are written with less pitiless severity and with a more accomplished
mastery of verse, continue the work of the Satires. From Horace he
derived much, something from Juvenal, and something from his
predecessor Regnier; but he had not the lightness nor the _bonhomie_
of Horace, nor his easy and amiable wisdom.

In the _Art Poetique_ Boileau is constructive; he exhibits the true
doctrine of literature, as he conceived it. Granted genius, fire,
imagination--the gifts of heaven--what should be the self-imposed
discipline of a poet? Above all, the cultivation of that power which
distinguishes false from true, and aids every other faculty--the
reason. "Nothing," declares Boileau, "is beautiful save what is
true;" nature is the model, the aim and end of art; reason and good
sense discern reality; they test the fidelity of the artistic
imitation of nature; they alone can vouch for the correspondence of
the idea with its object, and the adequacy of the expression to the
idea. What is permanent and universal in literature lives by the aid
of no fashion of the day, but by virtue of its truth to nature. And
hence is derived the authority of the ancient classics, which have
been tried by time and have endured; these we do not accept as tyrants,
but we may safely follow as guides.

To study nature is, however, before all else to study man--that is,
human nature--and to distinguish in human nature what is universal
and abiding from what is transitory and accidental; we cannot be
expected to discover things absolutely new; it suffices to give to
what is true a perfect expression. Unhappily, human nature, as
understood by Boileau, included little beyond the court and the town.
Unhappily his appreciation of classical literature was defective;
to justify as true and natural the mythology of Greece he has to regard
it as a body of symbols or a moral allegory. Unhappily his survey
of literature was too narrow to include the truths and the splendours
of Mediaeval poetry and art. For historical truth, indeed, he had
little sense; seeking for what is permanent and universal, he had
little regard for local colour and the truth of manners. To secure
assent from contemporary minds truth must assume what they take to
be its image, and a Greek or Roman on the stage must not shock the
demand for verisimilitude made by the courtly imagination of the days
of Louis Quatorze. Art which fails to please is no longer art.

To the workmanship, the techniq