749 



BOILEAU, SIEUR DESPREAUX. 



BOISROBEBT, FRANCOIS LE METEL DE. 



760 



by his retirement and relief from business and care; but soon after he 

 was suddenly attacked by illness, and died, October 3rd, 1835, after a 

 very short confinement. Boieldieu was honoured by a splendid public 

 funeral, which was, in some degree, a military one, for he was an 

 officer of the National Guard, and held the order of the Legion of 

 Honour. His heart was claimed by the city of Rouen, and received 

 with great pomp in the cathedral, the council of the town having voted 

 12,000 francs to defray the expense of the solemnity. They also erected 

 a column to his memory; and the government settled a pension on 

 his son. 



BOILEAU, NICOLAS, SIEUR DESPREAUX, was born at or near 

 Paris, on November 1, 1636, and was the eleventh child of Gilles 

 Boileau, first Registrar (Greffier) of the Great Chamber of the Parlia- 

 ment of Paris. 



Nicolas Boileau finished his education at the College of Beauvais, 

 where his predominant taste was discovered by Seviu, one of the pro- 

 fessors. Nevertheless the future guide of the French Muse was not 

 at all distinguished by precocity in tho pursuit through which he 

 afterwards gained his fame : nor was it until he had perceived his 

 own inaptness both for the bar and for the pulpit, that he devoted 

 himself altogether to Parnassus. 



The law had few attractions for him : and although he obtained 

 from the church a priory of 800 livres annual rent, he afterwards 

 resigned it, and moat honourably distributed in charities the whole 

 of his calculated receipt*. His earliest poetical attempts were in 

 satire, by which he nullified a prediction made by his father, who, 

 when comparing ihe genius of each of his three sons, used to say, 

 " That as for Colin, he would never speak ill of anybody." But the 

 seven 'Satires' which Boileau published in 1666, with a preliminary 

 address to the king (a formula not to be omitted by any author who 

 courted popular notice), were playful and sportive, not rabid and viru- 

 lent; they showed, as he used to observe of himself, neither fang nor 

 talon. They excited considerable attention among the lettered circles 

 of the capital, by a terseness of language and a polish of versification 

 to which the public ear had not heretofore been accustomed. The 

 number was increased from time to time till they amounted to 

 twelve. > 



The fearlessness of Boilfau's attack upon tlie bad taste which had 

 elevated Chapelaine and Quinault to the loftiest poetical eminence 

 was quickly repaid by general applause, by royal favour, and by sub- 

 stantial patronage. Boilean received a considerable pension, and 

 when the treasurer's clerk, a matter-of-fact man, one day inquired 

 where were " the works" for which the order instructed him to make 

 this payment, the poet amused himself by answering that he was a 

 ' Imilder." He was also appointed joint historiographer with Racine ; 

 an office which, notwithstanding the brilliancy of their master's ex- 

 ploit*, appears to have been regarded by both ef them as a sinecure, 

 unless so far as they contributed some illustrations to a medallic 

 history. So well however were Boileau's habits and manners adapted 

 to the court, that he won over the single harsh critic whom he 

 encountered in it, the rigid Duke of Montausier, who at first had not 

 8crupled to pronounce that the satire which had been unprovoked must 

 of necessity be ill-natured. In 1634 Boileau had the melancholy ta.sk 

 of announcing to the king the death of his historiographical colleague : 

 Louis, who had bis watch in his hand at the time, paid him the high 

 compliment of saying, that notwithstanding his many engagements, 

 an hour in every week should be reserved for the enjoyment of his 

 conversation. It was not till that year that he was admitted a member 

 of tho Academy. Twelve ' Epistles/ which flow with much greater 

 ease than the 'Satires,' were produced between 1669 and 1696. The 

 ' Art of Poetry,' accompanied by a translation of ' Longinus on the 

 Sublime,' with critical remarks on that writer, was published in 1673; 

 in which year also appeared four cantos of the ' Lutrin,' a mock-heroic, 

 suggested by the President Lamoignon. 



The two concluding cantos were not appended to the ' Lutrin ' till 

 ten years after its first appearance. The minor poems which escaped 

 Boileau from time to time are altogether unworthy of his pen. The 

 ' Ode on the Capture of Namur' by Louis in 1692 is tame, cold, and 

 spiritless ; and his occasional verses, if written in our own days, would 

 scarcely find gratuitous admission into a magazine or an annual. ' Les 

 Hero* des Roman*,' a dialogue after the manner of Lucian (as all 

 dialogues at that time were said to be), is the chief of his original 

 prose work*. It was written in the beginning of 1665, and it very 

 pleasantly exposes the absurdity of Honor<5 d' Urte, Madame de Scu- 

 dery, and their imitators. It probably gave a death-blow to the 

 ' Astr<5es,' the ' Cyrus,' and the ' Cldlies,' and it formed part of a con- 

 troversy which at that time raged in Franco, and which produced last- 

 ing enmity between Boileau and Fontcnelle the comparative merits 

 of the ancients and of the moderns. 



Boilean lived till 1706 hi familiar intercourse with the choicest con- 

 temporary writers, and in the enjoyment of the best society of the 

 capital. Repeated attacks of infirmity and an increasing deafness 

 then warned him to retire, and he closed an honourable existence, 

 peaceably and piously, on March 13, 1711, having exceeded his seventy- 

 fourth birthday by a few months. 



Hoileau is one of that scanty number of poets who have left behind 

 them 



" No line which, dyiny, they would wish to Wot; " 



and the high moral standard of his writings may be best estimated 

 by the innocence of the very expressions to which the enmity of Per- 

 rault objected. Boileau in his tenth ' Satire,' while denouncing the 

 opera, speaks of the ' HeYos a voix luxurieuse,' and of the ' morals 

 lubriques.' These terms were gravely represented to be offensive to 

 modesty ; and the silly charge awakened no less a champion than 

 Arnauld, whose letter, together with a grateful acknowledgment which 

 it received from Boileau, is printed in most editions of the poet's works. 

 His purse was always open for purposes of benevolence. When indi- 

 gence compelled the advocate Patin to dispose of his library, Boileau 

 paid down a third more purchase-money than had been offered for 

 the collection, at the same time signifying that he bought only the 

 reversion, and that the books were to remain the property of their 

 original owner during his lifetime. In a similar spirit he prevailed 

 upon the king to continue the pension to Corneille, which had been 

 revoked on Colbert's death. The French critics are much inclined 

 to compare Boileau with Pope, and naturally to give preference to the 

 former ; but we think, so far as they admit comparison, the English 

 poet may encounter it without apprehension. Both of them were 

 great imitators ; and as Pope was twenty-one years of age at the time 

 of Boileau's death, the former had the advantage of one additional 

 model, which there cannot he a doubt he studied very attentively. 

 There are passages in the works of Pope which are undisguised trans- 

 lations, and which he avowed to be so. Memory or observation will 

 supply innumerable close parallels ; and the ' Essay on Criticism ' 

 especially, one of Pope's earliest works, is very largely indebted to the 

 'Art of Poetry.' 



The 'Moral Essays' are immeasurably superior to the 'Satires,' 

 inasmuch as Pope looked abroad into the world and upon mankind, 

 while the narrower view of Boileau was circumscribed by Paris and 

 the courtiers of the Grand Monarque. Each has failed in lyric poetry; 

 and it almost seems as if the caparisons of the heroic couplet were 

 indispensable for the development of their full powers, for the exhi- 

 bition, if we may so speak, of their paces : yet Pope, happily for his 

 reputation, has escaped any approach to the downright epigram with 

 which the ' Ode sur la Prise de Namur ' concludes. The ' Rape of 

 the Lock ' is far richer in imagery and much more playful in expres- 

 sion than the ' Lutrin ; ' and after-thought, which added to the one 

 its graceful machinery of Sylphs and Gnomes, gave to the other only 

 two more cantos with the lumbering personifications of Poetry and 

 Justice. Of the sentiments which inspired the greatest effort of the 

 English bard, the ' Eloise to Abelard,' Boileau, as we have already 

 hinted, was perhaps physically iucapabla; and from the labour 

 required by the version of Homer there can be little doubt that he 

 would have shrunk in dismay. 



Yet, after all the assertions of minute criticism, Boileau deserves a 

 much higher station than ho is allowed by Fontenelle. From the 

 charge of a want of poetical feeling he has been well defended by La 

 Harpe, who says even of the 'Satires' (among which he reckons the 

 eleventh as the ' chef-d'oeuvre ') " I like to read them, because I like 

 good poetry, good wit, and good sense." 



Each of two elder brothers of Nicolas Boileau attained some distinc- 

 tion in his time. GILLES BOILEAU, born in 1631, pursued the law, 

 and became Paymaster of the H6tel-de-Ville in Paris, and Comptroller 

 of the Royal Treasury. He gained also the coveted honour of admis- 

 sion into the French Academy. Nicolas satirised his brother, in some 

 lines which he afterwards cancelled, for having obtained a pension 

 from Colbert, through the interest of Chapelaine. They were reconciled 

 however before the death of Gilles Boileau, which occurred in 1669. 

 In his lifetime Gilles published a translation of the ' Encheiridion ' of 

 Epictetns and of the 'Tablet' of Cebes, and another of Diogenes 

 Laertius ; a controversial pamphlet addressed to Manage, and one also 

 to Costar. His posthumous works, consisting of Poems, Letters, his 

 Speech on admission into the Academy, and a translation of the fourth 

 book of the ' JEueid. ' into French verse, were collected by Nicolas in 

 one volume, 12ino. 



JACQUES BOILEAU was born in 1635, and studied at the College of 

 Harcourt, where he graduated in theology. He became Dean, Grand 

 Vicar, and Official of the Diocese of Sens. In 1694 he was promoted 

 to a Canonry in the Sainte Chapelle at Paris, and he died in 1716, at 

 the advanced age of eighty-two. His avowed works are numerous, 

 but chiefly on forgotten questions of theology ; and he wrote much 

 also either anonymously or under feigned names, as Marcellus Aucy- 

 ranus, Claudius Fonteius, Jacques Barnabe', &c. A complete list of his 

 works is given in the twelfth volume of tho ' Me"moires ' of Niceron. 

 The only one which is now remembered is the 'Historia Flagellantium, 

 sive de recto et ptrverso Flagellorum usu apud Christiauos,' Paris, 

 1700, 12mo. The freedom with which the author of this work has 

 visited the abuses of superstitious penance occasioned much scandal, 

 and exposed him to numerous attacks, which however he disregarded. 

 The treatise was translated into French about a year after its appear- 

 ance ; and it has been rendered into English by De Lolme. 



BOISROBERT, FRANCOIS LE METEL DE, was born at Caen, 

 in Normandy, in 1592. He studied for the legal profession, but 

 having taken a journey to Rome, he attracted so much notice by the 

 gaiety of his conversation, that the pope, Urban VIII., requested that 

 he might be introduced to him. This was accordingly done, and the 

 pope was so much delighted with his society, that lie bestowed on 



