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"The situation," remarked Jack, "is something like that of Louis XIV. at the famous passage of the Rhine, of whom Boileau said: 'His grandeur tied him to the banks. Had you been only a common sailor, captain, a parole would not have stood in the way of your escape." "But," said Willis, "the parole can be given up, can it not?" "Not without a reasonable excuse," replied the captain.
"If you wish to hear it. This is how it was: "You knew Boivin, the old editorial clerk, whom we called Boileau?" "Yes, perfectly." "He was my office chum. The rascal had a house at Colombes and always invited me to spend Sunday with him. "I let myself be entrapped like an animal, and set out, one morning by the 8 o'clock train.
Here she was in the centre of things, ready for news, ready for arrivals, ready to go anywhere or do anything that might be necessary, and, more than that, there was a delightful consciousness that she had seen something of Switzerland and Italy, and without having missed a telegram by being away. The party did not return to the Hotel Boileau.
They now triumphed in their turn. The Dutch struck medals. The Spaniards sang Te Deums. Many poems, serious and sportive, appeared, of which one only has lived. Prior burlesqued, with admirable spirit and pleasantry, the bombastic verses in which Boileau had celebrated the first taking of Namur.
Among the competitors was CLAUDE PERRAULT, that physician so defamed by Boileau, the poet. His plans were preferred, and merited the preference. Many pleasantries were circulated at the expense of the new medical architect; and PERRAULT replied to those sarcasms by producing the beautiful colonnade of the Louvre, the master-piece of French architecture, and the admiration of all Europe.
But his head was terribly hurt, and it was that hurt that for three days and three nights made Kent hover with nerve-racking indecision between life and death. The fourth day reason came back to him, and Boileau fed him venison broth. The fifth day he stood up. The sixth he thanked Andre, and said that he was ready to go.
"Made prostitute and profligate the Muse." If you cannot be a poet, be a poetaster; and if you cannot be that, be a poetess, or "she-poet," as Johnson, in his big dictionary, defines the word. So "gently take all that ungently comes," and hammer away as sedulously as old Boileau. Somebody will, undoubtedly, in the next age, relish your rinsings. A poet, you know, is a prophet.
These are the names of the illustrious men proscribed: the Girondists Gensonne, Guadet, Brissot, Gorsas, Petion, Vergniaud, Salles, Barbaroux, Chambon, Buzot, Birotteau, Lidon, Rabaud, Lasource, Lanjuinais, Grangeneuve, Lehardy, Lesage, Louvet, Valaze, Lebrun, minister of foreign affairs, Clavieres, minister of taxes; and the members of the Council of Twelve, Kervelegan, Gardien, Rabaud Saint-Etienne, Boileau, Bertrand, Vigee, Molleveau, Henri La Riviere, Gomaire, and Bergoing.
How seriously the question between the Moderns and the Ancients on whose behalf Boileau had come forward and crossed swords with Saint Sorlin was taken is shown by the fact that Saint Sorlin, before his death, solemnly bequeathed the championship of the Moderns to a younger man, Charles Perrault. We shall see how he fulfilled the trust.
Need it be told that France stands pre-eminent in dramatic excellence; that Corneille, Racine, and Molière, were contemporaries of Bossuet, Massillon, and Boileau; that the tragedies of Voltaire were the highest effort of his vast and varied genius?
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