BOILEAU, Despreaux Nicoas, a celebrated French poet, was born at Paris in the year 1636. After having gone through a course of literature and philosophy, his relations induced him to study the law, and he was admitted advocate at the age of twenty-one. But though he had all the talents necessary for the bar, yet he could not adapt himself to a science which turns upon continual equivocations, and often obliges those who follow it to clothe falsehood in the garb of truth; and, besides, the books of Accursius and of Alciat were little likely to please the disciple of Horace and of Juvenal. He therefore deserted what his biographers call “l’antrc de la chicane,” and determined to study theology; but he soon found that scholastic divinity had its tricks and quirks as well as law. He imagined, that in order to allure him more cunningly, chicanery, which he thought to avoid, had only changed her habit; and so renouncing the Sorbonne, he applied himself entirely to the study of the belles lettres, and soon occupied one of the most distinguished places on Parnassus. The public gave his works the reception they deserved; and Louis XIV. who loved to encourage the sciences and polite literature, was not only pleased to have M. Bodeau’s works read to him as they were composed, but settled a yearly pension of 2000 livres upon ĥim, and gave him the privilege of printing all his works. He was afterwards chosen a member of the French academy, and also of the academy of inscriptions. This great man, who was as remarkable for his integrity, his innocence, and diffusive benevolence, as for the keenness of his satire, died of a dropsy in the chest on the 13th of March 1711, in the seventy-fifth year of his age. The Lutrin of Bodeau, still considered by some French critics as one of the .best poems to which France has given birth, was first published in 1674. But it is with great reason and justice that Voltaire confesses it inferior to the Rape of the Loch. Few poets, however, can so properly be compared as Pope and Bodeau; and, wherever their writings admit of a parallel being drawn, we may, without any national partiality, adjudge the superiority to the English bard. These two great authors resembled each other as much in.the integrity of their lives, as in the subjects and execution of their compositions. There are two actions recorded of Boileau, which sufficiently prove that the inexorable satirist had a most generous and friendly heart. When Patru, the celebrated advocate, who was ruined by his passion for literature, found himself under the painful necessity of selling his extensive library, and had almost agreed to part with it for a moderate sum, Loileau tendered him a higher price, and, after paying the money, added this condition to the purchase, that Patru should retain, during his life, the possession of the books. Another instance of the poet’s generosity is of a yet nobler character. When it was rumoured at court that the king intended to retrench the pension of Corneille, Bodeau hastened to Madame de Montespan, and represented that his sovereign, equitable as he was, could not, without injustice, grant a pension to an author like himself, just ascending Parnassus, and withdraw it from Corneille, who had so long been seated on the summit; he entreated her, for the honour of the king, to prevail on his majesty rather to strike off his pension, than to withdraw that of a man whose title to that which he enjoyed was incomparably greater; and he declared that he could more easily console himself under the loss of that distinction, than under the affliction of seeing a just reward taken away from such a poet as Corneille. This magnanimous application had the success which it deserved; and it appears the more noble, that the rival of Corneille was the intimate friend of Boileau. The long and unreserved intercourse which subsisted between Boileau and Racine was highly beneficial and honourable to both. The dying farewell of the latter is the most expressive eulogy on the private character of Boileau: “Je regarde comme un bonheur pour moi de mourir avant vous,’' said the tender Racine, in taking a final leave of his faithful and generous friend. As a satirist Bodeau is inferior to Horace; but in his Epistles he almost equals his illustrious model; whilst, in regularity of plan, felicity of transition, and a firm, sustained elegance of style, his Art Poétique will stand a comparison with the celebrated Epistle to the Pisos. His works consist of his Satires; his Epistles; his Art of Poetry, including his Epigrams, and some other pieces of French and Latin poetry; his Dialogue on Poetry and Musie; a Dialogue on the Heroes of Romance, a Translation of Longinuss Treatise on the Sublime, with Critical Reflections on that author; and the best edition of them, perhaps, is that with the notes and commentaries of Μ. Daunou, printed at Paris in 1809, in 3 vols. 8vo; but the edition of 1747 by Lcfevre de Saint-Marc, in 5 vols. 8vo, with cuts, and accompanied with the remarks of Brossette, is the most recherchée.