All these, however, much more the awkward Tenth, on Women, and the very inferior Eleventh, must give place to the Ninth, an imitation of Horace, II. vii., written in the author’s fortieth or forty-first year, nominally to defend himself for his former attacks on his compeers, but really, of course, to renew them. Once more his favourite equivalents (only mentioned _infamiæ causa_) for Gyas and Cloanthus—Colletet, Pelletier, Quinault, and the rest—appear. Once more Racan receives partial, and Théophile almost total, insult. Here is the famous contrast of _le clinquant du Tasse_ and _l’or de Virgile_; and here the still more famous lines on the _Cid_, embedded in—and plainly owing their complimentary tone to the fact that they are embedded in—an onslaught on Chapelain. Again and again the luckless Cotin is “horsed” and justified: while the almost equally luckless Pelletier[374] serves as a foil to “d’Ablancourt et Patru.” The singular posthumous piece _Sur l'Équivoque_, appended usually as the Twelfth satire, is a sort of attempt to generalise and amplify the author’s horror of conceit and obscurity. ----- Footnote 374: Not of course Boileau’s worthy predecessor in Art-Poetic writing (_v. supra_, pp. 117, 118), but an advocate of the mid-seventeenth century, who was unfortunate enough to commit sonnets, and to be disliked by the satirist. ----- To dwell on the minor pieces of verse, which are often literary, would be here impossible; it is enough to say that they include the two epigrams on Corneille’s _Agésilas_ and _Attila_, and numerous assaults on Perrault. [Sidenote: _The_ Epigrams _and_ Epistles.] The _Epistles_ are not nearly so full of our matter as the _Satires_; but the Seventh (to Racine on the success of the opposition _Phèdre_ by the hated Pradon) and the Tenth (on his own verses) belong to us. The first of these has been very highly, and in part quite deservedly, praised. The reference to the death and the almost dishonoured grave of Molière, though slightly theatrical, is both vigorous and really touching; the eulogy of Racine himself is, in the circumstances, but allowably excessive; and the half-flattering, half-boasting mention of his own enjoyment of the favour of the “great,” from Louis to La Rochefoucauld, would be tolerable if it were not mainly a vehicle for fresh abuse of Linière and Tallemant, of Perrin and Pradon himself. [Sidenote: _Prose—The_ Héros de Roman; _the_ Réflexions sur Longin.]