published in 1666, though, owing to the influence of Chapelain, the
royal privilege was shortly after withdrawn from them. Boileau, however,
soon became a great favourite with the king, as, though in actual
conversation he retained his natural freedom of speech, he did not
hesitate to use the most grovelling flattery of expression in verse.
Pensions and places were given to him freely, so that, his own property
being not inconsiderable, he was one of the few wealthy men of letters
of the day. He was kept out of the Academy for some time by the fact
that he had libelled half its members and was unpopular with the other
half, but the royal influence at last got him in in 1684. In his later
years the morose arrogance, which was his chief characteristic,
increased on him, and was doubtless aggravated by the bad health from
which he suffered during the whole of his long life. He died in 1711,
having outlived all his friends except Louis himself.

Boileau's works consist of twelve satires, of the same number of
epistles, of an _Art Poetique_, of the _Lutrin_, a serio-comic poem, of
two odes, and of three or four score epigrams and miscellaneous pieces
in verse, with a translation of Longinus on the Sublime, some short
critical dissertations, and a number of letters in prose. With the
exception of the _Lutrin_ it will be observed that almost all his
poetical work is very closely modelled on Horace. His satire is
extremely clever, but, as necessarily happens when the frame and manner
of one time are used for the circumstances of another, it is altogether
artificial. The Horatian satire is nothing if not personal, and as
Boileau (even more than Pope, who strongly resembles him) had a bad
heart, his personalities are unusually reckless and offensive. Thus in a
couplet against parasites he inserted at one time the name of Colletet
(son of the Colletet mentioned above), at another that of Pelletier,
though both were notoriously free from the vice, and guilty of no fault
except poverty and a disposition to produce indifferent verse. Boileau's
crusade, too, against the minor poets of his day was unfortunately
followed by his own production of a ridiculous ode, excellently
burlesqued by Prior, on the taking of Namur in 1692 by the French. This,
with certain pieces of Young's, is perhaps the most glaring example
extant of how a writer of great talent and literary skill may combine
the basest flattery with the most abjectly bad verse.