leaders--Molière, Racine, La Fontaine--were still disputing their right
to pre-eminence among a host of inferior and now forgotten writers whose
works were carrying on the weak and tasteless traditions of the former
age--it was at this moment that Boileau brought to the aid of the new
movement the whole force of his admirable clear-sightedness, his
dauntless pertinacity, and his caustic, unforgettable wit. No doubt,
without him, the Classical school would have triumphed--ultimately, like
all good things--but it would be hard to exaggerate the service which
was rendered it by Boileau. During many years, in a long series of
satires and epistles, in the _Art Poétique_ and in various prose works,
he impressed upon the reading public the worthlessness of the old
artificial school of preciosity and affectation, and the high value of
the achievements of his great contemporaries. He did more: he not only
attacked and eulogized the works of individuals, he formulated general
principles and gave pointed and repeated expression to the ideals of the
new school. Thus, through him, classicism gained self-consciousness; it
became possessed of a definite doctrine; and a group of writers was
formed, united together by common aims, and destined to exercise an
immense influence upon the development not only of French, but of
European literature. For these reasons--for his almost unerring
prescience in the discernment of contemporary merit and for his
triumphant consolidation of the classical tradition--Boileau must be
reckoned as the earliest of that illustrious company of great critics
which is one of the peculiar glories of French letters. The bulk of his
writing will probably never again be read by any save the curious
explorer; but the spirit of his work lies happily condensed in one short
epistle--_À son Esprit_--where his good sense, his wit, his lucid vigour
and his essential humanity find their consummate expression; it is a
spirit which still animates the literature of France.