The tragedy does not end with the martyrdom of Polyeuctes. Paulina becomes a Christian, but remains pagan enough to call her father "barbarous" in acrimoniously bidding him finish his work by putting his daughter also to death. Severus reproaches Felix for his cruelty, and threatens him with his own enmity. Felix undergoes instantaneous conversion,--a miracle of grace which, under the circumstances provided by Corneille, we may excuse Voltaire for laughing at. Paulina is delighted; and Severus asks, "Who would not be touched by a spectacle so tender?" The tragedy thus comes near ending happily enough to be called a comedy. Such as the foregoing exhibits him, is Corneille, the father of French tragedy, where at his best; where at his worst, he is something so different that you would hardly admit him to be the same man. For never was genius more unequal in different manifestations of itself, than Corneille in his different works. Molière is reported to have said that Corneille had a familiar, or a fairy, that came to him at times, and enabled him to write sublimely; but that, when the poet was left to himself, he could write as poorly as another man. Corneille produced some thirty-three dramatic pieces in all, but of these not more than six or seven retain their place on the French stage. Besides his plays, there is a translation in verse by him of the "Imitation of Christ;" there are metrical versions of a considerable number of the Psalms; there are odes, madrigals, sonnets, stanzas, addresses to the king. Then there are discourses in prose on dramatic poetry, on tragedy, and on the three unities. Add to these, elaborate appreciations by himself of a considerable number of his own plays, prefaces, epistles, arguments to his pieces, and you have, what with the notes, the introductions, the eulogies, and other such things that the faithful French editor knows so well how to accumulate, matter enough of Corneille to swell out eleven, or, in one edition,--that issued under Napoleon as First Consul,--even twelve, handsome volumes of his works. Corneille and Bossuet together constitute a kind of rank by themselves among the _Dii Majores_ of the French literary Olympus. XI. RACINE. 1639-1699.