PREFACE, V

Scott, and other English writers hâve given of Pierre Corneille ; but I must beg leave to transcribe the foUowing extract from a work quite recently published, and therefore not generally known.

In one of his lectures delivered at Edinburgh, Mr. Bridges says : —

" Corneille is known to us by name, and very little more. The loss is ours, and I venture to say it is a very serions loss; one reason is, perhaps, that no great poet ever produced so many works, which though grand in parts, yet as a whole are faulty. But if those who open him for the first time lirait their reading to his four masterpieces, the Cid, the Horace, the Cinna, and the Polyeucte, they will find themselves brought face to face with a spirit of heroic stamp. They had best put ail comparisons with the great English dramatist utterly aside. Between the ' myriad-minded * magician of our own land, and the manly, limited, straightforward simplicity of Corneille, there is no similarity whatever. If Corneille is to be compared to other poets, it would be to the Greek dramatists, to Virgil and Lucan, or to our own Milton: The motive in each of his works is simple, and usually the same — the conflict between private and public passions, between love and duty, between love and honour, between love and religion ;--etemal problems which will vex the noblest natures to the end of time 8."

Surely such a eulogy amply justifies us in giving Corneille a distinguished place on the list of educational books published by the Delegates of the Clarendon Press.