of which may possibly be a year older than these respective dates), show what political economists might call the stationary state of the poet's genius. The first two plays produced after the interval, _Oedipe_, 1659, and _La Toison d'Or_, 1660, both show the benefit of the rest the poet had had, together with certain signs of advancing years. _La Toison d'Or_, like _Andromede_, includes a great deal of spectacle, and is rather an elaborate masque interspersed with regular dramatic scenes than a tragedy. It is one of the best specimens of the kind. In _Sertorius_, 1662, there are occasional passages of much grandeur and beauty, but _Sophonisbe_, 1663, is hardly a success, nor is _Othon_, 1664. _Agesilas_, 1666, and _Attila_, 1667, have been (the latter unfairly) damned by a quatrain of Boileau's. But _Tite et Berenice_, 1670, must be acknowledged to be inferior to the play of Racine in rivalry with which it was produced. _Pulcherie_, 1672, and _Surena_, 1674, are last-fruits off an old tree, which, especially the second, are not unworthy of it. Nor was Corneille's contribution to the remarkable opera of _Psyche_, 1671, inconsiderable. This completes his dramatic work, which amounts to thirty pieces and part of another. It should be added that, to all the plays up to _La Toison d'Or_, he subjoined in a collected edition very remarkable criticisms of them, which he calls _Examens_. The characteristics of this great dramatist are perhaps more uniform than those of any writer of equal rank, and there can be little doubt that this uniformity, which, considering the great bulk of his work, amounts almost to monotony, was the cause of his gradual loss of popularity. We shall not here notice the points which he has in common with Racine, as a writer of the French classical drama. These will come in more suitably when Racine himself has been dealt with. In Corneille the academic criticism of the time found the fault that he rather excited admiration than pity and terror, and it held that admiration was 'not a tragic passion.' The criticism was clumsy, and to a great extent futile, but it has a certain basis of truth. It is comparatively rare for Corneille to attempt, after his earliest period, to interest his hearers or readers in the fortunes of his characters. It is rather in the way that they bear their fortunes, and particularly in a kind of haughty disdain for fortune itself, that these characters impress us. Sometimes, as in the Cleopatre of _Rodogune_, this masterful temper is engaged on the side of evil, more frequently it is combined with amiable or at least respectable characteristics. But there is always something 'remote and afar' about it, and the application by La Bruyere of the famous comparison between the Greek tragedians is in the main strictly accurate. It follows that Corneille's demand upon his hearers or readers is a somewhat severe one, and one with which many men are neither disposed nor able to comply.