(1636-1711)
The name of Louis XIV. suggests ultra-lavishness in life and taste; a
time when French society, surfeited with pleasure, demanded a stimulus
of continual novelty in current literature. The natural result was
_preciosité_, hyperbole, falsetto sentiment, which ranked the unusual
above the natural, clever conceit above careful workmanship. It was
tainted with artificiality, and now seems mawkish and superficial.
But Boileau changed all that. Perhaps no author unendowed with genius
has ever so influenced literature,
[Illustration: BOILEAU]
Aside from his work, the man and his life seem essentially commonplace.
Nicholas Boileau, who, adding another name to his own,--quite a fashion
then,--was usually called Despréaux by his contemporaries, was born in
Paris, in the palace court, nearly opposite the royal Sainte Chapelle.
He rarely went farther from the city than to the little house at
Auteuil, where he spent twenty summers. So he knew his Paris very
intimately, and was limited too by knowing only her life and thought. To
his repressed youth, guarded by a strict father and a cross
servant,--for his mother died in his babyhood,--is sometimes attributed
his lack of emotional quality. But his was not an intense nature, and
probably no training could have made the didactic poet lyric or
passionate. Sincerity and common-sense were his predominating qualities,
and he had the rare faculty of obedience to his own instincts. He first
studied for the priesthood, but anything like mysticism was too
repellent to his matter-of-fact mind. Then, as many of his family had
been lawyers, he naturally turned toward that career. But the practice
as taught him seemed senseless and arbitrary. Its rational basis upon a
logical theory only dawned upon him later. In spite of his literary
tastes, there was something extremely mundane about the pleasure-loving
bachelor, so fond of good eating and of jovial café revels with Racine,
Furetière, Ninon de L'Enclos, and other witty Bohemians. With them he
was much happier than in the more fastidious society of the Hôtel
Rambouillet, from which he retired after reading aloud a satiric poem
not favorably received. Neither was he happy at court, in spite of the
favor of Louis XIV., who, entertained by his rough honesty, gave him a
pension of two thousand francs. Later, when appointed with Racine to
write a history of the reign,--that unfortunate history which was
accidentally burned,--we find him an unwilling follower on royal
expeditions, his ungainly horsemanship the mock of high-bred courtiers.
In fact, he was bourgeois through and through, and not at ease with the
aristocrats. He was thrifty bourgeois too; so often called miserly as
well as malicious that it is pleasant to remember certain illustrations
of his nobler side. The man who offered to resign his own pension if
that of old disfavored Corneille might be continued, and when the latter
was forced to sell his library, paid him its full value and then left
him in lifelong possession,--was generous if he did love to save sous.
His was a fine independence, which felt his art too lofty for purchase,
and would accept nothing from the booksellers.
He had always wished to be a poet. Feeble of body, asthmatic, and in
later life deaf and almost deprived of voice, he found in writing all
the charm of a brilliant and ingenious game. Then too he had something
definite to say, as all his work consistently testifies. Neither rich
nor poor, without family cares, he could give himself unreservedly to
authorship. In 1660 he published a satire upon the vices of Paris, which
inaugurated his great success. Seven satires appeared in 1666, and he
afterward added five others. Their malicious wit, their novel form, the
harmonious swing of the couplet rhyme, forced immediate attention. They
held up contemporary literary weaknesses to scorn, and indulged in the
most merciless personalities, sparing not even his own brother, the poet
Gilles Boileau. All retorts upon himself the author bore with complacent
superiority which forced his adversaries to feel worsted.
From 1666 to 1774 most of the 'Epistles' were written; and also his best
known work, 'L'Art poétique' (The Art of Poetry). In the satires he had
been destructive, but he was too practical to be negative. The 'Art of
Poetry,' modeled after Horace's work of that name, offers the theory of
poetic composition. It is a work in four cantos of couplets: the first
setting forth general rules of metrical composition; the second a
dissertation upon different forms--ode, sonnet, pastoral, and others;
the third treating tragedy, comedy, and epic poetry; and the last
consisting of general reflections and advice to authors. Briefly stated,
Boileau's desire was to establish literature upon a foundation of
unchanging laws. Why did some works speedily die while others endure
through the centuries? Because works akin to the eternal classics did
not, like much contemporary writing, reflect the trivial and
evanescent. They contained what is perennially true of humanity; and
stated this in a simple, interesting, and reasonable way. Above all,
Boileau demands truth in subject, and the conscientious workmanship
which finds the most suitable form of expression. To see a word at the
end of a couplet only because it rhymes with the word above it, he finds
inexcusable. Without a method resulting in unity, clearness, and
proportion, writing is not literature. Later, in his 'Reflections upon
Longinus,' Boileau repeated and emphasized these views.
His mock-heroic poem 'Le Lutrin' (The Reading-Desk), ridiculing clerical
pettinesses, was strong in realistic descriptions, and was perhaps his
most popular work.
A modern poet's definition of poetry as "the heat and height of sane
emotion" would have been unintelligible to Boileau. Deficient in
imagination, he always saw life on its material side, and was irritated
by any display of emotion not reducible to logic. So his poetry is
sensible, clear argument in exquisitely careful metre. His great
strength lay in a taste which recognized harmony and fitness
instinctively. To us his quality is best translated by the dainty,
perfect couplets of his imitator Pope. His talent, essentially French in
its love of effect and classification, has strewn the language with
clever saws, and his works have been studied as authoritative models by
generation after generation of students.
But after all, it is less as a poet than as a critic, "the lawgiver of
the French Parnassus," that the world has always known Boileau, Before
him the art of criticism had hardly existed. Authors had received
indiscriminate praise or blame, usually founded upon interested motives
or personal bias; but there had been little comparison with an
acknowledged standard. This "slashing reviewer in verse," as Saintsbury
calls him, was a severe pedagogue, but his public did learn their
lesson. He made mistakes, was neither broad-minded nor profound in
attainments, was occasionally unjust; but he showed readers why they
should praise or blame; taught them appreciation of his greater friends
Molière and Racine; and pointed out to authors what their purpose should
be. With a greater creative power seeking self-expression, he might have
accomplished less in literary reform.