last with a roar.  It is a strange kind of poetry:  not that of imaginative vision, of plastic beauty, of subtle feeling; but that of intellectual excitement and spiritual strength.  It is the poetry of Malherbe multiplied a thousandfold in vigour and in genius, and expressed in the form most appropriate to it—­the dramatic Alexandrine verse.  The stuff out of which it is woven, made up, not of the images of sense, but of the processes of thought, is, in fact, simply argument.  One can understand how verse created from such material might be vigorous and impressive; it is difficult to imagine how it could also be passionate—­until one has read Corneille.  Then one realizes afresh the compelling power of genius.  His tragic personages, standing forth without mystery, without ‘atmosphere’, without local colour, but simply in the clear white light of reason, rivet our attention, and seem at last to seize upon our very souls.  Their sentences, balanced, weighty and voluble, reveal the terrors of destiny, the furies of love, the exasperations of pride, with an intensity of intellectual precision that burns and blazes.  The deeper these strange beings sink into their anguish, the more remorseless their arguments become.  They prove their horror in dreadful syllogisms; every inference plunges them farther into the abyss; and their intelligence flames upward to its highest point, when they are finally engulfed.

Such is the singular passion that fills Corneille’s tragedies.  The creatures that give utterance to it are hardly human beings:  they are embodiments of will, force, intellect and pride.  The situations in which they are placed are calculated to expose these qualities to the utmost; and all Corneille’s masterpieces are concerned with the same subject—­the combat between indomitable egoism and the forces of Fate.  It is in the meeting of these ‘fell incensed opposites’ that the tragedy consists.  In Le Cid, Chimene’s passion for Rodrigue struggles in a death-grapple with the destiny that makes Rodrigue the slayer of her father.  In Polyeucte it is the same passion struggling with the dictates of religion.  In Les Horaces, patriotism, family love and personal passion are all pitted against Fate.  In Cinna, the conflict passes within the mind of Auguste, between the promptings of a noble magnanimity and the desire for revenge.  In all these plays the central characters display a superhuman courage and constancy and self-control.  They are ideal figures, speaking with a force and an elevation unknown in actual experience; they never blench, they never waver, but move adamantine to their doom.  They are for ever asserting the strength of their own individuality.

    Je suis maitre de moi comme de l’univers,
    Je le suis, je veux l’etre,

declares Auguste; and Medee, at the climax of her misfortunes, uses the same language—­

    ’Dans un si grand revers que vous reste-t-il?’—­’Moi! 
    Moi, dis-je, et c’est assez!’