Although his actual poverty has been recently denied, he cannot have been affluent. His pensions covered but a small part of his long life and were most irregularly paid. He was no "dedicator," and the occasional presents of rich men, such as Montauron (who gave him a thousand, others say two hundred, pistoles for the dedication of _Cinna_), and Fouquet (who commissioned _OEdipe_), were few and far between, though they have exposed him to reflections which show great ignorance of the manners of the age. Of his professional earnings, the small sum for which, as we have seen, he gave up his offices, and the expression of Fontenelle that he practised "sans goût et sans succès," are sufficient proof. His patrimony and his wife's dowry must both have been trifling. On the other hand, it was during the early and middle part of his career impossible, and during the later part very difficult, for a dramatist to live decently by his pieces. It was not till the middle of the century that the custom of allowing the author two shares in the profits during the first run of the piece was observed, and even then revivals profited him nothing. Thomas Corneille himself, who to his undoubted talents united wonderful facility, untiring industry, and (gift valuable above all others to the playwright) an extraordinary knack of hitting the public fancy, died, notwithstanding his simple tastes, "as poor as Job." We know that Pierre received for two of his later pieces two thousand livres each, and we do not know that he ever received more.
But his reward in fame was not stinted. Corneille, unlike many of the great writers of the world, was not driven to wait for "the next age" to do him justice. The cabal or clique which attacked the _Cid_ had no effect whatever on the judgment of the public. All his subsequent masterpieces were received with the same ungrudging applause, and the rising star of Racine, even in conjunction with the manifest inferiority of Corneille's last five or six plays, with difficulty prevailed against the older poet's towering reputation. The great men of his time--Condé, Turenne, the maréchal de Grammont, the knight-errant duc de Guise--were his fervent admirers. Nor had he less justice done him by a class from whom less justice might have been expected, the brother men of letters whose criticisms he treated with such scant courtesy. The respectable mediocrity of Chapelain might misapprehend him; the lesser geniuses of Scudéry and Mairet might feel alarm at his advent; the envious Claverets and D'Aubignacs might snarl and scribble. But Balzac did him justice; Rotrou, as we have seen, never failed in generous appreciation; Molière in conversation and in print recognized him as his own master and the foremost of dramatists. We have quoted the informal tribute of Racine; but it should not be forgotten that Racine, in discharge of his duty as respondent at the Academical reception of Thomas Corneille, pronounced upon the memory of Pierre perhaps the noblest and most just tribute of eulogy that ever issued from the lips of a rival. Boileau's testimony is of a more chequered character; yet he seems never to have failed in admiring Corneille whenever his principles would allow him to do so. Questioned as to the great men of Louis XIV.'s reign, he is said to have replied: "I only know three,--Corneille, Molière and myself." "And how about Racine?" his auditor ventured to remark. "He was an extremely clever fellow to whom I taught the art of elaborate rhyming" (_rimer difficilement_). It was reserved for the 18th century to exalt Racine above Corneille. Voltaire, who was prompted by his natural benevolence to comment on the latter (the profits went to a relation of the poet), was not altogether fitted by nature to appreciate Corneille, and moreover, as has been ingeniously pointed out, was not a little wearied by the length of his task. His partially unfavourable verdict was endorsed earlier by Vauvenargues, who knew little of poetry, and later by La Harpe, whose critical standpoint has now been universally abandoned. Napoleon I. was a great admirer of Corneille ("s'il vivait, je le ferais prince," he said), and under the Empire and the Restoration an approach to a sounder appreciation was made. But it was the glory of the romantic school, or rather of the more catholic study of letters which that school brought about, to restore Corneille to his true rank. So long, indeed, as a certain kind of criticism was pursued, due appreciation was impossible. When it was thought sufficient to say with Boileau that Corneille excited, not pity or terror, but admiration which was not a tragic passion; or that