Part 1 — Juvenal to Boileau.

SINCE we don’t dispatch couriers every day from the kingdom of Pluto, you ought not to be surprized, that I have not had an opportunity till now, of telling you what sticks in my stomach. I thought your first satires very admirable, your expressions just and laboriously turn’d, yet charming and natural. Were the distribution of rewards in my power, I should certainly give you something for your Art of Poetry: but for your Lutrin, that master-piece of your wit, that highest effort of your imagination, I see nothing in it worthy of you, but the verification. Every one owns you can write, nay, your very enemies allow it; but you know a metamorphosis requires an entire change; therefore, since you resolve to imitate Virgil, you should have made choice of noble heroes. He that travestied the Æneis, understood it better than you, and did not fatigue himself so much; and as he was a man of clear and good sense, has judiciously remark’d, that his queen disguised like a country-wench, is infinitely beyond your clockmaker’s wife dress’d like an empress. But let us leave this subject, which now it is too late to amend, since what is done cannot be undone. What did you mean, you I say, who have been accused of stealing my lines, and who, to deal honestly with you, have often followed the same road I have traced? What did you mean, I say, by reflecting on particulars in your satire against women: Did I ever set you that example? Is not my sixth satire against the sex in general; and when I look back as far as the reigns of Saturn and Rhea for [27] modesty, do I pretend the least shadow of it is left upon the earth? Unthinking fool! those different characters you have drawn, will make you so many particular enemies; and I question, if the patroness you have chosen can secure you from their claws.

If an affected zeal inspires you with so much veneration for a saint of the Italian fashion, in truth you ought to have burnt your incense so privately, that the smoke might not have offended others. How can the bard that boasts of eating no flesh in Lent, that would frankly discipline himself in the face of the godly, like one of the [28] militia of St. Francis, adore a golden cow, and adorn an idol each blast of wind can overthrow, with those garlands which should be preserv’d for the statues of the greatest heroes! She is, it is true, very singular in her kind; but will you stain your name, of illustrious poet, by creeping before a walking mummy of her superannuated gallantry? your sordid interest has made you a traytor to Satire; and thereby you occasion here continual divisions, [29] Chaquelian and St. Amant have been at cuffs with [30] Moliere and Cornielle, because you have not treated them so civilly as your [31] Urgande. The two first ridicule your sordid covetous humour, and say you learnt that baseness while you belong’d to the Register’s Office. The other two, who were perhaps of your trade, defend the honour of your extraction. But St. Amant[32], who will never forget the unworthy character you have given him concerning his poverty, which he swears is false; and submitting his verses to the judgment of unprejudiced persons, for which you ridicule him, said in a haughty tone, (which set us all a laughing) that when he was a gentleman of the chamber in ordinary to the queen of Poland, and embassador extraordinary at the coronation of the queen of Sweden, he kept several footmen of better quality than yourself. Chaquelian, who cannot say so much for himself, is content with singing the terrible valour of the duke de Nevers’s lackeys, who kept time with their cudgels on your shoulders. We were forced to call for a bottle to appease this war; and St. Amant, taking the glass in his hand, swore by his maker, he had rather you had call’d him drunkard than fool, tho’ he drinks very moderately in this place, where it is no great scandal to be thirsty. Be not concerned at this paragraph, because the rest of my letter sufficiently testifies the esteem I have for you, and my concern for your welfare: therefore to preserve both, renounce your sordid way of praising vice, and employ your happy talent in teaching good manners, and correcting the bad, which will be an employment worthy of your great genius, and is the only way to recommend you to the good opinion of the learned ancients.