MERLIN. Il faut dire inégaux, principaux. C'est le terme. Les huit jours qu'on y fut furent huit carnavaux: LA RISSOLE. Oh! dame, M'interrompre à tous coups, c'est me chiffonner l'âme,1 Franchement. MERLIN. Parlez bien. On ne dit point navaux, Ni fataux, ni régaux, non plus que carnavaux. Vouloir parler ainsi, c'est faire une sottise. LA RISSOLE. Eh, mordié! comment donc voulez-vous que je dise? Si vous me reprenez lorsque je dis des mals, Inégals, principals, et des vice-amirals, Lorsqu'un moment après, pour mieux me faire entendre, Je dis fataux, navaux, devez-vous me reprendre? J'enrage de bon cœur quand je trouve un trigaud, 2 Qui souffle tout ensemble et le froid et le chaud. MERLIN. J'ai la raison pour moi qui me fait vous reprendre, Et je vais clairement vous le faire comprendre: Al est un singulier dont le pluriel fait aux. On dit, c'est mon égal, et ce sont mes égaux. C'est l'usage. LA RISSOLE. L'usage? Eh bien, soit. Je l'accepte. MERLIN. Fatal, naval, régal sont des mots qu'on excepte. Pour peu qu'on ait de sens, ou d'érudition, On sait que chaque règle a son exception. Par conséquent on voit par cette raison seule. . . . LA RISSOLE. J'ai des démangeaisons de te casser la gueule.3 MERLIN. Vous! LA RISSOLE. Oui, palsandié! moi: je n'aime point du tout Qu'on me berce d'un conte à dormir tout debout: Lorsqu'on veut me railler, je donne sur la face. MERLIN. Et tu crois au Mercure occuper une place, Toi? Tu n'y seras point, je t'en donne ma foi. LA RISSOLE. Mordié! je me bats l'œil du Mercure et de toi. Pour vous faire dépit tant à toi qu'à ton maître, Je déclare à tous deux que je n'y veux pas être. Plus de mille soldats en auraient acheté Pour voir en quel endroit La Rissole eût été: Adieu, pays.5 C'est moi qu'on nomme La Rissole. Ces bras te deviendront où fatals, ou fataux. MERLIN. Adieu, guerrier fameux par tes combats navaux. 1 A popular expression for contrarier. A familiar expression, meaning a man wanting in straightforwardness, using mean, deceitful devices (from the vulgar-latin trical dus, from trica, a farce). 3 A very trivial expression for: J'ai grande envie de te battre. 4 A popular metaphor meaning: Je ne m'en soucie guère. 3 3 Pays, payse, popular words, which denote people of the same country, or of the same town. BOILEAU. SKETCH OF HIS LIFE AND WORKS.1 NICOLAS BOILEAU, who assumed the name of DESPRÉAUX, was born at Paris in 1636. His father, who was clerk to the parliament of Paris, sent him to study at the École de Droit, and in 1656 he was called to the bar; but Boileau soon found out that he had no liking for the legal profession, and after studying Divinity for some time, he followed his natural bent and devoted himself to poetry. Satire was the field he chose for his first essay and his productions met with great success, owing both to the intrinsic merits of his verses and the pungency of his criticisms; he had taken care to season these with a little judicious flattery of Louis XIV, who was fond enough of seeing others made a butt of, as long as he was spoken of in terms of praise and deference himself. Boileau composed his first satire at the age of twenty-four (1660); he was thirty-three, when he wrote his first epistle (1669). About the same time he began his Art Poétique, which he did not finish till five years later. He was thirty-eight years old, when he published the four first cantos of the Lutrin (1674), a mock-heroïc poem, whose two concluding cantos did not appear till 1683. Boileau's successes attracted the notice of the king at an early period. He was posted to a pension and was appointed historiographer royal, together with his friend Racine (1677); he sometimes figured in the suite of the armies, whose exploits he was supposed to commemorate, but he never seems to have made any serious attempt at doing so. He was often admitted to the presence of the king and Mme de Maintenon, and though he was not so successful a courtier as Racine, his frank and somewhat rugged honesty always commanded their esteem. In 1683 the dictum of the king unlocked for Boileau the doors of the French Academy, of which Racine had been a member thirteen years. Death had carried off the principal victims of his satires: Chapelain,2 Scudéri,3 Cotin and many others were no more; but he found among his new colleagues Boyer,5 Quinault, and l'abbé Tallemant, whom he had not spared either, and he expressed a not unnatural surprise at finding himself in this august company, from which, as he said himself, so many weighty reasons seemed likely to banish him for ever. Boileau survived his friends Molière and Racine. In his latter years the general respect and esteem which he enjoyed somewhat We have in part followed Geruzez, Études. 2 V. p. 63, n. 4. Scudéri, v. p. 64, n. 1. Cotin, v. p. 113. Femmes Savantes. 5 Boyer (1664-1729) is best known as a lexicographer. 4 Quinault, a lyric and dramatic poet (1635-1688) whose lyrical tragedies, set to music by Lulli, met with great and well-deserved success. It is now agreed at all hands that Boileau judged him too severely; but we must remember that the latter's critiques referred only to Quinault's earlier poems, composed before he had hit upon his true line. The abbé Tallemant des Réaux (1620-1693) is best known for his translation of Plutarch. alleviated the sufferings of disease to which he was a prey; he died in 1711 at the age of seventy-five and was buried in the Sainte Chapelle, underneath the very spot occupied by the lutrin which his verses have immortalized. Boileau has rendered great and undoubted services to French language and literature by teaching his contemporaries to put their true value on the inferior works then in vogue, by leading them to appreciate Corneille, Molière and Racine, and by giving them in his own writings an example of correct and elegant versification; but he lacked the creative power, the depth of feeling and the rich imagination of a genuine poet. He has also incurred the reproach of unfairness towards some of the victims of his satires and of having frequently given undue importance to the minutiae of literary composition, to mere questions of form, which will never have any but a secondary value. Our readers will find in this work selections from the Satires, the Epistles, the Art Poétique and the Lutrin. I. LES SATIRES. (1660-1698). Boileau's first satires are his weakest. They bear the stamp of youth and immaturity, yet they are conspicuous for a faultless style and regular versification. People were afraid to praise the inferior writers who had till then passed on the world as first-rate, when their opponents could retaliate by quoting against them Boileau's caustic, elegant and easily remembered lines.} SATIRE I (1660). In this first satire, which is imitated from Juvenal's third, Boileau directs against Paris a portion of the invectives, which the Latin satirist showered on the Rome of his day; but the disciple is very inferior to his master. The following is a specimen of his remarks on contemporary Paris. Mais moi, vivre à Paris! Eh! qu'y voudrais-je faire? Je ne sais ni tromper, ni feindre, ni mentir; Et, quand je le pourrais, je n'y puis consentir. Je ne sais point en lâche essuyer les outrages D'un faquin orgueilleux qui vous tient à ses gages, De mes sonnets flatteurs lasser tout l'univers, Et vendre au plus offrant mon encens et mes vers; Pour un si bas emploi ma muse est trop altière, Je suis rustique et fier, et j'ai l'âme grossière. Je ne puis rien nommer, si ce n'est par son nom; J'appelle un chat un chat, et Rolet' un fripon. This line has become the French equivalent of to call a spade a spade". SATIRE II. The second satire is addressed to Molière: Rare et fameux esprit, dont la fertile veine Pour qui tient Apollon tous ses trésors ouverts, Et qui sais à quel coin se marquent les bons vers, The subject of this satire is the capriciousness of rhyme, which, instead of obediently serving the poet, too often masters him. It is 'A counsel of very bad reputation, who was subsequently banished for life. here we find that malicious couplet which for ever after stuck to the name of the unfortunate Quinault: Si je pense exprimer un auteur sans défaut, La raison dit Virgile, et la rime Quinault. Scudéri's fertility as an author is adverted to in the following lines: Bienheureux Scudéri, dont la fertile plume Peut tous les mois sans peine enfanter un volume! Mais ils trouvent pourtant, quoi qu'on en puisse dire, SATIRE III. In the third satire, Boileau gives a graphic description of a dinnerparty, which might be a scene from one of Molière's plays, such is the wealth of absurd details and ludicrous incidents. The author supposes that he is accosted in the street by a friend, who asks: Quel sujet inconnu vous trouble et vous altère? D'où vous vient aujourd'hui cet air sombre et sévère, Et ce visage enfin plus pâle qu'un rentier, A l'aspect d'un arrêt qui retranche un quartier? The poet then relates how he has been entrapped into dining with a fool, whose invitations he had successfully eluded for a whole year. The wretch, with the view of obtaining his promise, holds out the prospect of a reading of Tartuffe (v. p. 62). Molière avec Tartuffe y doit jouer son rôle. Of course the poet, when he makes his appearance, finds, not Molière, but a collection of bores. Deux nobles campagnards, grands lecteurs de romans, Tenait à peine autour d'une table carrée, This line was the signal of a relentless war between Boileau and Cotin; the latter found an ally in the person of the pastry-cook Minot, whose professional self-esteem Boileau had wounded by the lines: Car Mignot, c'est tout dire; et, dans le monde entier, The confederates took a very original method of revenge. Cotin wrote a satire; but all the copies, instead of being sold by a bookseller, found their way into the pastry-cook's shop, where they served to wrap up his cakes. The sale of both wares was enormous, and some one remarked that the public had never before found Cotin's verses so much to their taste. Next comes in Boileau's satire the amusing description of the menu, which begins thus: Sur un lièvre flanqué de six poulets étiques, Soon the conversation takes an animated turn: after politics comes literature, and a dispute arises on the merits of Quinault's poetry. The vanity of an unappreciated poet is so much hurt in the course of the debate, that under the influence of wine he and another of the guests come from words to blows: Je suis donc un sot, moi? vous en avez menti, Reprend le campagnard; et, sans plus de langage, De nouveau l'on s'efforce; on crie, on les sépare: Je consens de bon cœur, pour punir ma folie, Que tous les vins pour moi deviennent vins de Brie; Qu'à Paris le gibier manque tous les hivers, Et qu'à peine au mois d'août l'on mange des pois verts. SATIRE IV. This satire (1664), which is addressed to the abbé Le Vayer, treats of human follies. D'où vient, cher Le Vayer, que l'homme le moins sage Et qu'il n'est point de fou qui, par belles raisons, According to Brossette, one of Boileau's commentators, the poet got the idea of this satire from a conversation with Le Vayer and Molière, in which the paradox was set up that all men are mad, but that every one nevertheless fancies himself to be the only sane one. SATIRE V. This satire, which is an imitation of Juvenal's eighth is much superior to the fourth. It is addressed to the marquis de Dangeau. La noblesse, Dangeau, n'est pas une chimère, Quand, sous l'étroite loi d'une vertu sévère, Un homme issu d'un sang fécond en demi-dieux Suit, comme toi, la trace où marchaient ses aïeux. Mais je ne puis souffrir qu'un fat, dont la mollesse N'a rien pour s'appuyer qu'une vaine noblesse, Se pare insolemment du mérite d'autrui, Et me vante un honneur qui ne vient pas de lui. The poet maintains that there is no merit in the nobility of birth, unless it is accompanied by nobility of character; he refuses to bow |