While he was employing himself on "Andromaque" he sustained an attack, which roused him to some resentment. Nicole, in a letter he published against a new sect of religionists, asserted that "a romance writer and a theatrical poet are public poisoners--not of bodies, but of souls--and that they ought to look on themselves as the occasion of an infinity of spiritual homicides, of which they are, or might be, the cause." Racine felt this censure the more bitterly from his having been excluded from visiting the Port Royal on account of his tragedies[100]; and he answered it by a letter, addressed "To the author of imaginary reveries." This letter is written with a good deal of wit and pleasantry: we miss the high tone of eloquent feeling that it might be supposed that an author, warmed with the dignity of his calling, would have expressed. His letter was answered, and he was excited to write a reply, which he showed to Boileau. The satirist persuaded him to suppress it; telling him that it would do no honour to his heart, since he attacked, in attacking the Port Royal, men of the highest integrity, to whom he was under obligations. Racine yielded, declaring that his letter should never see light; which it did not till after his death, when a stray copy was found and printed. The conduct of the poets was honourable. It is probable that Racine did not, in his heart, believe in the goodness of his cause; for he was deeply imbued with the prejudices instilled by the jansenists in his early youth. He was piqued by the attack, but his conscience sided with his censurers; and the degraded state to which clerical influence brought French actors in those days might well cause a devout catholic to doubt the innocence of the drama. A higher tone of feeling would have caused Racine to perceive that the fault lay with the persecutors, not the persecuted; but though an amiable and upright man, and a man of genius, he was in nothing beyond his age.