A humourist might maintain the two opposite theses, “That Boileau has genuine authority,” and “That the French are always craving for a tyrant,” on the strength of a curious _catena_ of evidence from Voltaire’s “Ça porte malheur” to Marmontel, who had presumed to speak lightly of Despréaux, down to M. Bourgoin’s “On a difficilement raison contre Boileau.” But to those who “bear an English heart” these terrors are idle. ----- As to the first question there is, to a certain extent, no difference of opinion. [Sidenote: _Want of originality._] The injured Cotin undoubtedly had truth on his side, in the parody quoted above, as to a large part of the _Art Poétique_. But what has not been quite sufficiently recognised is that this is the best part. Take away the almost (sometimes quite) literal translations from Horace, and you will take away Boileau’s backbone; take away the Horatian suggestions, and you will go far to deprive his criticism of its skeleton altogether, and leave it a mere jumble of promiscuous observations. It would be interesting and by no means otiose—if one only had the money and the time—to print the _Art Poétique_ with the direct Horatian borrowment in rubric, the suggested passages in black italic, and the mere personalities, illustrations, flatteries, lampoons, and the like, in, say, blue. But I fear the remains in ordinary print would be wofully small, and still more wofully unimportant. This, however, would not matter so very much if Boileau had been strikingly original in what he adds, or had applied the Horatian doctrine with striking appropriateness to the altered condition of literature. One would think it impossible, if distinguished instances to the contrary were not known, for any one to maintain that he has done either. By far the greater part of the achievements of modern, and practically the whole of the achievements of mediæval, literature up to his time, are simply ignored, or, where referred to, ridiculously misdescribed. Nay more, Horatian parallels are got in by inventing a history of what never existed.