Corneille's keenest adversaries have always been compelled to recognise in him a residuum, which withstood their destructive criticism. Vauvenargues said that "he sometimes expressed himself with great energy and no one has more loftly traits, no one has left behind him the idea of a dialogue so closely compacted and so vehement, or has depicted with equal felicity the power and the inflexibility of the soul, which come to it from virtue. There are astonishing flashes that come forth even from the disputes and upon which I commented unfavourably, there are battles that really elevate the heart, and finally, although he frequently removes himself from nature, it must be confessed that he depicts her with great directness and vigour in many places, and only there is he to be admired." Jacobi, in an essay which is an indictment, was however, compelled to excogitate or to beg for the reason of such fame; he found himself obliged to praise the many vivacious scenes, the depth of discourse, the loftiness of expression, to be found scattered here and there in those tragedies. Although Schiller did not care for him at all, he made an exception for "the part that is properly speaking heroic," which was "felicitously treated," although he added that "even this vein, which is not rich in itself, was treated monotonously." Schlegel was struck with certain passages and with the style which is often powerful and concise and De Sanctis observed that Corneille was in his own field, when he portrayed greatness of soul, not in its gradations and struggles, but "as nature and habit, in the security of possession." A German philologist, after he has run down the tragedies of the "quadrilateral," judges Corneille to be "a jurist and a cold man of intellect, although full of nobility and dignity of soul, but without clearness as to his own aptitudes, and without original creative power." This writer declares that "nowhere in his works do we feel the breath of genius that laughs at all restraints," but he goes on to make exception for the splendour of his "language." It seems somewhat difficult to make an exception for the language, precisely when discussing the question of poetical genius! NOTE. I draw attention to it in this note, because I have never seen it mentioned: it is to be found in the _Charactere der vornehmsten Dichter aller Nationen.... von einer Gesellschaft von Gelehrten_ (Leipzig, 1796), Vol. V, part I, pp. 38-138.