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| | Nicholas Boileau biography |
 | | The most distinguished of French critics in the age of Louis XIV, known as the "legislator of Parnassus." He was in criticism an incarnation of correct, commonplace common sense, a schoolmaster in careful workmanship, sworn enemy of all false sentiment and preciosity, such as marred the poetry and fiction of his immediate predecessors. |
 | | He was born in Paris, Nov. 1, 1636, studied first for the priesthood, then for the law, but found his place instinctively in the rather Bohemian literary company of Molière, La Fontaine, Racine, the philologist and realistic novelist Furetière, and the witty Ninon de l'Enclos. |
 | | He has been studied by generations because his is the art that can be learned, as Pope, his best pupil, learned it, though his own Horace might have taught him that the true poet could not be made. |
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