The Historic Muse reappears, but in such case, as hinted above, that we shall magnanimously abstain from further vengeance on her. If only Boileau had omitted the unhappy note which says that _leurs pièces_ (those of his imaginary _pélerins_) _sont imprimées_, thereby suggesting that he had read them! You must have Love: but do not be _doucereux_; keep the stock characters; do not modernise the ancients; and if you invent a personage let him be constant to himself. The theatre really is very difficult. But Epic is still more so. It depends entirely upon action, upon fable; and in order to make it noble you put in the _deorum ministerium_.[364] Æneas’ voyage would have been quite an ordinary thing without Juno, and Neptune, and Æolus:— “C’est là ce qui surprend, frappe, saisit, attache.”[365] ----- Footnote 363: As it takes ten lines (171-180) in the French to explain our single epithet, they need not make fun of it. Footnote 364: See on the Petronian passage, vol. i. p. 245, and on its mischievous influence the present chapter, _passim_. Footnote 365: I like to vary Boileau’s stale criticism with his admirably fresh and vigorous verse. ----- But the modern deity will not do at all; and devils and angels are worse. Do let us keep our Tritons, our Parcæ, our Pan, and our Charon! If not, in a short time we shall not be able to tie a bandage on the eyes of Themis, or put a balance in her hand![366] Further, be very careful of your names. There was a person once who actually called his hero Childebrand! Minor receipts for handling follow; and then we find ourselves back on the stage with Comedy, as to which Boileau extols Nature, and tells us that Molière would have been the best of comic dramatists—if he had been other than he was. ----- Footnote 366: “She can do without them,” as L. Arruntius most excellently remarked on a parallel occasion. _Vide_ i. 238. ----- The Fourth Canto returns to the generalities of the first, and, taking advantage of this wider scope, begins an attack, not unamusing but in very bad taste, on Claude Perrault, architect, doctor, and, like his more celebrated brother Charles, and a third not so well known as either, a champion on the modern side (_v. infra_). It ends, in accordance with the habits of the age, in an elaborate and rather well-declaimed panegyric of the king, wherein the adroit historiographer supplies an epilogue to the perhaps not quite so adroit critic. For some lines in the middle Boileau, though constantly returning to the crutch of Horace, does occupy himself with literature. His precepts may be thus summarised. Whatever you are, be not a bad writer, and if you _must_ be, be rather bombastic than cold; but, on the whole, degrees of mediocrity do not much matter. Here the satirist once more comes to the rescue and dictates the (in application insolent,[367] but) intrinsically good couplet—