The word ‘moi’ dominates these tragedies; and their heroes, bursting with this extraordinary egoism, assume even more towering proportions in their self-abnegation than in their pride.  Then the thrilling clarion-notes of their defiances give way to the deep grand music of stern sublimity and stoic resignation.  The gigantic spirit recoils upon itself, crushes itself, and reaches its last triumph.

Drama of this kind must, it is clear, lack many of the qualities which are usually associated with the dramatic art; there is no room in it for variety of character-drawing, for delicacy of feeling, or for the realistic presentation of the experiences of life.  Corneille hardly attempted to produce such effects as these; and during his early years his great gifts of passion and rhetoric easily made up for the deficiency.  As he grew older, however, his inspiration weakened; his command of his material left him; and he was no longer able to fill the figures of his creation with the old intellectual sublimity.  His heroes and his heroines became mere mouthing puppets, pouring out an endless stream of elaborate, high-flown sentiments, wrapped up in a complicated jargon of argumentative verse.  His later plays are miserable failures.  Not only do they illustrate the inherent weaknesses of Corneille’s dramatic method, but they are also full of the characteristic bad taste and affectations of the age.  The vital spirit once withdrawn, out sprang the noisome creatures from their lurking-places to feast upon the corpse.

Nevertheless, with all his faults, Corneille dominated French literature for twenty years.  His genius, transcendent, unfortunate, noble in endeavour, unequal in accomplishment, typifies the ambiguous movement of the time.  For still the flood of ‘Precious’ literature poured from the press—­dull, contorted epics, and stilted epigrams on my lady’s eyebrow, and learned dissertations decked out in sparkling tinsel, and infinitely long romances, full of alembicated loves.  Then suddenly one day a small pamphlet in the form of a letter appeared on the bookstalls of Paris; and with its appearance the long reign of confused ideals and misguided efforts came to an end for ever.  The pamphlet was the first of Pascal’s Lettres Provinciales—­the work which ushered into being the great classical age—­the Grand Siecle of Louis XIV.

In the Lettres Provinciales PASCAL created French prose—­the French prose that we know to-day, the French prose which ranks by virtue of its vigour, elegance and precision as a unique thing in the literature of the world.  Earlier prose-writers—­Joinville, Froissart, Rabelais, Montaigne—­had been in turns charming, or picturesque, or delicate, or overflowing with vitality; but none had struck upon the really characteristically French note.  They lacked form, and those fine qualities of strength and clarity which form alone can give.  Their sentences were indeterminate—­long, complex,