success among his own order of Jesuits, wrote famous
critical works, was one of the best Latin poets of his time, and died at
Paris in 1687. His Whole Critical Works were translated by Dr. Basil
Kennett in two volumes, which appeared in 1705. The preface of their
publisher said of Rapin that

he has long dictated in this part of letters. He is acknowledged as
the great arbitrator between the merits of the best writers; and
during the course of almost thirty years there have been few appeals
from his sentence.

(See also a note on p. 168, vol. i. [Footnote 3 of No. 44.]) Rene le
Bossu, the great French authority on Epic Poetry, born in 1631, was a
regular canon of St. Genevieve, and taught the Humanities in several
religious houses of his order. He died, subprior of the Abbey of St.
Jean de Cartres, in 1680. He wrote, besides his Treatise upon Epic
Poetry, a parallel between the philosophies of Aristotle and Descartes,
which appeared a few months earlier (in 1674) with less success. Another
authority was Father Bouhours, of whom see note on p. 236, vol. i.
[Footnote 4 of No. 62.] Another was Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle.
called by Voltaire the most universal genius of his age. He was born at
Rouen in 1657, looking so delicate that he was baptized in a hurry, and
at 16 was unequal to the exertion of a game at billiards, being caused
by any unusual exercise to spit blood, though he lived to the age of a
hundred, less one month and two days. He was taught by the Jesuits, went
to the bar to please his father, pleaded a cause, lost it, and gave up
the profession to devote his time wholly to literature and philosophy.
He went to Paris, wrote plays and the Dialogues of the Dead, living
then with his uncle, Thomas Corneille. A discourse on the Eclogue
prefixed to his pastoral poems made him an authority in this manner of
composition. It was translated by Motteux for addition to the English
translation of Bossu on the Epic, which had also appended to it an Essay
on Satire by another of these French critics, Andre Dacier. Dacier, born
at Castres in 1651, was educated at Saumur under Taneguy le Fevre, who
was at the same time making a scholar of his own daughter Anne. Dacier
and the young lady became warmly attached to one another, married,
united in abjuring Protestantism, and were for forty years, in the
happiest concord, man and wife and fellow-scholars. Dacier and his wife,
as well as Fontenelle, were alive when th