It was perhaps not without its influence on the style of Corneille, that a youthful labor of his in authorship was to translate, wholly or partially, the "Pharsalia" of Lucan. His fondness for Lucan, Corneille always retained. This taste on his part, and the rhymed Alexandrines in which he wrote tragedy, may together help account for the hyperheroic style which is Corneille's great fault. A lady criticised his tragedy, "The Death of Pompey," by saying: "Very fine, but too many heroes in it." Corneille's tragedies generally have, if not too many heroes, at least too much hero, in them. Concerning the historian Gibbon's habitual pomp of expression, it was once wittily said that nobody could possibly tell the truth in such a style as that. It would be equally near the mark if we should say of Corneille's chosen mold of verse, that nobody could possibly be simple and natural in that. Moliere's comedy, however, would almost confute us. Pierre Corneille was born in Rouen. He studied law, and he was admitted to practice as an advocate, like Moliere; but, like Moliere, he heard and he heeded an inward voice summoning him away from the bar to the stage. Corneille did not, however, like Moliere, tread the boards as an actor. He had a lively sense of personal dignity. He was eminently the "lofty, grave tragedian," in his own esteem. "But I am Pierre Corneille notwithstanding," he self-respectingly said once, when friends were regretting to him some deficiency of grace in his personal carriage. One can imagine him taking off his hat to himself with unaffected deference. But this serious genius began dramatic composition with writing comedy. He made several experiments of this kind with no commanding success; but at thirty he wrote the tragedy of "The Cid," and instantly became famous. His subsequent plays were chiefly on classical subjects. The subject of "The Cid" was drawn from Spanish literature. This was emphatically what has been called an "epoch-making" production. Richelieu's "Academy," at the instigation, indeed almost under the dictation, of Richelieu, who was jealous of Corneille, tried to write it down. They succeeded about as Balaam succeeded in prophesying against Israel. "The Cid" triumphed over them, and over the great minister. It established not only Corneille's fame, but his authority. The man of genius taken alone proved stronger than the men of taste taken together.