said to have once for all abolished the lucubrations of La Calprenede, Mlle de Scudery and their fellows. Though fairly widely read in manuscript, the book was not published till 1713, out of regard, it is said, for Mlle de Scudery. To these early days belong the reunions at the _Moulon Blanc_ and the _Pomme du Pin_, where Boileau, Moliere, Racine, Chapelle and Antoine Furetiere met to discuss literary questions. To Moliere and Racine he proved a constant friend, and supported their interests on many occasions. In 1666, prompted by the publication of two unauthorized editions, he published _Satires du Sieur D...._, containing seven satires and the _Discours au roi_. From 1669 onwards appeared his epistles, graver in tone than the satires, maturer in thought, more exquisite and polished in style. The _Epitres_ gained for him the favour of Louis XIV., who desired his presence at court. The king asked him which he thought his best verses. Whereupon Boileau diplomatically selected as his "least bad" some still unprinted lines in honour of the grand monarch and proceeded to recite them. He received forthwith a pension of 2000 livres. In 1674 his two masterpieces, _L'Art poetique_ and _Le Lutrin_, were published with some earlier works as the _Oeuvres diverses du sieur D_.... The first, in imitation of the _Ars Poetica_ of Horace, lays down the code for all future French verse, and may be said to fill in French literature a parallel place to that held by its prototype in Latin. On English literature the maxims of Boileau, through the translation revised by Dryden, and through the magnificent imitation of them in Pope's _Essay on Criticism_, have exercised no slight influence. Boileau does not merely lay down rules for the language of poetry, but analyses carefully the various kinds of verse composition, and enunciates the principles peculiar to each. Of the four books of _L'Art poetique_, the first and last consist of general precepts, inculcating mainly the great rule of _bon sens_; the second treats of the pastoral, the elegy, the ode, the epigram and satire; and the third of tragic and epic poetry. Though the rules laid down are of value, their tendency is rather to hamper and render too mechanical the efforts of poetry. Boileau himself, a great, though by no means infallible critic in verse, cannot be considered a great poet. He rendered the utmost service in destroying the exaggerated reputations of the mediocrities of his time, but his judgment was sometimes at fault. The _Lutrin_, a mock heroic poem, of which four cantos appeared in 1674, furnished Alexander Pope with a model for the _Rape of the Lock_, but the English poem is superior in richness of imagination and subtlety of invention. The fifth and sixth cantos, afterwards added by Boileau, rather detract from the beauty of the poem; the last canto in particular is quite unworthy of his genius. In 1674 appeared also his translation of Longinus _On the Sublime_, to