Pavillon, who deserves a very similar general description, but who gave
no such single example of his abilities: all belong to this class.

[Sidenote: Epic School. Chapelain.]

Side by side with the frivolous school, but in curious contrast with it,
there existed a school of ponderous epic writers, the extirpation of
which is the best claim of Boileau to the gratitude of posterity. The
typical poets of this class are Georges de Scudery, the author of
_Alaric_, and Chapelain, the author of the _Pucelle_. Scudery was a
soldier and a man of considerable talent, who lacked nothing but
patience and the power of self-criticism to produce really good work.
Like his more famous sister, he had invention and literary facility. His
plays are not without merit in parts, and his epic of _Alaric_, amidst
astonishing platitudes and extravagances, has occasional good lines. But
Chapelain is by far the most remarkable figure of the school. He was
bred up to be a poet from his earliest age, and by a stroke of luck,
impossible in less anomalous times, he was taken at his own valuation
for years. _La Pucelle_ was quoted in manuscript, and anxiously expected
for half a short lifetime. It only appeared to be hopelessly damned.
There are passages in it of merit, but they are associated with lines
which read like designed burlesques. The onslaughts of Boileau have
created a kind of reaction in favour of Chapelain with some who disagree
with Boileau's poetical principles: but he is not defensible. His odes
are indeed tolerable in parts; not so the _Pucelle_, save, as has been
said, in occasional lines. The _Clovis_ of Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin is
worse than the _Pucelle_. On the other hand, the Pere le Moyne in his
_St. Louis_, taking apparently Du Bartas as his model, produced work
which, if not very readable as a whole, manifests real and very
considerable poetical talent. Lastly, Saint Amant in the _Moise Sauve_
showed how far below himself a clever writer may be when he mistakes his
style.

[Sidenote: Bacchanalian School. Saint Amant.]

Saint Amant[228], who, to do him justice, did not call _Moise Sauve_ an
epic but an 'idylle heroique,' is the link between this school and a
third composed of purely convivial poets, who even in this century
furnished work of remarkable excellence, and who produced a numerous and
brilliant progeny in the next. Saint Amant's Anacreontic poems are of
great merit. Of the same class was Saint Pavin, who was n