ue of poetry, Boileau attaches a high
importance. Its several species--idyl, elegy, ode, sonnet, epigram,
rondeau, ballade, madrigal, satire, epic, tragedy, comedy--are
separated from one another by fixed boundaries, and each is subject
to its own rules; but genius, on occasion, may transcend those rules,
and snatch an unauthorised grace. It is difficult to understand why
from among the _genres_ of poetry Boileau omitted the fable; perhaps
he did not regard its form, now in verse and now in prose, as defined;
possibly he was insensible of the perfection to which the fable in
verse had been carried by La Fontaine. The fourth _chant_ of the _Art
Poetique_ is remarkable for its lofty conception of the position of
the poet; its counsels express the dignity of the writer's own
literary life. He has been charged not only with cruelty as a satirist,
but with the baseness of a flatterer of the great. It would be more
just to notice the honourable independence which he maintained,
notwithstanding his poetical homage to the King, which was an
inevitable requisition. Boileau's influence as a critic of
literature can hardly be overrated; it has much in common with the
influence of Pope on English literature--beneficial as regards his
own time, somewhat restrictive and even tyrannical upon later
generations.

_Le Lutrin_ (completed in 1683) is not a burlesque which degrades
a noble theme, but, like Pope's far more admirable _Rape of the Lock_,
a heroi-comic poem humorously exalting humble matter of the day. It
tells of the combats of ecclesiastics respecting the position of a
lectern, combats in which the books of a neighbouring publisher serve
as formidable projectiles. The scene is in the Sainte-Chapelle and
the Palais de Justice. Boileau's gift for the vivid presentation of
visible detail, and his skill in versification, served him here better
than did his choice of a subject. On the whole, we think of him less
as a poet than as the classical guardian and legislator of poetry.
He was an emancipator by directing art towards reason and truth; when
larger interpretations of truth and reason than his became possible,
his influence acted unfavourably as a constraint.

All that Boileau lacked as a poet was possessed by the most easy and
natural of the singers of his time--one whose art is like nature in
its freedom, while yet it never wrongs the delicate bounds of art.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE was born in 1621 at Chateau-Thierry, in Champ