f things and
persons, and a remarkable skill at reproducing that aspect in words.

[Sidenote: Minor Poets of the later Seventeenth Century.]

The list of poets of the century has to be completed by some of more or
less importance who flourished in the later days of Louis XIV., and, in
some few cases, outlived him. Brebeuf might have been mentioned before,
as he was Boileau's elder, and, dying young, did not reach even the most
brilliant period of the reign. But he is unlike any of the three schools
who have been described, and his language is more modern than that of
most of the poets who wrote before or during the Fronde. His principal
work is a translation of the _Pharsalia_, in which both the defects and
the merits of the original are represented with remarkable fidelity.
Boileau, who found fault with his _fatras obscur_, allowed him frequent
flashes of genius, and these flashes are rather more frequent than might
be supposed, being also of a kind which Boileau was not usually inclined
to recognise. Brebeuf is decidedly of what may be called the right
school of French poets, though he is one of the least of that school.
His minor poetry displays the same characteristics as his translation,
but is of less importance. Madame Deshoulieres, still more unjustly
criticised by Boileau, is unquestionably one of the chief poetesses of
France; indeed, with Louise Labe and Marceline Desbordes Valmore, she is
almost the only one of importance. Her poems, like those of most of her
contemporaries, are of the occasional order, and have too much in them
that is artificial, but frequently also they have real pathos and
occasionally not a little vigour. 'Le Songe' is a very admirable ode,
having some of the characteristics of the English Caroline school.
Racine himself, independently of his dramas, and the choruses inserted
in them, wrote some poetry, chiefly religious, which has his usual
characteristics of refinement in language and versification. Anthony
Hamilton has left some verses (notably an exquisite song, beginning
'Celle qu'adore mon coeur n'est ni brune ni blonde') as dainty and
original as his prose. At the end of the century two poets, whose names
always occur together in literary history, the Abbe de Chaulieu and the
Marquis de la Fare, close the record. They were not only alike in their
literary work, but were personal friends, and not the worst of
Chaulieu's pieces is an elegy on La Fare, whom, though the older man of