As such the public joyfully accepted him. He became the favourite guest of the best society in Paris, where genius and wit were honoured. Joined to his faculty of writing satires, whose every word was as a gem set in gold, Boileau read his verses well, and possessed the talent of mimicry, which added greatly to the zest of his recitations. Chapelain, Cotin, and the poetasters whom he lashed, passed thus, as it were, in living array before his audience; and the enjoyment he created naturally led to a popularity, which, as it was bestowed by the well-born, the beautiful, and the rich, spread a halo of prosperity round the poet's steps. Boileau, however, has not escaped censure for his personal attacks. It was considered a defilement of the elevated spirit of poetical satire to attack persons; and, though Boileau only lashed these men as authors, their blameless private characters made many recoil from seeing their names held up to ridicule. Not only his contemporaries, but later writers, have blamed him.[82] He has even been accused of acting from base motives. That Chapelain, when he made a list for Colbert of literary men deserving of pensions, did not include Boileau's name is supposed to be the occasion of his enmity. But the dislike seems to have had foundation earlier; for we are told that the first satire was composed when the poet was only four-and-twenty, and had no pretensions to be pensioned for unwritten works, and, indeed, before the pensions in question were granted.[83] Some ill blood might have arisen through a quarrel between Boileau and his elder brother Giles, who was a friend of Chapelain. This circumstance rendered him, perhaps, more willing to attack the latter; but, doubtless, his ruling motive was his hatred of a bad book, and his natural genius, which directed the scope of his labours. Boileau himself carefully distinguishes between attacks made on authors and on individuals; and, _à propos_, of his ridicule of Chapelain, he says, "En blamant ses écrits, ai-je d'un style affreux Distilé sur sa vie un venin dangereux? Ma muse en l'attaquant, charitable et discrete, Scait de l'homme d'honneur distinguer le poète."[84] Still he whimsically gives, as it were, the lie to this very defence by his subsequent conduct; for, when any one of the unhappy authors whom he had held up to ridicule showed him personal kindness, he was not proof against the impulse that led him to expunge his name in the next edition of his works, and substitute that of some new-sprung enemy. Thus in the seventh satire we find the following persons strung together:-- "Faut-il d'un froid Rimeur dépeindre la manie? Mes vers, comme un torrent, coulent sur le papier, Je rencontre à la fois Perrin et Pelletier, Bardou, Mauroy, Boursault, Colletet, Titreville." He afterwards altered the last verse to "Bonnecorse, Pradon, Colletet, Titreville."