephens, Walbrook, begun 1672, and finished in 1679, the interior of which is one of the most exquisite specimens of architectural art which the world contains, and has excited, perhaps, more enthusiastic admiration than anything else that Wren has done. During the whole of this time, too, notwithstanding the little leisure which his professional avocations must have left him, he appears to have continued his philosophical pursuits, and his attendance on the Royal Society, of which, from the first, he had been one of the most active and valuable members. His communications, and the experiments which he suggested, embraced some of the profoundest parts of astronomy and the mathematics, as well as various points in anatomy and natural history, and the chemical and mechanical arts.

The design which Wren had prepared for the new Cathedral, and which had been approved by the King, being that of which a model is still preserved in an apartment over the Morning-Prayer Chapel, did not in some respects please the majority of his brother-commissioners, who insisted that, in order to give the building the true cathedral form, the aisles should be added at the sides as they now stand, although the architect is said to have felt so strongly the injury done by that alteration, that he actually shed tears in speaking of it. This difficulty, however, being at length settled, his Majesty, on the 14th May, 1675, issued his warrant for immediately commencing the work; and accordingly, after a few weeks more had been spent in throwing down the old walls and removing the rubbish, the first stone was laid by Sir Christopher, assisted by his master-mason, Mr. Thomas Strong, on the 21st of June. From this time the building proceeded steadily till its completion in 1710; in which year the highest stone of the lantern on the cupola was laid by Mr. Christopher Wren, the son of the architect, as representing his venerable father, now in the seventy-eighth year of his age.

The salary which Sir Christopher Wren received as architect of St. Paul’s was only £200 a year. Yet in the last years of his superintendence a moiety of this pittance was withheld from him by the Commissioners, under the authority of a clause which they had got inserted in an act of parliament entitling them to keep back the money till the work should be finished, by way of thereby ensuring the requisite expedition in the architect. Even after the building had been actually completed, they still continued, on the same pretence, to refuse payment of the arrears due, alleging that certain things yet remained to be done, which, after all, objections and difficulties interposed by themselves alone prevented from being performed. Like his great predecessor, Michael Angelo, Wren was too honest and zealous in the discharge of his duty not to have provoked the enmity of many persons who had their private ends to serve in the discharge of a great public duty. He was at last obliged to petition the Queen on the subject of the treatment to which he was subjected; but it was not till after a struggle of some years that he succeeded in obtaining redress. The faction by whom he was thus opposed even attempted to blacken his character by a direct charge of peculation, or at least of connivance at that crime, in a pamphlet entitled ‘Frauds and Abuses at St. Paul’s,’ which appeared in 1712, and in reference to which Sir Christopher deemed it proper to appeal to the public in an anonymous reply published the year after, wherein he vindicated himself triumphantly from the aspersions which had been thrown upon him.

The other architectural works which he designed and executed during this period, both in London and elsewhere, are far too numerous to be mentioned in detail. Among them were the parish church of St. Bride, in Fleet Street, which was finished in 1680, and the beautiful spire of which, originally two hundred and thirty-four feet in height, has been deemed to rival that of St. Mary-le-Bow; the church of St. James, Westminster, finished in 1683, a building in almost all its parts not more remarkable for its beauty than for its scientific construction; and of which the roof especially, both for its strength and elegance, and for its adaptation to the distinct conveyance of sound, has been reckoned a singularly happy triumph of art; and the church of St. Andrew, Holborn, a fine specimen of a commodious and an imposing interior: besides many others of inferior note. In 1696 he commenced the building of the present Hospital at Greenwich, of which he lived to complete the greater part. This is undoubtedly one of the most splendid erections of our great architect. Among his less successful works may be enumerated Chelsea Hospital, begun in 1682, and finished in 1690, a plain, but not an inelegant building; his additions to the Palace of Hampton Court, carried on from 1690 to 1694, which are certainly not in the best taste; and his repairs at Westminster Abbey, of which he was appointed Surveyor-General in 1698. In his attempt to restore and complete this venerable edifice, his ignorance of the principles of the Gothic style, and his want of taste for its peculiar beauties, made him fail perhaps more egregiously than on any other occasion. In 1679 he completed the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, one of the most magnificent of his works; and in 1683, the Chapel of Queen’s College, and the Ashmolean Museum, at Oxford. The same year he began the erection of the extensive pile of Winchester Castle, originally intended for a royal palace, but now used as a military barrack. To these works are to be added a long list of halls for the city companies, and other public buildings, as well as a considerable number of private edifices. Among the latter was Marlborough House, Pall-Mall. Indeed scarcely a building of importance was undertaken during this long period which he was not called upon to design or superintend. The activity both of mind and body must have been extraordinary, which enabled him to accomplish what he did, not to speak of the ready and fertile ingenuity, and the inexhaustible sources of invention and science he must have possessed, to meet the incessant demands that were made for new and varying displays of his contriving skill. It appears, too, in addition to all this, that the duties imposed upon him by his place of Surveyor of Public Works, for which he only received a salary of £100 a year, were of an extremely harassing description, and must have consumed a great deal of his time. Claims and disputes as to rights of property, and petitions or complaints in regard to the infringement of the building regulations in every part of the metropolis and its vicinity, seem to have been constantly submitted to his examination and adjudication; and Mr. Elmes has printed many of his reports upon these cases from the original manuscripts, which afford striking evidence both of the promptitude with which he gave his attention to the numerous calls thus made upon him, and of the large expenditure of time and labour they must have cost him.

The long series of years during which Wren was occupied in the accomplishment of his greatest work, and which had conducted him from the middle stage of life to old age, brought to him also of course various other changes. He had been twice married, and had become the father of two sons and a daughter, of whom the eldest, Christopher, was the author of Parentalia, or Memoirs of the Family of the Wrens. In 1680, he was elected to the Presidency of the Royal Society, on its being declined by Mr. Boyle; and this honourable office he held for two years; during which, notwithstanding all his other occupations, we find him occupying the chair in person at almost every meeting, and still continuing to take his usual prominent part in the scientific discussions of the evening. In 1684 there was added to his other appointments that of Comptroller of the Works at Windsor. In May, 1685, he entered parliament as one of the members for Plympton; and he also sat for Windsor both in the convention which met after the revolution, and in the first parliament of William III. He afterwards sat for Weymouth in the parliament which met in February, 1700, and which was dissolved in November of the year following.

The evening of Wren’s life was marked by neglect and ingratitude. In the eighty-sixth year of his age he was removed from the office of Surveyor-General, which he had held for forty-nine years, in favour of one Benson, whose incapacity and dishonesty soon led to his disgrace and dismissal. Fortunately Wren’s temper was too happy and placid to be affected by the loss of court favour, and he retired to his home at Hampton Court, where he spent the last five years of his life chiefly in the study of the Scriptures, and the revision of his philosophical works. He died February 25, 1723, in the ninety-first year of his age.

More minute accounts of his life are to be found in the Parentalia, already mentioned, and in Mr. Elmes’s quarto volume. We may also refer the reader to a longer memoir in the Library of Useful Knowledge.

_Engraved by T. Woolnoth._

CORNEILLE.

_From an original Picture by C. Lebrun in the possession of the
Institute of France._

Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.

_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]

CORNEILLE

Peter Corneille was born at Rouen, on the 6th of June, 1606. His father was in the profession of the law, and held an office of trust under Louis XIII. Young Corneille was educated in the Jesuits’ College at Rouen; and, while there, formed an attachment to that society, which he maintained unimpaired in after-life. He was destined for the bar, at which he practised for a short time, but had no turn for business; and with better warrant than the many, who mistake a lazy and vagabond inclination for genius and the muse, he quitted the path of ambition and preferment for a road to fame, shorter, and therefore better suited to an aspiring, but impatient mind. A French writer congratulates his country, that he who would have made an obscure and ill-qualified provincial barrister, became, by change of place and pursuits, the glory and ornament of a great empire in its most splendid day. Corneille “left his calling for an idle trade,” without having bespoken the favour of the public by any minor specimens of poetical talent. He seems indeed to have hung loose upon society, till a petty affair of gallantry discovered the mine of his natural genius, though not in his purest and richest vein. The story is told by Fontenelle, and has been related of many others with nearly the same incidents; being the common-place of youthful adventure. One of Corneille’s friends had introduced him to his intended wife; and the lady, without any imputation of treachery on the part of the supplanter, took such a fancy to him, as induced her to play the jilt towards his introducer. Corneille moulded the embarrassment into a comedy entitled Melite. The drama had hitherto been at a low ebb among the French. Their tragedy was flat and languid: to comedy, properly so called, they had no pretensions. The theatre therefore had hitherto been little attended by persons of condition. Racine describes the French stage when Corneille began to write, as absolutely without order or regularity, taste or knowledge, as to what constituted the real merits of the drama. The writers, he says, were as ignorant as the spectators. Their subjects were extravagant and improbable; neither manners nor characters were delineated. The diction was still more faulty than the action; the wit was confined to the lowest puns. In short, all the rules of art, even those of decency and propriety, were violated. This description gives us the history of the infant drama in all ages and countries; of Thespis in his cart, and of Gammer Gurton’s needle.

While the French theatre was in this state of degradation, Melite appeared. Whatever its faults might be, there was something in it like originality of character; some indications of a comic vein, and some ingenious combinations. The public hailed the new era with delight, and the poet was astonished at his own success. The stage seemed all at once to flourish and to have taken its proper station among the elegant arts and rational amusements. On the strength of this acquisition, a new company of actors was formed; and the successful experiment was followed up by a series of pieces of the same kind, between the years 1632 and 1635. Imperfect as they were, we may trace in them some sketches of new character, which the more methodical and practised dramatists of a later period filled out with more skill and higher colouring, but with little claim to invention.

We owe to Corneille one of the most entertaining personages in modern comedy,—the Chambermaid; who has succeeded to the office of the Nurse in the elder drama. This change was partly, perhaps principally, produced by that great revolution in the modern stage which introduced women upon the boards. While female characters were consigned to male representatives, the poet took every opportunity of throwing his heroines into breeches to slur over the awkwardness of the boys; and the subordinate instruments of the plot were duly enveloped in the hoods and flannels of decrepit age, while the hard features of the adult male were easily manufactured into wrinkles. But when once real women were brought forward, they had their own interests to manage as well as those of the author; and the artificial disguise of their persons would ill have accorded with those speculations, of which personal beauty formed a main ingredient. It was their business therefore, while they conducted the love-affairs of their mistresses, to interweave an underplot between themselves and the valets. Less attractive perhaps than their young ladies in outward show, they obtained compensation in the piquancy of wit intrusted to their delivery, and thus divided the interest among the spectators in no disadvantageous proportion.

Corneille was also the first who brought the dialogue of polished society upon the French stage, which had hitherto been confined to the vulgarities of low comedy or the bombast of inflated tragedy. But it is time to rescue him from the obscurity of his own early compositions.

His first tragedy was Medea, copied principally from the faulty model of Seneca, whose prolix declamation, thus early adopted, probably exercised an unfavourable influence on the after fortunes of the national tragedy. His nephew Fontenelle, indeed, says that “he took flight at once, and soared instantly to the sublime.” But this sentence has not been confirmed by more impartial critics. The Continent has condemned the witchcraft; but we are bound to uphold it in defence of our own Shakspeare, who has clothed his hags with more picturesque and awful attributes than the magnificent and imperial sorceries of Corneille, Seneca, or even Euripides himself have exhibited.

The year 1637 was the era of the production of the Cid; the play not only of France, but of Europe, for it has been translated into most languages. But a sudden reputation involves its possessor in many vexations. Poets were in those days compelled to be courtiers, if they would prosper. At the Hotel de Rambouillet, an assembly was held, consisting of courtly and fashionable authors, who wasted their time in composing _thèses d’amour_ and other fopperies of romantic literature. Over this society, as well as over the politics of Europe, Richelieu chose to be umpire. He was also the founder of the French Academy, and the avowed patron of its members. With this hold upon their good manners, he kept four authors in pay, for the purpose of filling out his own dramatic and poetical skeletons. Corneille consented to be one of the party, and was so ignorant of the ways of courts as to fancy that he might exercise his judgment independently. He was even simple enough to be astonished that the well-meant liberty of making some alterations in the plot of one of these ministerial dramas should give offence: but as he was too proud to surrender his own judgment, or to risk future affronts from the revulsion of the Cardinal’s goodwill, he withdrew from the palace, and abandoned himself to uncontrolled intercourse with the Muse. Richelieu therefore became the principal instigator of a cabal, which the envy of the wits sufficiently inclined them to form. Under such auspices, they entered into a conspiracy against the uncourtly offender. The prime minister could not endure that the successful intriguer in political life should be taxed with failure in unravelling the intricacies of a fictitious interest: he therefore looked at the real defects in a performance approved by the public with a jaundiced eye, and with but a half-opened one at its unrivalled beauties. As universal patron, he had settled a pension on the poet; but he levelled insidious and clandestine shafts against his fame. The “irritable tribe” willingly ran to arms, with Scuderi at their head, who wrote hostile remarks on the Cid, addressed to the Academy in the form of an appeal, in the course of which he quaintly termed himself _the evangelist of truth_. According to the statutes of the Academy, that august body could not take upon itself the decision, without the consent of both parties. Corneille, however indignant professionally, was under too many personal obligations to the Cardinal to spurn the authority of a tribunal erected by him. He therefore gave his assent to the reference, but in terms of considerable haughtiness. The Academy drew up a critique, to which they gave the modest title of “Sentiments of the French Academy on the tragicomedy of the Cid.” In the execution of this delicate commission, the learned members contrived to reconcile the demands of sound taste and criticism with the tact and suppleness of courtiers. They gratified the splenetic temper of the minister by censures, the justice of which could not be gainsayed: but they praised the beauties of the great scenes with a nobleness of panegyric, which took from the author all right to complain of partiality. This solemn judgment was given after five months of debate and negotiation between the Cardinal and the academicians, who dreaded official frowns if they wholly acquitted, and public disgust if they condemned against evidence. If it be considered that this infant institution owed its birth to Richelieu, and depended on him for its future growth, the verdict is highly honourable to the individuals, and creditable to the literary character, even when disadvantageously circumstanced by being entangled in the trammels of a court.

Our limits will not permit the examination of insulated passages, nor even individual tragedies: but independently of the splendour of the execution, other circumstances attending the career of the _Cid_ produced a strong impression on the remainder of Corneille’s dramatic life. The Cid was taken from two Spanish plays, and several passages were actual translations; but not in sufficient number to invalidate the author’s claim to a large share of originality. To set that question at rest, in the editions published by himself, he gave the passages taken from the Spanish at the bottom of the page. Yet it was objected by his rivals and libellers, that the author of Medea and the Cid could only imitate or translate: that he had stolen the first of his tragedies from Seneca, the second from Guillen de Castro: a clever borrower, without a spark of tragic genius or invention! Unluckily for this bold assertion, among other European languages, this French play was translated into Spanish; and the nation, whence the piece was professedly derived, thought it worth while to recover it in the dress given to it by an illustrious foreigner. Against such unfounded censures it will be sufficient to quote the authority of Boileau, who speaks of the Cid as a _merveille naissante_.

Having achieved his first great success on a Spanish subject and after a Spanish model, it is not improbable that, had all gone smoothly, he would have continued to draw his resources from the same fountain. But vexation and resentment, usually at variance with good policy, now conspired with it; and put him on seeking a new road to fame. He had, as it should seem, intended to transplant a succession of Spanish histories and fables, with all the entanglement of Spanish contrivance in the weaving of plots. But in weighing the objections started against his piece, he found that they applied rather to his Spanish originals than to his own adaptation; he therefore determined to cut the knot of future controversy, by adopting the severity of the classical model. To this we owe Horace, Pompée, Cinna, and Polyeucte;—masterpieces which his more polished but more feeble successors in vain aspired to emulate. Thus did this eager war of criticism produce a crisis in the dramatic history of France. Its stage would probably, but for this, have been heroic and chivalrous, not, as it is, Roman, and after the manner of the ancients. It might even have rivalled our own in tragicomedy;—that monster stigmatized by Voltaire as the offspring of barbarism, although, and perhaps because, he “pilfered snug” from it; and might hope, by undervaluing the article, to escape detection as the purloiner.

At the end of three years, devoted to the study of the ancients, the injured author avenged the injuries levelled against the Cid by the production of Horace. Although the impetuous poet had not yet subdued his genius to the trammels of just arrangement, unity of action, and the other severe rules of the classic drama, such was the originality of conception, the force of character, and grandeur of sentiment displayed in this performance, that new views of excellence were opened to the astonished audience. Voltaire, with all the pedantry of mechanical criticism, objects to Horace, that in it there are three tragedies instead of one. Whatever may be the force of this objection with the French, it will weigh little with a people inured to the irregular sublimity and unfettered splendour of Shakspeare. Cinna redeemed many of the errors of Horace, and improved upon its various merits. The suffrages of the public were divided between it and Polyeucte, as the author’s masterpiece. But Dryden considered the Cid and China as his two best plays; and speaks of Polyeucte sarcastically, as “in matters of religion, as solemn as the long stops upon our organs.”

Before the performance of Polyeucte, Corneille read it at the Hotel de Rambouillet. That tribunal affected sovereign authority in affairs of wit. Even the reputation of the author, now in all its splendour, could no further command the civilities of the critics, than to “damn with faint praise.” Some days afterwards, Voiture called on Corneille, and, after much complimentary circumlocution, took the liberty of just hinting, that its success was not likely to answer expectation: above all, that its _Christian spirit_ was calculated to give offence. Corneille, much alarmed, was about to withdraw it from rehearsal: the persuasions of an inferior player spirited him up to risk the consequences of avowing himself a Christian in an infidel court. Thus, probably, a hanger-on of the theatre had the honour of preventing a repetition of that malice, by which rival wits attempted to arrest the career of the Cid.

The winter of 1641–42 produced La Mort de Pompée and Le Menteur.

The opening of La Mort de Pompée has been frequently commended for grandeur of conception and originality; and the skill cannot be denied, by which the enunciation of the circumstances producing the interest of the piece is rendered consistent with the dignity of the subject and characters. The same praise cannot be conceded to the inflation of the dialogue and the intolerable length of the speeches. But the concluding speech of Cæsar to the second scene of the third act, and the whole of the fourth act, notwithstanding the censure of Dryden, both on this tragedy and the Cinna, that “they are not so properly to be called plays, as long discourses of reason and state,” may be selected as favourable specimens of the style and power of French dialogue.

A short notice will be sufficient for the comedy of Corneille; and the production of Le Menteur, his most celebrated piece, affords the fittest opportunity. As the Cid was imitated from Guillen de Castro, Lopé de Vega furnished the groundwork of Le Menteur. It is considered to be the first genuine example of the comedy of intrigue and character in France; for Melite was at best but a mere attempt. Before this time, there was no unsophisticated nature, no conventional manners, no truth of delineation. Mirth was raised by extravagance, and curiosity by incidents bordering on the impossible. Corneille appealed to nature and to truth: however imperfect the execution, in comparison with that of his next successor in comedy, he proved that he knew how Thalia as well as Melpomene ought to be drawn. The greatest compliment, perhaps, that can be paid to his genius is, that he pointed out the road both to Racine and Moliere.

The year 1645 gave birth to Rodogune, in which, having before touched the springs of wonder and pity, he worked on his audience by the more powerful engine of terror. His subsequent pieces were below his former level, and betrayed, not so much the decay of genius from the growing infirmities of nature, as that fatal mistake in _writing themselves out_, so common to authors in the province of imagination. The cold reception of Pertharite disgusted the poet, and he renounced the stage in a splenetic little preface to the printed play, complaining that “he had been an author too long to be a fashionable one.” The turmoil of the court and the gaiety of the theatre had not effaced his early sentiments of piety and religion; he therefore betook himself to the translation of Kempis’s Imitation of Jesus Christ, which he performed very finely. This gave rise to a ridiculous and unfounded story, that the first book was imposed on him as a penance; the second, by the Queen’s command; and the third, by the terrors of conscience during a severe illness.

As the mortification of failure faded away with time, his passion for the theatre revived. Notwithstanding some misgivings, he was encouraged by Fouquet Destrin in 1659, after six years’ absence. He began again, with more benefit to his popularity than to his true fame, with Œdipus;—the noblest and most pathetic subject, most nobly treated, of ancient tragedy. La Toison d’Or came next; a spectacle got up for the King’s marriage;—a species of piece in which the poet always plays a subordinate part to the scene-painter and the dressmaker. Sertorius is to be noticed as having given scope to the fine declamatory powers of Mademoiselle Clairon, the Siddons of the French stage.

Berenice rose to an unenviable fame, principally in consequence of the following circumstances. Henrietta of England, then Duchess of Orleans, whom Fontenelle had the good manners to compliment as “a princess who had a high relish for works of genius, and had been able to call forth some sparks of it _even in a barbarous country_,” privately set Corneille and Racine to work on the same subject. Their pieces were represented at the same time; and the struggle between a worn-out veteran and a champion in the vigour of youth, terminated, as might have been expected, in the victory of the latter. This literary contest was known by the title of “the duel.” The experiment proves the love of mischief, but says little for the good taste or benevolence of the royal instigator. Pulchérie and Surena were his last productions: both better than Berenice, with sufficient merit to render the close of his literary life respectable, if not splendid.

The personal history of Corneille furnishes little anecdote; we have only further to state, that he was chosen a Member of the French Academy in 1647, and was Dean of that society at the time of his death, which took place in 1684, in his seventy-ninth year.

He is said to have been a man of a devout and melancholy cast. He spoke little in company, even on subjects which his pursuits had made his own. The author of ‘Melanges d’Histoire et du Literature,’ a work published under the name of Vigneut Marville, but really written by the Pêre Bonaventure d’Ayounne, a Cistercian monk of Paris, says, that “the first time he saw him, he took him for a tradesman of Rouen. His conversation was so heavy as to be extremely tiresome if it lasted long.” But whatever might be the outward coarseness or dulness of the man, he was mild of temper in his family, a good husband, parent, and friend. His worth and integrity were unquestionable; nor had his connexion with the court, of which he was not fond, taught him that art of cringing so necessary to fortune and promotion. Hence his reputation was almost the only advantage accruing to him from his productions. His works have been often printed, and consist of more than thirty plays, tragedies and comedies.

Those who wish for a more detailed account of this great writer will find it in his life, by Fontenelle, in Voltaire’s several prefaces, in Racine’s Speech to the French Academy on the admission of his brother Thomas, and in Bayle. Many scattered remarks on him may also be found throughout Dryden’s critical prefaces.

_Engraved by W. T. Fry._

HALLEY

_From an original Picture ascribed to Dahl in the possession of the
Royal Society._

Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.

_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]

HALLEY

Edmund Halley, one of the greatest astronomers of an age which produced many, was born at a country house named Haggerston, in the parish of St. Leonard, Shoreditch, October 29, 1656. His father, a wealthy citizen and soap-boiler, intrusted the care of his son’s education to Dr. Gale, master of St. Paul’s School. Here young Halley applied himself to the study of mathematics and astronomy with what was then considered great success; for, before he left school, he understood the use of the celestial globe, and could construct a sun-dial; and, as he has himself informed us, had already observed the variation of the needle. In 1673, being in the seventeenth year of his age, he was entered of Queen’s College, Oxford, and two years afterwards gave the first proof of his astronomical genius by publishing, in the Philosophical Transactions, 1676, “a direct and geometrical method of finding the Aphelia and Eccentricities of the Planets.” His father, who seems to have had none of that antipathy to a son’s engaging in literary or scientific pursuits, which is represented as common to men of commerce by the writers of that age, supplied him liberally with astronomical instruments. Thus assisted, he made many observations, particularly of Jupiter and Saturn, by means of which he discovered that the motion of Saturn was slower, and that of Jupiter quicker than could be accounted for by the existing tables; and made some progress in correcting those tables accordingly. But he soon found that nothing could be done without a good catalogue of the stars. This, it appears, he had some intention of forming; but finding that Hevelius and Flamsteed were already employed on the same work, he proposed to himself to proceed to the southern hemisphere, and to complete the design by observing those stars which never rise above the horizons of Dantzic and Greenwich. Having obtained his father’s consent, and an allowance of £300 a-year; and having fixed upon St. Helena as the most convenient spot, he applied to Sir Joseph Williamson and Sir Jonas Moor, the Secretary of State and the Surveyor of the Ordnance. These gentlemen represented his intention in a favourable light to Charles II., and also to the East-India Company, who promised him every assistance in their power. Thus protected, he set out for St. Helena in 1676; his principal instruments being a sextant of five feet and a half radius, and a telescope of twenty-four feet in length. He found the climate not so favourable as he had been led to believe, and moreover describes himself as disgusted with the treatment he received from the Governor. Under these disadvantages, he nevertheless formed a catalogue of 350 stars, which he afterwards published under the name of ‘Catalogus Stellarum Australium.’ He called a new constellation which he had observed, by the title of _Robur Carolinum_, in honour of the well-known oak of Charles II. While at St. Helena he also observed a transit of Mercury, and suggested the use which might be made of similar phenomena in the determination of the sun’s distance from the earth. He first observed the necessity of shortening the pendulum as it approached the equator; or, at least, when Hook afterwards mentioned the circumstance to Newton, it was the first time the latter had heard of the fact.

Soon after his return to England, in November, 1678, Halley obtained the degree of M.A. from the University of Oxford, by royal mandate, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society. This body had been requested by Hevelius to select some person who might add the southern stars to his catalogue. A dispute was also pending between him and Hook, as to the use of telescopes in observing the stars, to which the former objected. To aid Hevelius, as well as to decide upon the character of his observations, Halley went to Dantzic, and it is related, as a proof of the energy of his character, that in one month from the time of his landing in England he published his catalogue, procured a mandate, took the degree, was elected F.R.S., arranged to go to Dantzic, and wrote to Hevelius. He arrived on the 26th of May, 1679, and the same night entered upon a series of observations with Hevelius, which he continued till July, when he returned to England, fully satisfied of his coadjutor’s accuracy.

In 1680 he again visited the continent. Between Paris and Calais he had a sight of the celebrated comet of that year, well known as the one by observations of which the orbit of these bodies was discovered to be nearly a parabola. He returned from his travels in the year 1681, and shortly after married the daughter of a Mr. Tooke then Auditor of the Exchequer, which union lasted fifty-five years. He settled at Islington, where, for more than ten years, he occupied himself with his usual pursuits, of the results of which we shall presently speak more particularly.

In 1691 the Savilian Professorship of Astronomy became vacant, and, as Whiston relates, on the authority of Dr. Bentley, Bishop Stillingfleet was requested to recommend Mr. Halley. But the astronomer’s avowed disbelief of Christianity interfered with his election in this instance, and the Professorship was given to Dr. Gregory. It is related by Sir David Brewster that Halley, when inclined to enter upon religious subjects with Newton, always received a check in words like the following, “You have not studied the subject—I have.”

After the above-mentioned failure, our astronomer received from King William the commission of Captain in the Navy, with command of a small vessel. The singularity of the reward need not surprise us, when the same monarch offered a company of dragoons to Swift: indeed the pursuits of Captain Halley were nearly akin to those of navigation, and he himself might be almost as well qualified for sailing, though perhaps not for fighting a ship, as most of his brother officers. In his new character Halley made two voyages, the first to the Mediterranean, the Brazils, and the West Indies, for the purpose of ascertaining the variation of the magnet, a subject in which he was much interested, and of which he afterwards published a chart; the second to ascertain the latitudes and longitudes of the principal points in the British Channel, and the course of the tides. In 1703 he was elected Savilian Professor of Geometry, on the death of the celebrated Wallis. He received, about the same time, the degree of Doctor of Laws, which is conferred without requiring subscription to the Articles of the Church. In his connexion with the University he superintended several parts of the edition of the Greek Geometers, which was printed at the University press.

Halley succeeded Sir Hans Sloane, in 1713, as Secretary to the Royal Society; and, in 1719, on the death of Flamsteed, he was appointed Astronomer Royal at Greenwich. In this employment he continued till his death, under the patronage of Queen Caroline, wife of George II., who procured for him the half-pay of the rank he formerly held in the navy. In 1737 he was seized with a paralytic disorder; but nevertheless continued his labours till within a short time of his death, which took place in January, 1742, at the age of eighty-five. He was interred at Lee, near Blackheath, where a monument was erected to him and his wife by their two daughters.

In person Dr. Halley was rather tall, thin, and fair, and remarkable as well for energy as vivacity of character. He cultivated the friendship and acquired the esteem of his most distinguished contemporaries, and particularly of Newton, spite of their very different opinions. Indeed it may be said that to him we owe, in some degree, the publication of the ‘Principia;’ for Halley being engaged upon the consideration of Kepler’s law, as it had been discovered by observation, viz., that the squares of the periodic times of planets are as the cubes of their distances, and suspecting that this might be accounted for on the supposition of a centripetal force, varying inversely as the square of the distance, applied himself to prove the connexion geometrically, in which he was unable to succeed. In this difficulty he applied to Hook and Wren, neither of whom could help him, and was recommended to consult Newton, then Lucasian Professor at Cambridge. Following this advice, he found in Newton all he wanted; and did not rest until he had persuaded his new acquaintance to give the results of his discoveries to the world. In about two years after this, the first edition of the ‘Principia’ was published, and the proofs were corrected by Halley, who supplied the well-known Latin verses which stand at the beginning of the work.

In conversation, Halley appears to have been of a jocose and somewhat satirical disposition. The following anecdote of him, which is told by Whiston, displays the usual modesty of the latter, when speaking of himself: “On my refusal from him of a glass of wine on a Wednesday or Friday, he said he was afraid I had a pope in my belly, which I denied, and added somewhat bluntly, that had it not been for the rise now and then of a Luther or a Whiston, he would himself have gone down on his knees to St. Winifred or St. Bridget, which he knew not how to contradict.” It is related that when Queen Caroline offered to obtain an increase of Halley’s salary as Astronomer Royal, he replied, “Pray, your Majesty, do no such thing, for should the salary be increased, it might become an object of emolument to place there some unqualified needy dependant, to the ruin of the institution.” And yet the sum which he would not suffer to be increased was only £100 a-year.

To give even a catalogue of the various labours of Halley, would require more space than we can here devote to the subject. For a more detailed account both of his life and discoveries, we must refer the reader to the Biographia Britannica, to Delambre, Histoire de l’Astronomie au dix-huitième Siecle, livre II., and the Philosophical Transactions of the time in which he lived; or better perhaps to the Miscellanea Curiosa, _London_, 1726, a selection of papers from the Transactions, containing the most remarkable of those written by Halley. We shall, nevertheless, proceed briefly to notice a few of the discoveries on which the fame of our astronomer is built.

The most remarkable of them, to a common reader, is the conjecture of the return of a comet. Some earlier astronomers, as Kepler, had imagined the motion of these bodies to be rectilinear. Newton, in explaining the principle of universal gravitation, showed how a comet might describe a parabola, and also how to calculate its motion, and compare it with observation. Hevelius had already indicated the curvature of a comet’s path, and Dörfel, a Saxon clergyman, had calculated the path of the comet of 1680 upon this supposition. Halley, in computing the parabolic elements of all the comets which had been well observed up to his time, suspected, from the general likeness of the three, that the comets of 1531, 1607, and 1682, were the same. He was the more confirmed in this, by knowing that comets had been seen, though no good observations were recorded, in the years 1305, 1380, and 1456, giving, with the former dates, a chain of differences of 75 and 76 years alternately. Halley supposed, therefore, that the orbit of this comet was, not a parabola, but a very elongated ellipse, and that it would return about the year 1758. The truth of his conjecture was fully confirmed in January, 1759, by Messier. The first person, however, who saw Halley’s comet, as it is now called, was George Palitzch, a farmer in the neighbourhood of Dresden, who had studied astronomy by himself, and fitted up a small observatory.