“Un fou du moins fait rire et peut nous égayer, Mais un froid écrivain ne sait rien qu’ennuyer.” Do not pay attention to flatterers (we had heard this before), do not excuse your verses, but keep an open ear for every comment: though you must be careful to separate foolish from wise criticisms. Join the solid and useful to the pleasant. Let your morality be of the very first water. You may introduce love; but respect principle and the young person. Do not be jealous of your rivals; do not put literature above its proper place; for heaven’s sake do not endeavour to make profit out of your writings [except by pensions].[368] Be not avaricious, but attend to Reason. If you do, Louis will give you pensions; and you will not have to tremble, like Colletet,[369] for your dinner, which depends on the success of a sonnet. Of this last ignoble gibe (too much imitated, alas! by our own Pope) we need take no further notice; and we shall say nothing more on any of the other points in Boileau which invite unfavourable comment, but are not strictly critical. Let us judge him as a critic only, and first on this piece. ----- Footnote 367: As usual Boileau gives the actual names of half a score inhabitants of the French Grub Street, of whom Cyrano de Bergerac (he was long dead, and Boileau was safe) has the consolation prize of being merely _fou_. Footnote 368: They were probably the _tribut légitime_ which a _noble esprit_ might derive from his work. Footnote 369: This refers to the _son_, François (1628-1680), of a more poetic pair—Guillaume (1598-1659) and Claudine Colletet. The former of these was also a critic in his way, and left, besides an _Art Poétique_ (1658) of no great value, a _Histoire des Poètes Français_ which, strangely enough, was never printed, and the MS. of which was burnt by the Vandals of the Commune in 1871. ----- Is it good criticism? This of course is far too large a question to answer off-hand. [Sidenote: _Critical examination of it._] We must hunt the answer to it by the way of minor questions, such as, Is it original? (the least important but of some importance). If it is not, What does it add to, and how ingeniously and usefully does it apply, the original from which it borrows? What methods does it use? To what extent and in what fashion would a poet adopting it as a manual be qualified for his art? And lastly (though perhaps some minor questions may crop up in our passage), What incidental excellences does it contain? What is the merit of the critical estimates which the author makes, in passing or with deliberation, of the authors, great and small, of the past and the present? Let us take these questions in order, and see what answers the _Art Poétique_, examined without prejudice, but without fear[370] or favour, can give to them. ----- Footnote 370: