. de Treville was Captain of the King's
Musketeers.

Ah, pleasant age to live in, when good intentions in poetry were more
richly endowed than ever is Research, even Research in Prehistoric
English, among us niggard moderns! How I wish I knew a Cardinal, or,
even as you did, a Prime Minister, who would praise and pension me; but
Envy be still! Your existence was more happy indeed; you constructed
odes, corrected sonnets, presided at the Ho'tel Rambouillet, while the
learned ladies were still young and fair, and you enjoyed a prodigious
celebrity on the score of your yet unpublished Epic. 'Who, indeed,' says
a sympathetic author, M. Theophile Gautier, 'who could expect less than
a miracle from a man so deeply learned in the laws of art--a perfect
Turk in the science of poetry, a person so well pensioned, and so
favoured by the great?' Bishops and politicians combined in perfect good
faith to advertise your merits. Hard must have been the heart that could
resist the testimonials of your skill as a poet offered by the Duc de
Montausier, and the learned Huet, Bishop of Avranches, and Monseigneur
Godeau, Bishop of Vence, or M. Colbert, who had such a genius for
finance.

If bishops and politicians and prime ministers skilled in finance, and
some critics, Menage and Sarrazin and Vaugetas, if ladies of birth and
taste, if all the world in fact, combined to tell you that you were
a great poet, how can we blame you for taking yourself seriously, and
appraising yourself at the public estimate?

It was not in human nature to resist the evidence of the bishops
especially, and when every minor poet believes in himself on the
testimony of his own conceit, you may be acquitted of vanity if you
listened to the plaudits of your friends. Nay, you ventured to pronounce
judgment on contemporaries whom Posterity has preferred to your
perfections. 'Moliere,' said you, 'understands the nature of comedy, and
presents it in a natural style. The plot of his best pieces is borrowed,
but not without judgment; his _morale_ is fair, and he has only to avoid
scurrility.'

Excellent, unconscious, popular Chapelain!

Of yourself you observed, in a Report on contemporary literature, that
your 'courage and sincerity never allowed you to tolerate work
not absolutely good.' And yet you regarded 'La Pucelle with some
complacency.

On the 'Pucelle you were occupied during a generation of mortal men.
I marvel not at the length of your labours, as you