IDEA OF LAW IX POET If Y 695 



priety of each could be determined by settled rules. " Every poem," 

 he says, u shines with its proper beauty. The rondeau, Gallic by birth, 

 has the artlessness of nature, the ballad, strictly subject to its old max- 

 ims, often owes a lustre to the caprice of its rhymes. The madrigal, 

 more simple and more noble in its style, breathes gentleness, tender- 

 ness, and love.' 1 Thus, in opposition to his own and Horace's teach- 

 ing, that the form of poetry must necessarily adapt itself to the 

 thought, he speaks as if poetry lay in stereotyped forms of versification. 

 In spite of his foundation of sound reasoning, he came insensibly to 

 identify the imitation of Nature, under the guidance of good sense, 

 with the mere external imitation of Greek and Eoman poets. 



Two examples will show the inconsistencies into which his logic 

 betrayed him. Among the various types of poetry which he found 

 himself obliged to define was the Eclogue. According to the dictates 

 of good sense this form of poem must, he says, avoid the two extremes 

 of pompous elevation on the one hand, and of rustic meanness on the 

 other. An easy abstract rule; but what does it practically mean ? 

 " Between these two excesses," says Boileau, " the path is difficult. In 

 order to find it, follow Theocritus and Virgil. Let their feeling com- 

 positions, dictated by the Graces, never quit your hands; turn them 

 over by night and day. They alone in their learned verse will be able 

 to teach you by what art an author may without meanness lower his 

 style; how to sing of Flora and the fields, of Pomona and the woods; 

 how to animate two shepherds to contend on the flute, to celebrate 

 the allurements of love's pleasures; to transform Narcissus into a 

 flower; to cover Daphne with bark; and by what art at times the 

 eclogue invests the country and the woods with consular dignity." 

 Would a poet who in Louis XIV. 's time acted obediently on these in- 

 structions have been imitating Nature according to the law of Good 

 Sense ? 



Again, Boileau found himself much perplexed how to apply the 

 principle of Good Sense to his idea of an epic poem. The epic, 

 he says, sustains itself by failli and lives by fiction; therefore you 

 cannot di-pense in a poem of this kind with the machinery of pagan 

 mytholngv. Hence it is impossible to write a Christian epic. " In 

 vain,'' he says, alluding to the attempts in this direction of poets in 

 the anti-classic camp: "'in vain do our deluded authors, banishing 

 from their verse these traditional ornaments, strive to make God, 

 the aints. and the prophets act like the deities sprung out of the 

 poets' imagination, tako the reader into Hell at every step, and intro- 

 duce him to Ashtaroth. Beelzebub, and Lucifer alone. The awful 

 mysteries of the Christian faith are incapable of gay and brilliant 

 ornament. On every side the Gospel presents to the mind the spec- 

 tacle only of Eepentance and Judgment, and the inexcusable mixture 

 of fiction gives to its truths an air of fable. What, an object to offer 



