A judge was needed to decide the question.

Chapelain gave judgment.

Corneille saw that he was doomed; the lion was muzzled, or, as was said at the time, the crow (_Corneille_) was plucked.

Now comes the painful side of this grotesque performance: after he had been thus quenched at his first flash, this genius, thoroughly modern, fed upon the Middle Ages and Spain, being compelled to lie to himself and to hark back to ancient times, drew for us that Castilian Rome, which is sublime beyond question, but in which, except perhaps in _Nicomede_, which was so ridiculed by the eighteenth century for its dignified and simple colouring, we find neither the real Rome nor the true Corneille.
Racine was treated to the same persecution, but did not make the same resistance.

Neither in his genius nor in his character was there any of Corneille's lofty asperity.