This success, which encouraged Corneille to pursue that sort of comedy, of which he was the first inventor, left him no reason to imagine, that he was one day to produce those masterpieces of tragedy, which his muse displayed afterwards with so much splendour; and yet less did he imagine, that his comick pieces, which, for want of any that were preferable, were then very much in fashion, would be eclipsed by another genius[36] formed upon the Greeks and Romans, and who would add to their excellencies improvements of his own, and that this modish comedy, to which Corneille, as to his idol, dedicated his labours, would quickly be forgot.  He wrote first Medea, and afterwards the Cid; and, by that prodigious flight of his genius, he discovered, though late, that nature had formed him to run in no other course but that of Sophocles.  Happy genius! that, without rule or imitation, could at once take so high a flight:  having once, as I may say, made himself an eagle, he never afterwards quitted the path which he had worked out for himself, over the heads of the writers of his time; yet he retained some traces of the false taste which infected the whole nation; but even in this, he deserves our admiration, since, in time, he changed it completely by the reflections he made, and those he occasioned.  In short, Corneille was born for tragedy, as Moliere for comedy.  Moliere, indeed, knew his own genius sooner, and was not less happy in procuring applause, though it often happened to him as to Corneille,

  “L’ignorance et l’erreur a ses naissantes pieces,
  En habit de marquis, en robes de comtesses,
  Vinssent pour diffamer son chef-d’oeuvre nouveau,
  Et secouer la tele a l’endroit le plus beau.”

But, without taking any farther notice of the time at which either came to the knowledge of his own genius, let us suppose that the powers of tragedy and comedy were as equally shared between Moliere and Corneille, as they are different in their own nature, and then nothing more will remain, than to compare the several difficulties of each composition, and to rate those difficulties together which are common to both.

It appears, first, that the tragick poet has, in his subject, an advantage over the comick, for he takes it from history; and his rival, at least in the more elevated and splendid comedy, is obliged to form it by his own invention.  Now, it is not so easy, as it might seem, to find comick subjects capable of a new and pleasing form; but history is a source, if not inexhaustible, yet certainly so copious as never to leave the genius aground.  It is true, that invention seems to have a wider field than history:  real facts are limited in their number, but the facts which may be feigned have no end; but though, in this respect, invention may be allowed to have the advantage, is the difficulty of inventing to be accounted as nothing?  To make a tragedy, is to get materials together, and to make use of them like a skilful architect;