Boil
a disease called by medical men BOILER follow a purely literary life. His first work appeared under the name of Despréaux. He published his satirical "Adieux d'un Poète à la Ville de Paris," in 1660, and, in 1663, we find him united with Molière, La Fontaine, and Racine, in the famous "society of four." In 1666 he published a collection of satires from which the royal privilege was for a time withdrawn, through the influence of Chapelain, one of the writers whom he had gibbeted. Boileau, however, soon gained the favor of the king, who awarded him various pensions, and in 1677 appointed him, along with Racine, to the post of royal historiographer. "L'Art Poétique," which contains the exposition of his literary creed, and which was imitated by Pope in the "Essay on Criticism," was published in 1674, along with four cantos of the "Lutrin." Between 1669 and 1677 Boileau published nine epistles, written, like his satires, on the Horatian model. In his last years Boileau retired to Auteuil, where he died March 13, 1711.