the fickle public. He had even serious thoughts of forsaking the world altogether, and becoming a monk, but was persuaded to adopt what for him at least was no doubt a wiser course, and at the age of thirty-eight (1677) he married Catherine de Romanet, a simple minded but excellent woman, who had a little fortune of her own. As a husband and a father (he had a family of two sons and five daughters), he gave himself up to a blameless and domestic life, and a complete reconciliation with the Solitaires of Port Royal was cemented by a frank apology for the sarcasms which he had levelled against them ten years before. Boileau acted as peacemaker on this occasion, as he had endeavoured to do when the rupture took place, and it is amusing to learn how the austere Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole were persuaded to read their old pupil's version of the time-honoured story of Phaedra and Hippolytus, and that the former relented so far as to praise the moral lesson which it taught, though he could not forgive him for trying to improve upon Euripides, and complained, "Why did he make Hippolytus in love?" As the king's historiographers, Boileau and Racine accompanied his victorious troops on several campaigns, but neither of them did more than accumulate materials which were never reduced to any coherent and permanent shape. Like the younger poet, Boileau discontinued all other literary work for many years after his appointment to this office. The regularity of Racine's married life was all that his friends of Port Royal could desire. He mapped out his hours with methodical precision, giving one third of his day to devotional exercises, another to his professional avocations, and the remainder to his family and friends. Madame de Maintenon, whom Louis XIV. had privately married in 1684, took a warm interest in a convent for the education of young ladies, which she had established at St. Cyr. Here it was the custom for the girls to recite plays at certain times, chiefly those of Corneille and Racine; and this they had done on one occasion with such evident relish for the tenderer passages, when "Andromache" had been selected for performance, that it was deemed unsuitable for repetition, and Racine was requested by Madame de Maintenon to write something expressly for her young charges of a more edifying tendency. Boileau advised him to decline the commission as one beneath his powers, but he was unwilling to offend Madame de Maintenon, and determined to do his best. The fruit of this resolution was the sacred drama of “Esther," which was privately performed at the Maison de St. Cyr in 1689, and met with much applause. Encouraged by this success, he essayed a higher flight in "Athalie," which was acted by the same young performers in 1691, and is justly regarded as the finest specimen of its kind. Neither of these sacred dramas was acted on a public stage till long after Racine's death, which occurred on the 12th of April, 1699. A short history of Port Royal was his last work, and formed a fitting conclusion to his chequered relations with that celebrated community; for therein he did full justice to the merits to which he had been blinded by passion in the hotter days of his theatrical career, and nobly repaid the debt of gratitude that he owed to those whose pious instructions had so long lain dormant but not dead, as testified by his subsequent conversion and the exalted religious sentiments of his later writings. |