PIERRE CORNEILLE, son of a legal official, was born at Rouen in 1606. His high promise as a pupil of the Jesuits was not confirmed when he attempted to practise at the bar; he was retiring, and spoke with difficulty. At twenty-three his first dramatic piece, _Melite_, a comedy, suggested, it is told, by an adventure of his youth, was given with applause in Paris; it glitters with points, and is of a complicated intrigue, but to contemporaries the plot appeared less entangled and the style more natural than they seem to modern readers. The tragi-comedy, _Clitandre_, which followed (1632), was a romantic drama, crowded with extravagant incidents, after the manner of Hardy. In _La Veuve_ he returned to the style of _Melite_, but with less artificial brilliance and more real vivacity; it was published with laudatory verses prefixed, in one of which Scudery bids the stars retire for the sun has risen. The scene is laid in Paris, and some presentation of contemporary manners is made in _La Galerie du Palais_ and _La Place Royale_. It was something to replace the nurse of elder comedy by the soubrette. The attention of Richelieu was attracted to the new dramatic author; he was numbered among the five _garcons poetes_ who worked upon the dramatic plans of the Cardinal; but he displeased his patron by his imaginative independence. Providing himself with a convenient excuse, Corneille retired to Rouen. These early works were ventures among which the poet was groping for his true way. He can hardly be said to have found it in _Medee_ (1635), but it was an advance to have attempted tragedy; the grandiose style of Seneca was a challenge to his genius; and in the famous line-- "_Dans un si grand revers, que vous reste-t-il? Moi!_" we see the flash of his indomitable pride of will, we hear the sudden thunder of his verse. An acquaintance, M. de Chalon, who had been one of the household of Marie de Medicis, directed Corneille to the Spanish drama. The _Illusion Comique_, the latest of his tentative plays, is a step towards the _Cid_; its plot is fantastical, but in some of the fanfaronades of the braggart Matamore, imported from Spain, are pseudo-heroics which only needed a certain transposition to become the language of chivalric heroism. The piece closes with a lofty eulogy of the French stage.