278 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN.

blessed, is truly ludicrous. Yet here Boileau laid himselfopen to attack. In the remainder of the poem, whileridiculing the clergy, no word escaped him that treatedsacred things jocosely, and he was too pious indeed not tohave shrunk from so doing. This joke made of a bishop’sblessing intrenched on this rule: priests, who hithertohad remained silent, now ventured to raise the cry ofblasphemy. However, it was innocuous : the excellentcharacter and real piety of Boileau sheltered him fromthe attacks so levelled. The sixth book recounts .the ar-rival of Piety, and Faith, and Grace, who awaken Aristus(the First President Lamoignon , to whom, he havingdied in the interval between the publishing the com-mencement of the poem and its conclusion, Boileaupaid this tribute of respect), and, through his mediation,peace is restored.

We have given this detail of the “ Lutrin, ” as beingat once the best and the most successful of Boileau’spoems. We now return to the author. We have al-luded to his presentation at court, occasioned by theeulogy of Louis XIV. , which the poet puts in the mouthof Indolence. Madame de Thianges, sister of madamede Montespan , was so struck by this passage, that, whilethe poem was still in manuscript, she read it to theking; and he, flattered and pleased, desired that thepoet should be presented to him. Boileau accordinglyappeared at court. The king conversed with him, andasked him what passage in his poems he himself es-teemed the best. It so happened that the prince ofConde had found fault with the conclusion of his epistleto the king. It had ended with the fable of the twomen quarrelling about an oyster they had found, andreferred their dispute to a judge, who swallowed thecause of it in a moment. The prince considered thisstory, however well told, not in harmony with the ele-vated tone of the epistle ; and Boileau, yielding to thecriticism, wrote a different conclusion. When askedby the king for his favourite passage, the little tact hehad as a courtier, joined to an author’s natural partiality