SOURCE: “Boileau, the Moderns, and the Topinamboux,” in Papers on Language and Literature, Vol. 10, No. 1, Winter 1974, pp. 21-34.

In essay that follows, Lein examines two epigrams Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, an Ancient, directed against the Moderns, noting the “potency of the invective” Boileau employed.

One of the most distinctive cleavages distinguishing contemporary poetic taste from that of earlier periods lies in our modern lack of appreciation for epigrams, and this dislocation in taste unfortunately conditions the direction of criticism and scholarship. The epigrams of Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux supply a good case in point. They have stirred little critical interest and seem to be condemned universally as possessing little poetic or intellectual significance. Nothing could be farther from the truth, as a close examination of two epigrams related to the controversy of Ancients and Moderns can demonstrate.

Although the intellectual and literary roots of the quarrel of the Ancients and...