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Who should say whether Alexander would have been a hero had his neck been straight; or Boileau a satirist, had he never been pecked by a turkey? It would be pleasant to see you, my beloved pupils, after reading "Quintus Curtius," twisting each other's throat; or, fresh from Boileau, hurrying to the poultry-yard in the hope of being mutilated into the performance of a second "Lutrin."
Pope's masterpiece is, perhaps, the Rape of the Lock, a mock heroic poem, a "dwarf Iliad" recounting, in five cantos, a society quarrel, which arose from Lord Petre's cutting a lock of hair from the head of Mrs. Arabella Fermor. Boileau, in his Lutrin, had treated with the same epic dignity a dispute over the placing of the reading-desk in a parish church.
Instead of being grateful for having good music presented in so many different fashions, they would only tolerate their own particular fashion: and a new Lutrin, a fierce war, divided musicians into two hostile camps, the camp of counterpoint and the camp of harmony.
The dedication contained some fine passages of genuine beauty and graceful versification. It was in some respects an imitation of the Lutrin of Boileau. It was very different from the doggerel in which he had taken part with his humpbacked father so long ago. Then he had blown the cow-horn, now he spoke with the tongue of a trumpet.
But, if I may believe the best critics who have talked to me on the subject, my "Rape of the Lock" is not inferior to your "Lutrin;" and my "Art of Criticism" may well be compared with your "Art of Poetry;" my "Ethic Epistles" are esteemed at least equal to yours; and my "Satires" much better. Boileau. Hold, Mr. Pope.
He confessed that he had been greatly struck with the Charivari, and boldly declared that the language of the Troubadours, which everyone supposed to be dead, was still in full life in France; that it not only lived, but that at that very moment a poor barber at Agen, without any instruction beyond that given by the fields, the woods, and the heavens, had written a serio-comic poem which, at the risk of being thought crazy by his colleagues of the Academy, he considered to be better composed than the Lutrin of Boileau, and even better than one of Pope's masterpieces, the Rape of the Lock.
Who should say whether Alexander would have been a hero had his neck been straight; or Boileau a satirist, had he never been pecked by a turkey? It would be pleasant to see you, my beloved pupils, after reading "Quintus Curtius," twisting each other's throat; or, fresh from Boileau, hurrying to the poultry-yard in the hope of being mutilated into the performance of a second "Lutrin."
See there, said my master, there's poor Williams, taking his solitary walk again, with his book. And, it seems, it was so contrived; for Mr. Peters had been, as I since find, desired to tell him to be in that walk at such an hour in the morning. So, old acquaintance, said my master, again have I met you in this place? What book are you now reading? He said, it was Boileau's Lutrin.
The Art Poetique and the Lutrin appeared in 1674; the first nine Satires and several of the Epistles had preceded them. Rather a witty, shrewd, and able versifier than a great poet, Boileau displayed in the Lutrin a richness and suppleness of fancy which his other works had not foreshadowed. The broad and cynical buffoonery of Scarron's burlesques had always shocked his severe and pure taste.
Like all provincials of his generation, he had been brought up on the Latin Classics, many pages of which he knew by heart, and also a mass of proverbs, and on La Fontaine and Boileau, the Boileau of L'Art Poetique, and, above all, of Lutrin, on the author of La Pucelle, and the poetae minores of the eighteenth century, in whose manner he squeezed out a certain number of poems.
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