NICHOLAS ( 1636-1711 ). The most distinguished of French critics in the age of Louis XIV., known as the 'legislator of lle was in criticism an incarnation of correct commonplace common sense, a schoolmaster in careful work manship, sworn enemy of all false sentiment and preciosity, such as marred the poetry and (let ion of his immediate predecessors. He was born in Paris, November I, 1636, studied first for the priesthood, then for the law, but found his place instinctively in the rather Bohemian literary company of Molii‘re. La Fontaine. Racine, the philologist and realistic novelist Furetiere. and the witty Ninon de FEnclos. Of the ]late] Ram bonillet and its literary coterie he made one trial and never another. Louis XI\'. liked his rare honesty and gave him a pension, but he shunned the Court, save when he could serve a friend there (e.g. Corneille), for he was a bourgeois and not at ease with the aristocracy. Feeble. asthmatic, in later life a little deaf, poetry was his aspira tion, and criticism, justly weighed and carefully balanced, his delight. his life was uneventful. lie never left Paris and its environs save at the com mind of the King, who made him a royal histo riographer, and he died at Auteuil. March 13, 1711. His satire on the vices of Paris was his first success. and by its (late gave a name to the 'school of 1660.' Seven other satires appeared in 1666, and five more complete the list. They
are in rhymed couplets, polished, harmonious, witty, with the maliciousness of merciless per sonalities. This was destructive criticism with a vengeance. In the Art poetique (1(174) he was constructive. and, following Horace's .1rs Port i ea, gave a theory of poetic composition in four cantos, of which the first lays down general rules, the second applies these to lyric poetry. the third to the epic and the drama, while the fourth contains general reflections, advice, and cautious, all spiced with brilliant wit and barbed with personal allusion. He preached a reign of lit erary law, truth in subject. conscientious work manship in form, unity, clearness, proportion. He sought to establish literature on an un changing foundation and to give canons of clas sicism for the ages. And indeed his work has a perennial reasonableness, though it allows scant scope for "the heat and height of sane emo tion" and the unchartered play of genius. For Boileau's mind was material, logical, lacking in The best edition of -Boileau's Works is by Gidel, 4 vols. ( 1870-73). Consult: Deschanel, Le roman tisme des elassiques, 4th series ( Paris, 1888) ; Lanson, Boileau (Paris, 1892) ; 3lorillot, Boi leau (Paris, 1892) ; Faguet, XV7/. SiPcle, Etudes litteraircs (Paris, 1SS7) ; Hemon, yours de lit terature (Paris, 1889-95).