Racine appeared on the scene as a revolutionary force. He and Moliere, sustained by their friend Boileau, presented a dramatic art absolutely new, which was separated by a gulf from that of Corneille and for which nothing had prepared the way. Corneille's predecessors were Mairet, the du Ryers and many others: Racine stood alone. He was the first and the last to make tragedy realistic, with the subject simple, the characters scrupulously true to nature, and the language often audaciously familiar. Louis XIV. applauded. Racine and the King well comprehended each other. Heinrich Heine has given the reason for this in one of those phrases which throw light upon an entire period: "Racine is the first modern poet, as Louis XIV. was the first modern King." The young Court applauded cordially with the King. It also belonged to the new regime; but for the old Court, for the survivors of the Hotel Rambouillet, the tragedy of Racine was as shocking, as displeasing, as were the first realistic romances to the faithful adherents of romanticism, and for the same reasons. In spite of the difficulty so many have, of sympathising with the ideas of the one called a little disdainfully "the gentle Racine," "the elegant Racine," this writer appeared neither gentle nor elegant to three-fourths of the salon, to the "old Court" of the Grande Mademoiselle. The _Pyrrhus_ seemed to them "brutal," the Phedre, a "madwoman" "the blackness" of Nero or Narcisse entirely beyond what should be permitted on the stage. Not that the personages of Corneille or of his predecessors acted less wickedly, but their brutes and villains were nevertheless "heroes" and that made all the difference. The personages created by Racine were only "men," simple men, who used words "low and grovelling," bourgeois words, expressions such as "Quoi qu'il en soit, que fais je, que dis-je!"[198] and did not even realise the sense: more than three hundred improper terms have been counted in _Andromaque_. Racine would have fared better if his poetic methods had not been in some way a criticism upon the cleverness of Corneille. This was the real grievance, obliging the adorers of the old poet to condemn the insolent one.