minister or the poet, yet so much attention to please the monarch, joined to such excellence, did not remain unrecompensed. Boileau was loaded with the king's favour, admitted at court, and named, in conjunction with Racine, royal historiographer. The two poets seemed closely occupied in writing the history of their patron; they even read several passages of it to the king; but they abstained from giving any of it to the public, in the persuasion that the history of sovereigns, even the most worthy of eulogy, cannot be written during their lives, without running the risk either of losing reputation by flattery, or incurring hazard by truth. It was with repugnance that Boileau had undertaken an office so little suited to his talents and his taste. "When I exercised," said he, "the trade of a satirist, which I understood pretty well, I was overwhelmed with insults and menaces, and I am now dearly paid for exercising that of historiographer, which I do not understand at all." Indeed, far from being dazzled by the favour he enjoyed, he rather felt it as an incumbrance. He often said, that the first sensation his fortune at court inspired in him, was a feeling of melancholy. He thought the bounty of his sovereign purchased too dearly by the loss of liberty-a blessing so intrinsically valuable, which all the empty and fugitive enjoyments of vanity are unable to compensate in the eyes of a philosopher. Boileau endeavoured by degrees to recover this darling liberty, in proportion as age seemed to permit the attempt; and for the last ten or twelve years of his life he entirely dropped his visits to court. "What should I do there?" said he, "I can praise no longer." He might, however, have found as much matter for his applauses as when he lavished them without the least reserve. While he attended at court, he maintained a freedom and frankness of speech, especially on topics of literature, which are not common among courtiers. courtiers. When Lewis asked his opinion of some verses which he had written, he replied, "Nothing, sire, is impossible to your majesty; you wished to make bad verses, and you have succeeded." He also took

part with the persecuted members of the Port-royal; and when one of the courtiers declared that the king was making diligent search after the celebrated Arnauld, in order to put him in the Bastile, Boileau observed, "His majesty is too fortunate; he will not find him :" and when the king asked him, what was the reason why the whole

world was running after a preacher named le Tourneux, a disciple of Arnauld, "Your majesty," he replied, "knows how fond people are of novelty-this is a minister who preaches the gospel." Boileau appears from various circumstances, to have been no great friend to the Jesuits, whom he offended by his "Epistle on the Love of God," and by many free speeches. By royal favour, he was admitted unanimously, in 1684, into the French academy, with which he had made very free in his epigrams; and he was also associated to the new academy of inscriptions and belles-lettres, of which he appeared to be a fit member, by his "Translation of Longinus on the Sublime." To science, with which he had little acquaintance, he rendered, however, important service by his burlesque "Arret in favour of the university, against an unknown personage called Reason," which was the means of preventing the establishment of a plan of intolerance in matters of philosophy. His attachment to the ancients, as the true models of literary taste and excellence, occasioned a controversy between him and Perrault concerning the comparative merit of the ancients and moderns, which was prosecuted for some time by epigrams and mutual reproaches, till at length the public began to be tired with their disputes, and a reconciliation was effected by the good offices of their common friends. This controversy laid the foundation of a lasting enmity between Boileau and Fontenelle, who inclined to the party of Perrault. Boileau, however, did not maintain his opinion with the pedantic extravagance of the Daciers; but he happily exercised his wit on the misrepresentations of the noted characters of antiquity, by the fashionable romances of the time, in his dialogue entitled "The Heroes of Romance," composed in the manner of Lucian. In opposition to the absurd opinions of father Hardouin, that most of the classical productions of ancient Rome had been written by the monks of the thirteenth century, Boileau pleasantly remarks, “I know nothing of all that; but though I am not very partial to the monks, I should not have been sorry to have lived with friar Tibullus, friar Juvenal, Dom Virgil, Dom Cicero, and such kind of folk." After the death of Racine, Boileau very much retired from court; induced partly by his love of liberty and independence, and partly by his dislike of that adulation which was expected, and for which the close of Lewis's reign afforded more scanty

materials than its commencement. Separated in a great degree from society, he indulged that austere and misanthropical disposition, from which he was never wholly exempt. His conversation, however, was more mild and gentle than his writings; and, as he used to say of himself, without "nails or claws," it was enlivened by occasional sallies of pleasantry, and rendered instructive by judicious opinions of authors and their works. He was religious without bigotry; and he abhorred fanaticism and hypocrisy. His circumstances were easy; and his prudent economy has been charged by some with degenerating into avarice. Instances, however, occur of his liberality and beneficence. At the death of Colbert, the pension which he had given to the poet Corneille was suppressed, though he was poor, old, infirm, and dying. Boileau interceded with the king for the restoration of it, and offered to transfer his own to Corneille, telling the monarch that he should be ashamed to receive his bounty while such a man was in want of it. He also bought, at an advanced price, the library of Patru, reduced in his circumstances, and left him in the possession of it till his death. He gave to the poor all the revenues he had received for eight years from a benefice he had enjoyed without performing the duties of it. To indigent men of letters his purse was always open; and at his death he bequeathed almost all his possessions to the poor. Upon the whole, his temper, though naturally austere, was on many occasions kind and benevolent, so that it has been said of him, that he was "cruel only in verse;" and his general character was distinguished by worth and integrity, with some alloys of literary jealousy and injustice. Boileau died of a dropsy. in the breast, March 11, 1711, and by his will left almost all his property to the poor. His funeral was attended by a very numerous company, which gave a woman of the lower class occasion to say, "He had many friends then! yet they say that he spoke ill of every body."

Boileau's character as a poet is now generally allowed to be that of taste, judgment, and good sense, which predominate in the best of his works as they do in the most popular of Pope's writings. The resemblance between these two poets is in many respects very striking, and in one respect continues to be so; they are, in France and England, more read and oftener quoted than any other poets. Both were accused of stealing from the ancients;

but says an elegant critic of our nation, those who flattered themselves that they should diminish the reputation of Boileau, by printing, in the manner of a commentary at the bottom of each page of his works, the many lines he has borrowed from Horace and Juvenal, were grossly deceived. The verses of the ancients which he has turned into French with so much address, and which he has happily made so homogeneous, and of a piece with the rest of the work, that every thing seems to have been conceived in a continued train of thought by the very same person, confer as much honour on him, as the verses which are purely his own. The original turn which he gives to his translations, the boldness of his expressions, so little forced and unnatural, that they seem to be born, as it were, with his thoughts, display almost as much invention as the first production of a thought entirely new. The same critic, Dr. Warton, is of opinion that Boileau's "Art of Poetry" is the best composition of that kind extant. "The brevity of his precepts," says this writer, "enlivened by proper imagery, the justness of his metaphors, the harmony of his numbers, as far as alexandrine lines will admit, the exactness of his method, the perspicuity of his remarks, and the energy of his style, all duly considered, may render this opinion not unreasonable. It is to this work he owes his immortality, which was of the highest utility to his nation, in diffusing a just way of thinking and writing, banishing every species of false wit, and introducing a general taste for the manly simplicity of the ancients, on whose writings this poet had formed his taste."

Of the numerous editions of Boileau's works, the best are, that of Geneva, 1716, 2 vols. 4to, with illustrations by Brossette; that of the Hague, with Picart's cuts, 1718, 2 vols. fol. and 1722, 4 vols. 12mo; that by Allix, with Cochin's cuts, 1740, 2 vols. 4to; that of Durand, 1745, 5 vols. 8vo; and lastly, a beautiful edition in 3 vols. 8vo. or 3 vols. 12mo, Paris, 1809, with notes by Daunou, a member of the Institute.1

BOILEAU (JAMES), one of the brothers of the preceding; a doctor of the Sorbonne, was born in 1635, studied in the university of Paris, took his degree of doctor in theology in 1662, was appointed dean of Sens, and vicar

1 D'Alembert's Eulogies translated by Aikin, 2 vols. 8vo.-Gen. Dict.-Warton's Essay on Pope, &c.

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of the archbishop Gondoin, in 1667; and in 1694, was presented by the king with a canonry in the holy chapel of Paris. He died dean of the faculty of theology in 1716. He is well known by a number of works in a peculiar style, some of which were not remarkable for decency; but these he wrote in Latin, "lest the bishops," he said, "should condemn them." He was not more a friend to the Jesuits than his brother; and he described them as men who lengthened the creed, and shortened the commandments." As dean of the chapter of Sens, he was appointed to harangue the celebrated prince of Condé, when he passed through the city. This great commander took particular pleasure on these occasions in disconcerting his panegyrists; but the doctor, perceiving his intention, counterfeited great confusion, and addressed him in the following manner: "Your highness will not be surprised, I trust, at seeing me tremble in your presence at the head of a company of peaceful priests; I should tremble still more, if I was at the head of 30,000 soldiers." He manifested a contempt of fanaticism, as well as of decorum, by his "Historia Flagellantium, &c." or, an account of the extravagant, and often indecent, practice of discipline by flagellation, in the popish church. It was translated into French; and not many years ago (viz. 1777, 4to. and again in 1782, 8vo.) by M. de Lolme, into English. In his treatise "De antiquo jure presbyterorum in regimine ecclesiastico," he endeavours to shew, that in the primitive times the priests participated with the bishops in the government of the church. He was also the author of several other publications, displaying much curious learning and a satirical turn, which are now consigned to oblivion.

GILLES, the eldest brother of Boileau Despreaux, was born in 1631, and had a place in the king's household. He was a man of wit and learning, and published a translation of Arrian's Epictetus, with a life of the philosopher, Paris, 1655, 8vo. He also published a translation of Diogenes Laertius, 1668, in 2 vols. 12mo; and two dissertatious against Menage and Costar. His "Posthumous Works" were published in 1670. He also wrote verses, in no high estimation. 1

BOILEAU (JOHN JAMES), canon of the church of St. Honoré at Paris, was of the diocese of Agen, in which he

1 D'Alembert's Eulogies translated by Aikin, 2 vols. 8vo.-Gen. Dict.-Warton's Essay on Pope, &c. and Dict. Hist.