260 literary and scientific men.

only eleven months old — she dying at the early age oftwenty-three. His childhood was one of suffering • sothat he said of himself, in after times, that he would notaccept a new life on the condition of passing through asimilar childhood. We are not told what the evils wereof which he complained, but they were certainly, to agreat degree, physical; for he was cut for the stone atan early age, and the operation being badly performedhe never entirely regained his health. His earliest yearswere spent at the village of Crone, in which his fatherhad a country house, where he spent his law vacations,and where, indeed, Louis Racine declares that Nicholaswas born. The house must have been small andhumble, for the boy was lodged in a loft above a barn,till a little room was constructed for him in the barnitself, which made him say that he commenced life bydescending into a barn. His disposition as a childwas marked by a simplicity and kindliness, that causedhis father to say, “ that Colin was a good fellow, whowould never speak ill of any one.” His turn for satiremade this seem ridiculous in after times : yet it wasfounded on truth. Delicacy, and a sort of irritabilityof taste, joined to wit, caused him to satirise writers :but he carefully abstained from impugning the privatecharacter of any one; and, with his friends, and in hisconduct during life, he was remarkable for probity,kindness of heart, and a cordial forgiving disposition.When we view him as a courtier, also, we recognize atonce that independence of feeling, joined to a certainabsence of mind, of which his father perceived the germ.

He went to school at Beauvais ; and M. Sevin, masterof one of the classes, discovered his taste for poetry, andasserted that he would acquire great reputation in hisfuture life ; being persuaded that, when a man is born apoet, nothing can prevent him from fulfilling his des-tiny. Boileau was at this time passionately fond ofromances and poetry; but his critical taste was awakenedby these very pursuits. “ Even at fifteen,” he says, inhis ninth satire, “ I detested a stupid book. Satire