Sieur Nicholas Despreaux, a celebrated French poet, was born at Paris in 1636. After he had gone through his course of polite literature and philosophy, his relations engaged him to the study of the law, and he was admitted advocate. But though he had all the talents necessary for the bar, yet he could not adapt himself to a science which turns upon continual equivocations, and often obliges those who follow it to clothe falsehood in the garb of truth. He therefore determined to study theology; but he could not long endure the thorns of school divinity. He imagined, that, to allure him more cunningly, chicanery, which he thought to avoid, had only changed her habit; and so he renounced the Sorbonne, betook himself entirely to the belles lettres, and took possession of one of the foremost places in Parnassus. The public gave his works the encomium they deserved; and Louis XIV., who always loved to encourage the sciences and polite literature, was not only pleased to have M. Boileau's works read to him constantly as he composed them, but settled a yearly pension of 2000 livres upon him, and gave him the privilege of printing all his works. He was afterwards chosen a member of the French academy, and also of the academy of medals and inscriptions. This great man, who was as remarkable for his integrity, his innocence, and diffusive benevolence, as for the keenness of his satires, died of a dropsey on the 2d of March 1711, in the 75th year of his age. The Lutrin of Boileau, still considered by some French critics of the present time as the best poem to which France has given birth, was first published in 1674. It is with great reason and justice that Voltaire confesses the Lutrin inferior to the Rape of the Lock. Few poets can so properly be compared as Pope and Boileau; and, wherever their writings will admit of comparison, we may, without any national partiality, adjudge the superiority to the English bard. These two great authors resembled each other as much in the integrity of their lives, as in the subjects and execution of their several compositions. There are two actions recorded of Boileau, which sufficiently prove that the inexorable satirist had a most generous and friendly heart. When Patru, the celebrated advocate, who was ruined by his passion for literature, found himself under the painful necessity of selling his extensive library, and had almost agreed to part with it for a moderate sum, Boileau gave him a much superior price; and, after paying the money, added this condition to the purchase, that Patru should retain, during his life, the possession of the books. The succeeding instance of the poet's generosity is yet nobler:—when it was rumoured at court that the king intended to retrench the pension of Corneille, Boileau hastened to Madame de Montespan, Boileau, Montespan, and said, that his sovereign, equitable as he was, could not, without injustice, grant a pension to an author like himself, just ascending Parnassus, and take it from Corneille, who had so long been seated on the summit; that he entreated her, for the honour of the king, to prevail on his majesty rather to strike off his pension, than to withdraw that reward from a man whose title to it was incomparably greater; and that he should more easily console himself under the loss of that distinction, than under the affliction of seeing it taken away from such a poet as Corneille. This magnanimous application had the success which it deserved, and it appears the more noble, when we recollect that the rival of Corneille was the intimate friend of Boileau. The long unrestrained intercourse which subsisted between our poet and Racine was highly beneficial and honourable to both. The dying farewell of the latter is the most expressive eulogy on the private character of Boileau: "Je regarde comme un bonheur pour moi de mourir avant vous," said the tender Racine, in taking a final leave of his faithful and generous friend.

**Boiling**, or **Ebullition**, the bubbling up of any fluid. The term is most commonly applied to that bubbling which happens by the application of fire, though that which ensues on the mixture of an acid and alkali is sometimes also distinguished by the same name. Boiling, in general, is occasioned by the discharge of an elastic fluid through that which is said to boil; and the appearance is the same, whether it is common air, fixed air, or steam, that makes its way through the fluid. The boiling of water is proved by Dr Hamilton of Dublin, in his essay on the ascent of vapour, to be occasioned by the lowermost particles of the water being heated and rarefied into vapour by reason of the vicinity of the bottom of the containing vessel; in consequence of which, being greatly inferior in specific gravity to the surrounding fluid, they ascend with great velocity, and lacerating and pushing up the body of water in their ascent, give it the tumultuous motion called boiling. That this is occasioned by steam, and not by particles of air or fire, as some have imagined, may be very easily proved in the following manner: Let a common drinking glass be filled with hot water, and then inverted into a vessel of the same: as soon as the water in the vessel begins to boil, large bubbles will be observed to ascend in the glass, which will displace the water in it, and in a short time there will be a continual bubbling from under its edge; but if the glass is then drawn up, so that its mouth may only touch the water, and a cloth dipped in cold water be applied to the outside, the steam within it will be instantly condensed, and the water will ascend so as to fill it entirely, or very nearly so. See the article **Evaporation**.