In comedy also Corneille begins the first great original epoch of French dramatic literature; for it was to him that Molière owed the inspiration of the tone and style which he made those of the higher forms of French comedy. But _Le Menteur_ (the parent, with its sequel, of a numerous dramatic progeny[103]) was itself derived from a Spanish original,[104] which it did not (as was the case with the _Cid_) transform into something new. French tragi-comedy Corneille can hardly be said to have invented;[105] and of the mongrel growths of sentimental comedy and of domestic drama or _drame_, he rather suggested than exemplified the conditions. Racine. The tragic art of Racine supplements rather than surpasses that of his older contemporary. His works reflect the serene and settled formality of an age in which the sun of monarchy shone with an effulgence no clouds seemed capable of obscuring, and in which the life of a nation seemed reducible to the surroundings of a court. The tone of the poetic literature of such an age is not necessarily unreal, because the range of its ideas is limited, and because its forms seem to exist by an immutable authority. That Racine should permanently hold the position which belongs to him in French dramatic literature is due to the fact that to him it was given to present these forms--the forms approved by his age--in what may reasonably be called perfection; and, from the point of view of workmanship, Sophocles could not have achieved more. What his plays contain is another question. They suit themselves so well to the successive phases in the life of Louis XIV., that Madame de Sévigné described Racine as having in his later years loved God as he had formerly loved his mistresses; and this sally at all events indicates the range of passions which inspired his tragic muse. His heroes are all of one type--that of a gracious gloriousness; his heroines vary in their fortunes, but they are all the "trophies of love,"[106] with the exception of the scriptural figures, which stand apart from the rest.[107] T. Corneille, Campistron, Joseph Duché (1668-1704), Antoin de Lafosse (c. 1653-1708) and Quinault were mere followers of one or both of the great masters of tragedy, though the last named achieved a reputation of his own in the bastard species of the opera. Characteristics of French classical tragedy.