Following in the footsteps of Horace’s Ars Poetica, Boileau’s Art of Poetry lays down, in four entertaining books dealing with all forms and genres of poetry, the codes and rules for good versification. This beautiful translation proved to have a lasting influence on the future shape of English literature - among others, it was imitated magnificently by Pope in his ‘Essay on Criticism’, who also took Lutrin as a model for his own masterpiece, The Rape of the Lock.