It seems a pity that after so much care and tenderness the play should have been produced along with “The Cid,” and that the audience, less manageable than the Academy, on the announcement that “Europe” would be repeated the next day, murmured their wish for Corneille’s piece. But the influence he sought to throw upon the fortunes of the Cid there can be no need to recount to Englishmen. Only it is clear that Richelieu was more like Cicero than Virgil, the former of whom indeed affected to be desirous of burning some productions, but was easily diverted by pleasant flattery; but the latter of whom, after having bestowed the labor of twelve years on his immortal poem, was genuinely conscious of imperfections which so few beside himself could have perceived, that in his last moments he ordered it to be committed to the flames, a fate evaded only by disregard of his solemn testamentary injunction. It is equally clear that Richelieu had not the plea of neglect and undeserved disfavor felt in its extreme by William Collins. For his odes, first published in 1747, crept slowly into notice, were spoken of indifferently by his acquaintance Dr. Johnson, and met with feeble praise from Gray. The while the author was sensible of their beauty, and so deeply felt the coldness with which they were received, that he obtained from his publisher the unsold copies and burnt them with his own hand. “If then his highly finished productions brought back but disappointment,” hypothesises Mr. Thomas Miller, “how thankful he must have felt that he had not committed himself further by sending into the world such works as his own fine taste condemned! We believe that when he had completed his ”Ode on the Passions,” he knew he had produced a poem which ought to live forever, for we cannot conceive that the mind which erected so imperishable a fabric could have a doubt of its durability.” Alas! an immortality which sees no origin _in præsenti_—how burdensome it is to bear.[75]