Gilles Boileau

Its life and its work

He is lawyer with the Parlement of Paris, then payer of the revenues of the Town hall. Friend of Furetière and the abbot Cotin, it is elected member of the French Academy in 1659. A few months before dying, at the age of only 38 years, it is named controller of the silverware of the king.

It is Gilles Boileau who introduces his brother into the literary circles, where he is quickly pointed out under the name of Despréaux. Gilles, whom one known as jealous of the success of his junior, will however have with him stormy relations. To most extremely from their quarrel, Nicolas will go until treating his brother of “reject of our age”, qualifier which he will regret thereafter and which he will make disappear from the Satires . The abbot of Olivet thus compares the talents of the two brothers: “The tests of the junior announced what one saw of him in the continuation, of the masterpieces of versification & good sense. There was not in him, if I thus dare to say, of poetic childhood. Âiné, on the contrary, born with much the spirit, but with jugment least healthy, the idea of the perfect one was never formed. It défioit not of its too great facility to be written: facility that Mr. Despréaux avoit not, & who must be always suspect, when it is not the fruit of a long exercise. ”

The poetry of Gilles Boileau, in major satirical part, exceeds in causticity that of his/her brother. Known for “the acridness of its bile”, it makes appear in 1655 a Avis with Mr. Ménage which starts a cruel battle of epigrams between literary men. At the time of a glare which will shake the Academy, it goes until pourfendre the wife of Scarron:

Vois on what your error is based,

Scarron, to believe that the world

Te will see for your maintenance;

What! don't you see, large animal,

If you grattois a little the head,

That you it devinerois well?

As for the translations of Gilles Boileau, known as the abbot of Olivet, “we have two considerable: that of Épictète, which was extremely approved; & that of Diogène Laërce, which is remained almost unknown. ” About the first, Pierre Bayle written: “It good, and is preceded by a life of Épictète, fullest and most exact that I saw up to now. The érudtion and criticism were widespread there skilfully. ”

Works

Table of Cébès, where it is treated in the manner of arriving at the natural happiness (1653)
the Life of Épictète and Enchiridion, or the Summary of its philosophy, with the Table of Cébès (1655)
Advis with Mr. Ménage on his eclogue entitled “Christine” (1655)
Diogène Laërce. Life of the philosophers (2 volumes, 1658)
posthumous Works of late Mr B., Academy Francoise, controller of the Silverware of Roy (1670)

Notes, sources and references

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