Popular Tales

rave;cle de Louis XIV, to the Academy, how angrily Boileau declared that the poem was an insult to the great men of times past, how Huet took Perrault's side, how Boileau wrote epigrams against him, how Racine pretended not to think him in earnest, and how he defended himself in Le Parallèle des Anciens et des Modernes. Here close the Memoirs, and the hero of the great Battle of the Books leaves its tale untold.

The quarrel is too old and too futile to require a long history. Perrault's remarks on Homer, the cause of the war, merely show that Perrault was quite out of sympathy with the heroic age and with heroic song. He avers that, if a favourable Heaven had permitted Homer to be born under Louis XIV, Homer would have been a much better poet.

'Cent défauts qu'on impute au siècle où tu naquis Ne profaneroient pas tes ouvrages exquis[2].'

Men of letters who were men of sense would have smiled and let Perrault perorate. But men of letters are rarely