the language founded on custom. Descartes, with whose philosophic ideas
we have here nothing to do, in his broad, ample periods, well delivered
and powerfully articulated, reproduced the Ciceronian phrase though
without its rather weak grace, and in great measure formed the mould
whence later was to flow the eloquence of Bossuet. The important works of
Descartes are his _Discourses on Method_, his _Meditation_, and
his _Treatise on the Passions_.

THE GOLDEN AGE: CORNEILLE.--The second half of the seventeenth century is
in all respects the golden age of French literature. Great poets and
great prose writers were then crowded in serried ranks. To begin with the
dramatic poets, who furnished the most vivid glory of the epoch, there
was Corneille, who, from 1636, with _The Cid_, was in full splendour
and who before 1650 had produced his most beautiful works, _Cinna_, _The
Horaces_, _Polyeucte_, continued for twenty-four years after 1650 to
furnish the stage with dramas that often possessed many fine qualities,
among which must be cited _Don Sancho of Aragon_, _Nicomedes_, _Oedipus_,
_Sertorius_, _Sophonisba_, _Titus and Berenice_, _Psyche_ (with Moliere),
_Rodogune Heraclius_, _Pulcheria_. Corneille must be regarded as the
real creator of _all_ the French drama, because he wrote comedies,
tragedies, operas, melodramas. It was therein, apart from his universal
virtuosity, that he more particularly made his mark, and in his best work
he was the delineator of the human will overcoming passions and, as it
were, intoxicated with this victory and his own power, so that he has
become a great advocate of energy and a prominent apostle of duty.

RACINE.--Racine, altogether different, without being opposed to duty,
loved to depict passions victorious over man and man the victim of his
passions and of the over-powering misfortunes therefrom resulting, thus
furnishing a moral lesson. He was a more penetrating psychologist than