of verse of
the whole century in France, he is rarely thought of (out of France) as
a poet. A poet, indeed, in the highest sense of the word he is not. He
has hardly any passion, evidences of it being almost confined to the
elegy to Fouquet and, perhaps, as M. Theodore de Banville pleads, to the
'Faucon' and 'Courtisane Amoureuse' of the _Contes_. He has no
indefinite suggestion of beauty; even his descriptions of nature, though
always accurate and picturesque, being somewhat prosaic. He may be said
to be a prose writer of the very first class who chose to write in
verse, and who justified his choice by a wonderful technical ability in
the particular form of verse which he used. There is no greater mistake
than the supposition that La Fontaine's verse-writing is mere facile
improvisation.

[Sidenote: Boileau.]

Nicolas Boileau[232], who was long known in France as the 'Law-giver of
Parnassus,' and who, perhaps, exercised a more powerful and lasting
influence over the literature of his native country than any other
critic has ever enjoyed, was born at Paris on All Saints' Day, 1636. His
father held the post of registrar of one of the numerous courts of law,
and his family had legal connections of wide range and long date. He
himself was brought up to the law, but had not the least inclination
for it; and at his father's death, which happened exactly when he
attained his majority, his inheritance was considerable enough to allow
him to do as he pleased. The family was a large one, and, according to a
custom of the time, the brothers, or at least some of them, were
distinguished by additional surnames. That which Nicolas
took--Despreaux--was, at any rate during his youth, more frequently used
than his patronymic, and has continued to be applied to him
indifferently, thereby causing some odd blunders on the part of ignorant
people. He himself sometimes signed Despreaux and sometimes
Boileau-Despreaux. Besides law, he had also studied theology, and,
though he never took orders, he enjoyed for a considerable time a priory
at Beauvais, the profits of which, however, he returned when he
definitely abandoned the idea of the church as a profession. He very
early made attempts in literature, and when he was a man of seven- or
eight-and-twenty, he joined La Fontaine, Racine, and Moliere in the
celebrated society of four. Social and literary criticism was even thus
early his forte, and his first collections of Horatian satire were