High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1 November 1636 13 March 1711) was a French poet and critic. Boileau was born in the rue de Jérusalem, in Paris, France. He was brought up to the law, but devoted to letters, associating himself with La Fontaine, Racine, and Molière. He is the author of Satires and Epistles, L'Art poétique and Le Lutrin, in which he attacked and employed his wit against what he perceived to be the bad taste of his time. Boileau did much to reform the prevailing form of French poetry, as Blaise Pascal did to reform the prose, and was for long the law-giver of Parnassus. He was greatly influenced by Horace.