was
repulsive, but his poetry had attracted her affections. Passing through
one of the halls of the palace, she saw him sleeping on a bench; she
approached and kissed him. Some of her attendants could not conceal
their astonishment that she should press with her lips those of a man so
frightfully ugly. The amiable princess answered, smiling, "I did not
kiss the man, but the mouth which has uttered so many fine things."

The great Colbert paid a pretty compliment to Boileau and Racine. This
minister, at his villa, was enjoying the conversation of our two poets,
when the arrival of a prelate was announced: turning quickly to the
servant, he said, "Let him be shown everything except myself!"

To such attentions from this great minister, Boileau alludes in these
verses:--

Plus d'un grand m'aima jusqnes a la tendresse;
Et ma vue a Colbert inspiroit l'allegresse.

Several pious persons have considered it as highly meritable to abstain
from the reading of poetry! A good father, in his account of the last
hours of Madame Racine, the lady of the celebrated tragic poet, pays
high compliments to her religious disposition, which, he says, was so
austere, that she would not allow herself to read poetry, as she
considered it to be a dangerous pleasure; and he highly commends her for
never having read the tragedies of her husband! Arnauld, though so
intimately connected with Racine for many years, had not read his
compositions. When at length he was persuaded to read Phaedra, he
declared himself to be delighted, but complained that the poet had set a
dangerous example, in making the manly Hippolytus dwindle to an
effeminate lover. As a critic, Arnauld was right; but Racine had his
nation to please. Such persons entertain notions of poetry similar to
that of an ancient father, who calls poetry the wine of Satan; or to
that of the religious and austere Nicole, who was so ably answered by
Racine: he said, that dramatic poets were public poisoners, not of
bodies, but of souls.

Poets, it is acknowledged, have foibles peculiar to themselves. They
sometimes act in the daily commerce of life as if every one was
concerned in the success of their productions. Poets are too frequently
merely poets. Segrais has recorded that the following maxim of
Rochefoucault was occasioned by reflecting on the characters of Boileau
and Racine. "It displays," he writes, "a great poverty of mind to have
only one kind of genius." On this Segrais o