ing days of the month are variously given as his birthday; | Those to Madame (or, as the habit of the time called her,
all that is certain is that he was christened on the 22d.
The ceremony was at that time often, though not invariably,
performed on the day of birth. Racine belonged to a
family of the upper bourgeoisie, which had indeed been
technically ennobled some generations earlier and bore
the punning arms of a rat and a swan (rat, cygne). The
poet himself subsequently dropped the rat. His family
were connected with others of the same or a slightly
higher station in La Ferté and its neighbourhood, the
Des Moulins, the Sconins, the Vitarts, all of whom appear
in Racine's life. His mother was Jeanne Sconin. His
father, of the same name as himself, was only four-and-
twenty at the time of the poet's birth. He seems to have
been a solicitor (procureur) by profession, and held, as his
father, the grandfather of the dramatist, had done, the
office of controleur au grenier à sel. Racine was the eldest
child of his parents. Little more than a year afterwards
his sister Marie was born and his mother died. Jean
Racine the elder married again, but three months later
he himself died and the stepmother is never heard of in
connexion with the poet or his sister. They were left
without-any provision, but their grandparents, Jean Racine
the eldest and Marie des Moulins, were still living, and
took charge of them. These grandparents had a daughter,
Agnes, who figures in Racine's history. She was a nun of
Port Royal under the style of Mère de Sainte Thècle, and
the whole family had strong Jansenist leanings. Jean
Racine the eldest died in 1649, and, apparently as a con-
sequence of this, the poet was sent to the Collége de
Beauvais. This (which was the grammar-school of the
town of that name, and not the famous Collége de Beauvais
at Paris) was intimately connected with Port Royal, and
to this latter place Racine was transferred in November
1655. His special masters there were Nicole and Le
Maître. The latter, in an extant letter written to his
pupil during one of the gusts of persecution which Port
Royal constantly suffered, speaks of himself as "votre
papa"; the manner in which Racine repaid this affection
will be seen shortly. It is evident from documents that
he was a very diligent student both at Beauvais and Port
Royal. He wrote verse both in Latin and French, and
his Port Royal odes, which it has been the fashion with
the more fanatical admirers of his later poetry to ridicule,
are far from despicable. They show the somewhat gar-
rulous nature-worship of the Pléiade tempered by the
example of the earlier school of Malherbe. He seems
also to have made at least a first draft of his version of
the breviary hymns; some, if not most, of a considerable
mass of translations from the classics and annotations on
them must also date from this time. Racine stayed at
Port Royal for three years, and left it, aged nearly nineteen,
in October 1658. He was then entered at the Collége
d'Harcourt and boarded with his second cousin, Nicolas
Vitart, steward of the duke of Luynes. Later, if not at
first, he lived in the Hôtel de Luynes itself. It is to be
observed that his Jansenist surroundings continued with
him here, for the duke of Luynes was a severe Port Royalist.
It is, however, clear from Racine's correspondence, which
as we have it begins in 1660 and is for some years very
abundant and interesting, that he was not at all of an
austere disposition at this time. His chief correspondent
is a certain young abbé Le Vasseur, who seems to have
been by no means seriously given. The letters are full
of verse-making and of other diversions; a certain Made-
moiselle Lucrèce, who seems to have been both amiable
and literary, is very frequently mentioned, neither is she
the only one of her sex who appears. Occasionally the
liveliness of the letters passes the bounds of strict de-
cency, though there is nothing very shocking in them.

Mademoiselle) Vitart are free from anything of this kind,
while they are very lively and pleasant. It does not
appear that Racine read much philosophy, as he should
have done, but he occasionally did some business in super-
intending building operations at Chevreuse, the duke's
country house. He would seem, however, to have been
already given up irrevocably to literature. This by no
means suited the views of his devout relations at Port
Royal, and he complains in one of his letters that an
unlucky sonnet on Mazarin had brought down on him
excommunications sur excommunications." But he had
much more important works in hand than sonnets. The
marriage of Louis XIV. was the occasion of an ambitious
ode, "La Nymphe de la Seine," which was submitted
before publication to Chapelain, the too famous author of
the Pucelle. Chapelain's fault was not ill-nature, and he
made many suggestions (including the very pertinent one
that Tritons were not usually found in rivers), which Racine
duly adopted. Nor did the ode bound his ambitions, for
he finished one piece, Amasie, and undertook another, Les
Amours d'Ovide, for the theatre. The first, however, was
rejected by the actors of the Marais, and it is not certain.
that the other was ever finished or offered to those of the
Hôtel de Bourgogne. Racine's letters show that he was
intimate with more than one actress at this time; he also
made acquaintance with La Fontaine, and the foundations
at any rate of the legendary "society of four" (Boileau,
La Fontaine, Molière, and Racine) were thus laid.
His relations were pretty certainly alarmed by this very
pardonable worldliness, though a severe expostulation with
him for keeping company with the abominable actors is
perhaps later in date. Allusions in a letter to his sister
leave little doubt of this. Racine was accordingly disturbed
in his easy-going life at Paris. In November 1661 he
went to Uzès in Languedoc to live with his uncle the Père
Sconin, vicar-general of that diocese, where it was hoped
that Sconin would be able to secure a benefice for his
nephew. It is certain that he was not slack in endeavour-
ing to do this, but his attempts were in vain, and perhaps
the church did not lose as much as the stage gained.
Racine was at Uzès for an uncertain time. All that is
known is that he was back in Paris before the end of
1663. His letters from Uzès to La Fontaine, to Le Vas-
seur, and others are in much the same strain as before,
but there is here and there a marked tone of cynicism in
them. One passage in particular, in which he tells how
he was disenchanted with a damsel of Uzès, has an un-
pleasantly Swiftian touch about it. Once back in Paris,
he gave himself up entirely to letters with a little courtier-
ship. An ode on the recovery of Louis XIV. from a slight
illness probably secured him the promise of a pension, of
which he speaks to his sister in the summer of 1664, and
on 22d August he actually received it. It is uncertain
whether this pension is identical with "gratifications"
which we know that Racine for some years received and
which were sometimes eight and sometimes six hundred
livres. It would seem not, as one of these gratifications
had been allotted to him the year before he so wrote to
his sister. All this shows that he had already acquired
some repute as a promising novice in letters, though he
had as yet done nothing substantive. The ode in which
he thanked the king for his presents, "La Renommée," is
said to have introduced him to Boileau, to whose censor-
ship there is no doubt that he owed much, if not every-
thing; and from this date, November 1663, the familiarity
of "the four" undoubtedly existed in full force. Racine
was at the time the least distinguished, but he rapidly
equalled, if not the merit, the reputation of his friends.
TTnfortunately it is precisely at this date that his corre-

|

spondence ceases, and it is not renewed till after the close This was a frequent kind of preliminary advertisement at
of his brief but brilliant career as a dramatist (Esther and the time, and it seems, as we find from the rhymed gazettes,
Athalie excepted). This is the more to be regretted in to have been successful.
to have been successful. It was anxiously expected by
that the most disputable events of Racine's life as well as the public, and Molière's company played it on 4th Decem-
the greater part of his literary work fall within this silent ber,-Monsieur, his wife Henrietta of England, and many
period. His strange behaviour to Molière, his virulent other distinguished persons being present. The gazetteer
attack on his masters and friends of Port Royal, and the Subligny vouches for its success, and the still more certain
sudden change by which, after the failure of Phèdre and testimony of the accounts of the theatre shows that the
for no clearly expressed cause, a man of pleasure and an receipts were good and, what is more, steady. But a fort-
active literary worker became a sober domestic character night afterwards Alexandre was played, "de complot avec
of almost ostentatiously religious habits, and abstained M. Racine," says La Grange, by the rival actors (who had
from almost all but official work, are unillumined by any four days before performed it in private) at the Hôtel de
words of his own. From this time forward the gossip of Bourgogne. A vast amount of ink has been spilt on this
the period and the Life by his son Louis are the chief question, but no one has produced any valid justification
sources of information. Unfortunately Louis Racine, for Racine. That the piece failed at the Palais Royal is
though a man of some ability and of unimpeached charac- demonstrably false, and as this is stated in the earliest,
ter, was only six years old when his father died, and had attempt to excuse Racine, and the only one made in his
no direct knowledge. Still his account represents family lifetime, it is pretty clear that his case was very weak.
papers and traditions and seems to have been carefully, His son simply says that he was "mécontent des acteurs,"
as it is certainly in the main impartially, written. From which indeed is self-evident. It is certain that Molière and
other sources-notably Boileau, Brossette, and Valincourt-he ceased to be friends in consequence of this proceeding;
a good deal of pretty certainly authentic information is
obtainable, and there exists a considerable body of corre-
spondence between Boileau and the poet during the last
ten years of Racine's life.

The first but the least characteristic of the dramas by
which Racine is known, La Thébaide, was finished by the
end of 1663, and on Friday 20th June 1664 it was played
by Molière's company at the Palais Royal theatre. Some
editors assert that Molière himself acted in it, but the
earliest account of the cast we have, and that is sixty years
after date, omits his name, though those of Madeleine Béjard
and Mademoiselle de Brie occur. There is a tradition,
supported by very little evidence, that Molière suggested
the subject; on the other hand, Louis Racine distinctly
says that his father wrote most of the play at Uzès before
he knew Molière. Racine's own letters, which cover the
period of composition, though not that of representation,
give little help in deciding this not very important ques-
tion, except that it appears from them that the play was
designed for the rival theatre, and that "La Déhanchée,"
Racine's familiar name for Mademoiselle de Beauchâteau,
with whom he was intimate, was to play Antigone. The
play itself is by far the weakest of Racine's works. He
has borrowed much from Euripides and not a little from
Rotrou ;
and in his general style and plan he has as yet
struck out no great variation from Corneille. We have
very little intelligence about the reception of the piece.
It was acted twelve times during the first month, which
was for the period a very fair success, and was occasion-
ally revived during the year following

To

and that Molière was in fault no one who has studied the character of the two men, no one even who considers the probabilities of the case, will easily believe. If, however, Alexandre was the occasion of showing the defects of Racine's character as a man, it raised him vastly in public estimation as a poet. He was now for the first time proposed as a serious rival to Corneille. There is a story, which a credible witness vouches for as Racine's own, that he read the piece to the author of the Cid and asked his verdict. verdict. Corneille praised the piece highly, but not as a drama, "Il l'assurait qu'il n'était pas propre a la poésie dramatique." There is no reason for disbelieving this, for the character of Alexander could not fail to shock Corneille, and he was notorious for not mincing his words. Nor can it be denied that Racine might have been justly hurt, though with a man of more amiable temper the slight would hardly have caused the settled antagonism to Corneille which he displayed. The contrast between the two even at this early period was accurately apprehended and put by Saint Evremond in his masterly Dissertation sur l'Alexandre, but this was not published for a year or two. this day it is the best criticism of the faults of Racine, though not, it may be, of the merits, which had not yet been fully seen. It may be added that in the preface of the printed play the poet showed the extreme sensitiveness to criticism which perhaps excuses, and which certainly often accompanies, a tendency to criticize others. These defects of character showed themselves still more fully in another matter. The Port Royalists, as has been said, detested the theatre, and in January 1666 Nicole, their chief writer, spoke in one of his Lettres sur Visionnaires of dramatic poets as "empoisonneurs publics." There was absolutely no reason why Racine should fit this cap on his own head; but he did so, and published immediately a letter to the author. It is very smartly written, and if Racine had contented himself with protesting against the absurd exaggeration of the decriers of the stage there would have been little harm done. But he filled the piece with personalities, telling an absurd story of Mère Angelique Arnauld's supposed intolerance, drawing a ridiculous picture of Le Maître (a dead man and his own special teacher and friend), and sneering savagely at Nicole himself. The latter made no reply, but two lay adherents of Port Royal took up the We have no definite details as to Racine's doings during quarrel with more zeal than discretion or ability. Racine the year 1664, but in February 1665 he read at the Hôtel wrote a second pamphlet as bitter and personal as the first, de Nevers before La Rochefoucauld, Madame de la Fayette, but less amusing, and was about to publish it when fortuMadame de Sévigné, and other scarcely less redoubtable nately Boileau, who had been absent from Paris, returned judges the greater part of his second acted play, Alexandre and protested against the publication. It remained accordle Grand, or, as Pomponne (who tells the fact) calls it, Porus.ingly unprinted till after the author's death, as well as a

This is apparently the date of the pleasant picture of the four friends which La Fontaine draws in his Psyche, Racine figuring as Acante, "qui aimait extrêmement les jardins, les fleurs, les ombrages." Various stories, more or less mythical, also belong to this period; the best authenticated of them contributes to the documents for Racine's unamiable temper. He had absolutely no reason to complain of Chapelain, who had helped him with criticism, obtained royal gifts for him, and, in a fashion, started him in the literary career, yet he helped in composing the lampoon of Chapelain decoiffe. The sin would not be unpardonable if it stood alone, but unluckily a much graver one followed.

After this disagreeable episode Racine's life for ten years and more becomes simply the history of his plays, if we except his liaisons with the actresses Mademoiselle du Parc and Mademoiselle de Champmeslé (which are undoubted, though there is not much to be said about them) and his election to the Academy on 17th July 1673. Mademoiselle du Parc (Marquise de Gorla) was no very great actress, but was very beautiful, and she had previously captivated Molière. Racine induced her to leave the Palais Royal company and join the Hôtel. She died in 1668, and long afterwards the infamous Voisin accused Racine of having poisoned her. Mademoiselle de Champmeslé was plain and stupid, but an admirable actress and apparently very attractive in some way, for not merely Racine but Charles de Sévigné and many others adored her. She was cruel to none, but for five years before his marriage Racine seems to have been her amant en titre. Long afterwards, just before his own death, he heard of her mortal illness and speaks of her to his son without a flash of tenderness.

years later, that Mademoiselle de Champmeslé captivated
the author. Andromaque was succeeded, at the distance
of not more than a year, by a play which, taken in con-
junction with his others, is perhaps the best proof of the
theatrical talent of Racine,—the charming comedietta of
Les Plaideurs. We do not know exactly when it was
played, but it was printed on 5th December 1668, and it
had succeeded so badly that doubtless no long time passed
between its appearance on the stage and in print. For
the printing at that time both in France and England
made the play publica materies, and therefore in the case
of very successful pieces it was put off as long as possible.
Many anecdotes are told about the origin and composition
of Les Plaideurs. The Wasps of Aristophanes and the
known fact that Racine originally destined it, not for a
French company, but for the Italian troupe which was
then playing the Commedia dell' Arte in Paris dispense us
from enumerating them. The result is a piece admirably
dramatic, but sufficiently literary to shock the profanum
vulgus, which too frequently gives the tone at theatres. It
failed completely, the chief favouring voice being, accord-
ing to a story sufficiently well attested and worthy of
belief even without attestation, that of the man who was
best qualified to praise and who might have been most
tempted to blame of any man then living. Molière, says
Valincourt, the special friend of Racine, said in leaving
the house, "Que ceux qui se moquoient de cette pièce
meritoient qu'on se moquoient d'eux." But the piece was
suddenly played at court a month later; the king laughed,
and its fortunes were restored. The truth probably was
that the legal profession, which was very powerful in the
city of Paris, did not fancy the most severe satire on its
ways which had been made public since the or ça of the
fifth book of Rabelais. It need only be added that, if
Louis XIV. admired Les Plaideurs, Napoleon did not, and
excluded it from his travelling library. It was followed
by a very different work, Britannicus, which appeared on
13th December 1669. It was much less successful than
Andromaque, and, whether or not the cabals, of which
Racine constantly complains, and which he certainly did
nothing to disarm, had anything to do with this, it seems
to have held its own but a very few nights. Afterwards
it became very popular, and even from the first the ex-
quisite versification was not denied. But there is no
doubt that in Britannicus the defects of Racine, which in
his first two plays were excusable on the score of apprentice-
ship, and in the next two hardly appeared at all, display
themselves pretty clearly to any competent critic. The
complete nullity of Britannicus and Junie and the insuffi-
cient attempt to display the complex and dangerous char-
acter of Nero are not redeemed by Agrippina, who is really
good, and Burrhus, who is solidly painted as a secondary
character. Voltaire calls it "la pièce des connaisseurs,"
and the description is-not quite in the sense in which the
critic meant it-a very pregnant one. Britannicus is
eminently the piece in which persons of a dilettante turn
are seduced by the beauties which do exist to discover
those which do not. The next play of Racine has, except
Phèdre, the most curious history of all. "Bérénice," says
Fontenelle succinctly, "fut un duél," and he acknowledges
that his uncle was not the conqueror. Henrietta of Orleans
proposed (it is said without letting them know the double
commission) the subject to Corneille and Racine at the
same time, and rumour gives no very creditable reasons
for her choice of the subject. Her death, famous for its
disputed causes and for Bossuet's sermon, preceded the
performance of the two plays, both of which, but especially
Racine's, were successful. There is no doubt that it is
the better of the two, but Chapelle's not unfriendly criti-
cism in quoting the two lines of an old song-

The series of his dramatic triumphs began with Andromaque, and this play may perhaps dispute with Phèdre and Athalie the title of his masterpiece. It is much more uniformly good than Phèdre, and the character of Hermione is the most personally interesting on the French tragic stage. It is said that the first representation of Andromaque was on 10th November 1667, in public and by the actors of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, but the first contemporary mention of it by the gazettes, prose and verse, is on the 17th, as performed in the queen's apartment. Perrault, by no means a friendly critic as far as Racine is concerned, says that it made as much noise as the Cid, and so it ought to have done. Whatever may be thought of the tragédie pathétique (a less favourable criticism might call it the "sentimental tragedy"), it could hardly be better exemplified than in this admirable play. A ferocious epigram of Racine's own (an epigram not unworthy of Martial, and as difficult to comment on to modern ears polite as some of Martial's own) tells us that some critics thought Pyrrhus too fond of his mistress, and Andromache too fond of her husband, which is not likely to be the present verdict. In the contemporary depreciations is to be found the avowal of its real merit. The interest was too varied, the pathos too close to human nature to content Boileau, and the partisans of Corneille still found Racine unequal to the heroic height of their master's grandeur. A just criticism will probably hold that these two objections neutralize each other. Both parties agreed in saying that much of the success was due to the actors, another censure which is equivalent to praise. It so happens, too, that, though the four main parts were played by accomplished artists, two at least of them were such as to try those artists severely. Pyrrhus was taken by Floridor, the best tragic actor by common consent of his time, and Orestes by Montfleury, also an accomplished player. But Mademoiselle du Parc, who played Andromache, had generally been thought below, not above, her parts, and Mademoiselle des Oeillets, who played the difficult rôle of Hermione, was old and had few physical advantages. No one who reads Andromaque without prejudice is likely to mistake the secret of its success, which is, in few words, the application f the most delicate art to the conception of really tragic passion. Before leaving the play it may be mentioned that it is said to have been in the part of Hermione, three

se croit courtisan," makes it appear that his comparatively | which a proved master in literature has a perfect right to low birth was not forgotten at Versailles.

Racine's first campaign was at the siege of Ypres in 1678, where some practical jokes are said to have been played on the two civilians who acted this early and peculiar variety of the part of special correspondent. Again in 1683, in 1687, and in each year from 1691 to 1693 Racine accompanied the king on similar expeditions. The literary results of these have been spoken of. His labours brought him, in addition to his other gains, frequent special presents from the king, one of which was as much as 1000 pistoles. In 1690 he further received the office of "gentilhomme ordinaire du roi," which afterwards passed to his son. Thus during the later years of his life he was more prosperous than is usual with poets. His domestic life appears to have been a happy one. Louis Racine tells us that his mother "did not know what a verse was," but Racine certainly knew enough about verses for both. They had seven children. The eldest, Jean Baptiste, was born in 1678; the youngest, Louis, in 1692. It has been said that he was thus too young to have many personal memories of his father, but he tells one or two stories which show Racine to have been at any rate a man of strong family affection, as, moreover, his letters prove. Between the two sons came five daughters, Marie, Anne, Elizabeth, Françoise, and Madeleine. The eldest, after showing "vocation," married in 1699, Anne and Elizabeth took the veil, the youngest two remained single but did not enter the cloister. To complete the notice of family matters-much of Racine's later correspondence is addressed to his sister Marie, Madame Rivière.

make of his forerunners. The beauty of the chorus, which Racine had restored more probably from a study of the Pléiade tragedy than from classical suggestions, the perfection of the characters, and the wonderful art of the whole piece need no praise. Almost immediately the poet was at work on another and a still finer piece of the same kind, and he had probably finished Athalie before the end of 1690. The fate of the play, however, was very different from that of Esther. Some fuss had been made about the worldliness of great court fêtes at Saint Cyr, and the new play, with settings as before by Moreau, was acted both at Versailles and at Saint Cyr with much less pomp and ceremony than Esther. It was printed in March 1691 and the public cared very little for it. The truth is that the last five-and-twenty years of the reign of Louis XIV. were marked by one of the lowest tides of literary accomplishment and appreciation in the history of France. The just judgment of posterity has ranked Athalie, if not as Racine's best work (and there are good grounds for considering it to be this), at any rate as equal to his best. Thenceforward Racine was practically silent, except for four cantiques spirituelles, in the style and with much of the merit of the choruses of Esther and Athalie. The general literary sentiment led by Fontenelle (who inherited the wrongs of Corneille, his uncle, and whom Racine had taken care to estrange further) was against the arrogant critic and the irritable poet, and they made their case worse by espousing the cause of La Bruyère, whose personalities in his Caractères had made him one of the best hated men in France, and by engaging in the ancient and modern battle with Perrault. Racine, moreover, was a constant and spiteful epigrammatist, and the unlucky habit of preferring his joke to his friend stuck by him to the last. A savage epigram on the Sesostris of Longepierre, who had done him no harm and was his familiar acquaintance, dates as late as 1695. Still the king maintained him in favour, and so long as this continued he could afford to laugh at Grub Street and the successors of the Hôtel de Rambouillet alike. At last, however, there seems (for the matter is not too clear) to have come a change. Some say that he disobliged Madame de Maintenon, some (and this would be much to his honour, but not exactly in accord with anything else known of him) that, like Vauban and Fénelon, he urged the growing misery of the people. But there seems to be little doubt of the fact of the royal displeasure, and it is even probable that it had some effect on his health. Disease of the liver appears to have been the immediate cause of his death, which took

The almost complete silence in the literary sphere which Racine imposed on himself after the comparative failure, shameful not for himself but for his adversaries, of Phèdre was broken once or twice even before the appearance of the two exquisite tragedies in which under singular circumstances he took leave of the stage. The most honourable of these was the reception of Thomas Corneille on 2d January 1685 at the Academy in the room of his brother. The discourse which Racine then pronounced turned almost entirely on his great rival, of whom he spoke even more than becomingly. But it was an odd conjunction of the two reigning passions of the latter part of his life-devoutness and obsequiousness to the court-which made him once more a dramatist. Madame de Maintenon had established an institution, first called the Maison Saint Louis, and afterwards (from the place to which it was transferred) the Maison de Saint Cyr, for the education of poor girls of noble family. The tradition of including acting in edu-place on 12th April 1699. The king seems to have, at any cation was not obsolete. At first the governess, Madame de Grinon, composed pieces for representation, but, says Madame de Caylus, a witness at first hand and a good judge, they were "detestable." Then recourse was had to chosen plays of Corneille and Racine, but here there were obvious objections. The favourite herself wrote to Racine that "nos petites filles" had played Andromaque "a great deal too well." She asked the poet for a new play suited to the circumstances, and, though Boileau advised him against it, it is not wonderful that he yielded. The result was the masterpiece of Esther, with music by Moreau, the court composer and organist of Saint Cyr. Although played by schoolgirls and in a dormitory, it had an enormous success, in which it may be charitably hoped the transparent comparison of the patroness to the hex ine had not too much to do. Printed shortly afterward it had to suffer a certain reaction, or perhaps a certain vengeance, from those who had not been admitted to the private stage. But no competent judge could hesitate, Racine probably had read and to some extent followed the Aman of Montchrestien, but he made of it only the use

rate, forgiven him after his death, and he gave the family a pension of 2000 livres. Racine was buried at Port Royal, but even this transaction was not the last of his relations with that famous home of religion and learning. After the destruction of the abbey in 1711 his body was exhumed and transferred to Saint Etienne du Mont, his gravestone being left behind and only restored to his ashes a hundred years later, in 1818. His eldest son was never married; his eldest daughter and Louis Racine have left descendants to the present day.

A critical biography of Racine is, in more ways than one, an exceptionally difficult undertaking, not in regard to the facts, which, as will have been seen, are fairly abundant, but as to the construction to be placed on them. The admirers of Racine's literary genius have made it a kind of religion to defend his character; and strictures on his character, it seems to be thought, imply a desire to depreciate his literary worth. The reader of the above sketch of his life must judge for himself whether Racine is or is not to be ranked with those great men of letters, fortunately the greater number, whose personality is attractive and their foibles at worst excusable. There is no doubt that the general impression given, not merely by the flying anecdotes of the time, but by ascertained facts, is somewhat unfavourable. Racine's affection for his family