PREFACE

Le Cid, Horace, Polyeucte and Ginna are generally regarded as the four principal works of Pierre Corneille. The best critics place them on the same level in point of merit ; and whilst selecting the last for publication in this séries of French Classics, I hâve been led by the considération that it is less known to the majority of readers than the three others.

More than twenty years ago, the late M. Victor Cousin pointed out the necessity of giving, from a carefùl survey of the original MSS., accurate éditions of the great French writers of the seventeenth century * ; he proved, for instance, that the négligence or timidity of Jansenist annotators had quite disiîgured the text of PascaFs Pensées. Other savants hâve since made out an equally clear case for Bossuet-, Madame de Sévigné^, and Racine^: enthusiasm has been excited, and the enterprising firm of Messrs. Hachette are now engaged xupon the gigantic task of publishing a complète séries of the Grands Écrivains de la France which will, when terminated, realize, and more than realize, M. Cousin's expectations. Such being the case, the best (the only thing I could do) was to gîve ComeiIle*s Cinna Verbatim from the excellent recension of M. Marty-Laveaux ; I hâve put together at the end of the play the most important various readings collected by the French editor, together with a sélection of remarks from the chief commentators, and a number of other notes

^ See bis work Des Pensées de Pascal. Paris 1843, ^^o* ^ See M. Gandar's récent volume, Bossuet Orateur, études critiques sur les sermons de la jeunesse de Bossuet. Paris 1867, 8vo.

' See the Préface to M. Hachette's édition of Madame de Sévigné. * See M. Hachette's édition, Préface.