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Charles

the story of Margaret of Scotland's Kiss, was a writer of a somewhat similar character. In both Christine and Chartier there is a great deal of rather heavy moralizing, and a great deal of rather pedantic erudition. But it is only fair to remember that the intolerable political and social evils of the day called for a good deal of moralizing, and that it was the function of the writers of this time to fill up as well as they could the scantily filled vessels of medieval science and learning. A very different person is Charles d'Orléans (1391-1465), one of the d'Orléans. greatest of grands seigneurs, for he was the father of a king of France, and heir to the duchies of Orléans and Milan. Charles, indeed, if not a Roland or a Bayard, was an admirable poet. He is the best-known and perhaps the best writer of the graceful poems in which an artificial versification is strictly observed, and helps by its recurrent lines and modulated rhymes to give to poetry something of a musical accompaniment even without the addition of music properly so called. His ballades are certainly inferior to those of Villon, but his rondels are unequalled. For fully a century and a half these forms engrossed the attention of French lyrical poets. Exercises in them were produced in enormous numbers, and of an excellence which has only recently obtained full recognition even in France. Charles d'Orléans is himself sufficient proof of what can be done in them in the way of elegance, sweetness, and grace which some have unjustly called effeminacy. But that this effeminacy was no natural or inevitable fault of the ballades and the rondeaux was fully proved by the most remarkable literary figure of the 15th century in France. To François Villon (1431-1463 ?), as to other great single writers, no attempt can be Viilon. made to do justice in this place. His remarkable life and character especially lie outside our subject. But he is universally recognized as the most important single figure of French literature before the Renaissance. His work is very strange in form, the undoubtedly genuine part of it consisting merely of two compositions, known as the great and little Testament, written in stanzas of eight lines of eight syllables each, with lyrical compositions in ballade and rondeau form interspersed. Nothing in old French literature can compare with the best of these, such as the "Ballade des dames du temps jadis," the "Ballade pour sa mère," "La Grosse Margot," Les Regrets de la belle Heaulmière," and others; while the whole composition is full of poetical traits of the most extraordinary vigour, picturesqueness and pathos. Towards the end of the century the poetical production of the time became very large. The artificial measures already alluded to, and others far more artificial and infinitely less beautiful, were largely practised. The typical poet of the end of the 15th century is Guillaume Crétin (d. 1525), who distinguished himself by writing verses with punning rhymes, verses ending with double or treble repetitions of the same sound, and many other tasteless absurdities, in which, as Pasquier remarks, "il perdit toute la grâce et la liberté de la composition." The other favourite Crétia. direction of the poetry of the time was a vein of allegorical moralizing drawn from the Roman de la rose through the medium of Chartier and Christine, which produced "Castles of Love,"" Temples of Honour," and such like. The combination of these drifts in verse-writing produced a school known in literary history, from a happy phrase of the satirist Coquillart (v. inf.), as the "Grands Rhétoriqueurs." The chief of these besides Crétin were Jean Molinet (d. 1507); Jean Meschinot (c. 14201491), author of the Lunettes des princes; Florimond Robertet (d. 1522); Georges Chastellain (1404-1475), to be mentioned again; and Octavien de Saint-Gelais (1466-1502), father of a better poet than himself. Yet some of the minor poets of the time are not to be despised. Such are Henri Baude (1430-1490), a less pedantic writer than most, Martial d'Auvergne (1440-1508), whose principal work is L'Amant rendu cordelier au service de l'amour, and others, many of whom formed part of the poetical court which Charles d'Orléans kept up at Blois after his release. While the serious poetry of the age took this turn, there was ro lack of lighter and satirical verse. Villon, indeed, were it not for the depth and pathos of his poetical sentiment, might

The

lart.

be claimed as a poet of the lighter order, and the patriotic diatribes against the English to which we have alluded easily passed into satire. The political quarrels of the latter part of the century also provoked much satirical composition. disputes of the Bien Public and those between Louis XI. and Charles of Burgundy employed many pens. The most remarkable piece of the light literature of the first is "Les Ânes Volants,” a ballad on some of the early favourites of Louis. The battles of France and Burgundy were waged on paper between Gilles des Ormes and the above-named Georges Chastelain, typical representatives of the two styles of 15th-century poetry already alluded to-Des Ormes being the lighter and more graceful writer, Chastelain a pompous and learned allegorist. The most remarkable representative of purely light poetry outside the theatre is Guillaume Coquillart (1421-1510), a lawyer Coquil of Champagne, who resided for the greater part of his life in Reims. This city, like others, suffered from the pitiless tyranny of Louis XI. The beginnings of the standing army which Charles VII. had started were extremely unpopular, and the use to which his son put them by no means removed this unpopularity. Coquillart described the military man of the period in his Monologue du gendarme cassé. Again, when the king entertained the idea of unifying the taxes and laws of the different provinces, Coquillart, who was named commissioner for this purpose, wrote on the occasion a satire called Les Droits nouveaux. A certain kind of satire, much less good-tempered than the earlier forms, became indeed common at this epoch. M. Lenient has well pointed out that a new satirical personification dominates this literature. It is no longer Renart with his cynical gaiety, or the curiously travestied and almost amiable Devil of the Middle Ages. Now it is Death as an incident ever present to the imagination, celebrated in the thousand repetitions of the Danse Macabre, sculptured all over the buildings of the time, even frequently performed on holidays and in public. With the usual tendency to follow pattern, the idea of the "dance" seems to have been extended, and we have a Dansé aux aveugles (1464) from Pierre Michaut, where the teachers are fortune, love and death, all blind. All through the century, too, anonymous verse of the lighter kind was written, some of it of great merit.. The folk-songs already alluded to, published by Gaston Paris, show one side of this composition, and many of the pieces contained in M. de Montaiglon's extensive Recueil des anciennes poésies françaises exhibit others.

The 15th century was perhaps more remarkable for its achievements in prose than in poetry. It produced, indeed, no prose writer of great distinction, except Comines; but it witnessed serious, if not extremely successful, efforts at prose composition. The invention of printing finally substituted the reader for the listener, and when this substitution has been effected, the main inducement to treat unsuitable subjects in verse is gone. The study of the classics at first hand contributed to the same end. As early as 1458 the university of Paris had a Greek professor. But long before this time translations in prose had been made. Pierre Bercheure (Bersuire) (1290-1352) had already translated Livy. Nicholas Oresme (c. 1334-1382), the tutor of Charles V., gave a version of certain Aristotelian works, which enriched the language with a large number of terms, then strange enough, now familiar. Raoul de Presles (1316-1383) turned into French the De civitate Dei of St Augustine. These writers or others composed Le Songe du vergier, an elaborate discussion of the power of the pope. The famous chancellor, Jean Charlier or Gerson (1363-1429), to whom the Imilation has among so many others been attributed, spoke constantly and wrote often in the vulgar tongue, though he attacked the most famous and popular work in that tongue, the Roman de la rose. Christine de Pisan and Alain Chartier were at least as much prose writers as poets; and the latter, while he, like Gerson, dealt much with the reform of the church, used in his Quadriloge invectif really forcible language for the purpose of spurring on the nobles of France to put an end to her sufferings and evils. These moral and didactic treatises were but continuations of others, which for convenience sake we have hitherto left unnoticed. Though

Early sermon. writers,

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Antoine de la Salle.

of romance, and the end of the 14th and the beginning of the
15th centuries were pre-eminently the time when
the epics of chivalry were re-edited and extended in The Cent
prose. Few, however, of these extensions offer much
literary interest. On the other hand, the best prose of
the century, and almost the earliest which deserves the title of
a satisfactory literary medium, was employed for the telling
of romances in miniature. The Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles is
undoubtedly the first work of prose belles-lettres in French,
and the first, moreover, of a long and most remarkable class
of literary work in which French writers may challenge all
comers with the certainty of victory-the short prose tale
of a comic character. This remarkable work has usually been
attributed, like the somewhat similar but later Heptameron,
to a knot of literary courtiers gathered round a royal personage,
in this case the dauphin Louis, afterwards Louis XI. Some
evidence has recently been produced which seems to show that
this tradition, which attributed some of the tales to Louis
himself, is erroneous, but the question is still undecided. The
subjects of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles are by no means new.
They are simply the old themes of the fabliaux treated in the
old way. The novelty is in the application of prose to such a
purpose, and in the crispness, the fluency and the elegance of
the prose used. The fortunate author or editor to whom these
admirable tales have of late been attributed is Antoine de la
Salle (1398-1461), who, if this attribution and certain
others be correct, must be allowed to be one of the
most original and fertile authors of early French litera-
ture. La Salle's one acknowledged work is the story
of Petit Jehan de Saintré, a short romance exhibiting great com-
mand of character and abundance of delicate draughtsmanship.
To this not only the authorship, part-authorship or editorship
of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles has been added; but the still
more famous and important work of L'Avocat Patelin has been
assigned by respectable, though of course conjecturing, authority
to the same paternity. The generosity of critics towards La
Salle has not even stopped here. A fourth masterpiece of the
period, Les Quinze Joies de mariage, has also been assigned
to him. This last work, like the other three, is satirical in subject,
and shows for the time a wonderful mastery of the language,
Of the fifteen joys of marriage, or, in other words, the fifteen
miseries of husbands, each has a chapter assigned to it, and each
is treated with the peculiar mixture of gravity and ridicule which
it requires. All who have read the book confess its infinite wit
and the grace of its style. It is true that it has been reproached
with cruelty and with a lack of the moral sentiment. But
humanity and morality were not the strong point of the 15th
century. There is, it must be admitted, about most of its
productions a lack of poetry and a lack of imagination, produced,
it may be, partly by political and other conditions outside litera-
ture, but very observable in it. The old forms of literature
itself had lost their interest, and new ones possessing
strength to last and power to develop themselves
had not yet appeared. It was impossible, even if the
taste for it had survived, to spin out the old themes
any longer. But the new forces required some time to set to
work, and to avail themselves of the tremendous weapon which
the press had put into their hands. When these things had
adjusted themselves, literature of a varied and vigorous kind
became once more possible and indeed necessary, nor did it
take long to make its appearance.

verse was in the centuries prior to the 15th the favourite medium | It had already long possessed a respectable position as a vehicle for literary composition, it was by no means the only one; and moral and educational treatises-some referred to above already existed in pedestrian phrase. Certain household books (Livres de raison) have been preserved, some of which date as far back as the 13th century. These contain not merely accounts, but family chronicles, receipts and the like. Accounts of travel, especially to the Holy Land, culminated in the famous Voyage of Mandeville which, though it has never been of so much import ance in French as în English, perhaps first took vernacular form in the French tongue. Of the 14th century, we have a Menagier de Paris, intended for the instruction of a young wife, and a large number of miscellaneous treatises of art, science and morality, while private letters, mostly as yet unpublished, exist in considerable numbers, and are generally of the moralizing character; books of devotion, too, are naturally frequent. But the most important divisions of medieval energy in prose composition are the spoken exercises of the pulpit and the bar. The beginnings of French sermons have been much discussed, especially the question whether St Bernard, whose discourses we possess in ancient, but doubtfully contemporary French, pronounced them in that language or in Latin. Towards the end of the 12th century, however, the sermons of Maurice de Sully (1160-1196) present the first undoubted examples of homiletics in the vernacular, and they are followed by many others--so many indeed that the 13th century alone counts 261 sermon-writers, besides a large body of anonymous work. These sermons were, as might indeed be expected, chiefly cast in a somewhat scholastic form-theme, exordium, development, example and peroration following in regular order. The 14th-century sermons, on the other hand, have as yet been little investigated. It must, however, be remembered that this age was the most famous of all for its scholastic illustrations, and for the early vigour of the Dominican and Franciscan orders. With the end of the century and the beginning of the 15th, the importance of the pulpit begins to revive. The early years of the new age have Gerson for their representative, while the end of the century sees the still more famous names of Michel Menot (1450-1518), Olivier Maillard (c. 1430-1502), and Jean Rauhn (1443-1514), all remarkable for the practice of a vigorous and homely style of oratory, recoiling before no aid of what we should nowadays style buffoonery, and manifesting a creditable indifference to the indignation of principalities and powers. Louis XI. is said to have threatened to throw Maillard into the Seine, and many instances of the boldness of these preachers and the rough vigour of their oratory have been preserved. Froissart had been followed as a chronicler by Enguerrand de Monstrelet (c. 1390-1453) and by the historiographers of the Burgundian court, Chastelain, already mentioned, whole interesting Chronique de Jacques de Lalaing is much the most attractive part of his work, and Olivier de la Marche. The memoir and chronicle writers, who were to be of so much importance in French literature, also begin to be numerous at this period. Juvenal des Ursins (1388-1473), an anonymous bourgeois de Paris (two such indeed), and the author of the Chronique scandaleuse, may be mentioned as presenting the character of 'minute observation and record which has distinguished the class ever since. Jean le maire de (not des) Belges (1473-c. 1525) was historiographer to Louis XII. and wrote Illustrations des Gaules. But Comines (1445-1509) is no imitator of Froissart or of any one else. The last of the quartette of great Comines. French medieval historians, he does not yield to any of his three predecessors in originality or merit, but he is very different from them. He fully represents the mania of the time for statecraft, and his book has long ranked with that of Machiavelli as a manual of the art, though he has not the absolutely non-moral character of the Italian. His memoirs, considered merely as literature, show a style well suited to their purport,not, indeed, brilliant or picturesque, but clear, terse and thoroughly well suited to the expression of the acuteness, observation and common sense of their author.

But prose was not content with the domain of serious literature.

Influence of the Renais

sance.

16th Century. In no country was the literary result of the Renaissance more striking and more manifold than in France. The double effect of the study of antiquity and the religious movement produced an outburst of literary developments of the most diverse kinds, which even the fierce and sanguinary civil dissensions of the Reformation did not succeed in checking. While the Renaissance in Italy had mainly exhausted its effects by the middle of the 16th century, while in Germany those effects only paved the way for a national literature, and did not themselves greatly contribute thereto, while in England it was not

till the extreme end of the period that a great literature was forthcoming-in France almost the whole century was marked by the production of capital works in every branch of literary effort. Not even the 17th century, and certainly not the 18th, can show such a group of prose writers and poets as is formed by Calvin, St Francis de Sales, Montaigne, du Vair, Bodin, d'Aubigné, the authors of the Satire Ménippée, Monluc, Brantôme, Pasquier, Rabelais, des Periers, Herberay des Essarts, Amyot, Garnier, Marot, Ronsard and the rest of the " Pléiade," and finally Regnier. These great writers are not merely remarkable for the vigour and originality of their thoughts, the freshness, variety and grace of their fancy, the abundance of their learning and the solidity of their arguments in the cases where argument is required. Their great merit is the creation,of a language and a style able to give expression to these good gifts. The foregoing account of the medieval literature of France will have shown sufficiently that it is not lawful to despise the literary capacities and achievements of the older French. But the old language, with all its merits, was ill-suited to be a vehicle for any but the simpler forms of literary composition. Pleasant or affecting tales could be told in it with interest and pathos. Songs of charming naïveté and grace could be sung; the requirements of the epic and the chronicle were suitably furnished. But it was barren of the terms of art and science; it did not readily lend itself to sustained eloquence, to impassioned poetry or to logical discussion. It had been too long accustomed to leave these things to Latin as their natural and legitimate exponent, and it bore marks of its original character as a lingua rustica, a tongue suited for homely conversation, for folk-lore and for ballads, rather than for the business of the forum and the court, the speculations of the study, and the declamation of the theatre. Efforts had indeed been made, culminating in the heavy and tasteless erudition of the schools of Chartier and Crétin, to supply the defect; but it was reserved for the 16th century completely to efface it. The series of prose writers from Calvin to Montaigne, of poets from Marot to Regnier, elaborated a language yielding to no modern tongue in beauty, richness, flexibility and strength, a language which the reactionary purism of succeeding generations defaced rather than improved, and the merits of which have in still later days been triumphantly vindicated by the confession and the practice of all the greatest writers of modern France. 16th-Century Poetry.-The first few years of the 16th century were naturally occupied rather with the last developments of the medieval forms than with the production of the new model. The clerks of the Bazoche and the Confraternity of the Passion still produced and acted mysteries, moralities and farces. The poets of the "Grands Rhétoriqueurs" school still wrote elaborate allegorical poetry. Chansons de geste, rhymed romances and fabliaux had long ceased to be written. But the press was multiplying the contents of the former in the prose form which they had finally assumed, and in the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles there already existed admirable specimens of the short prose tale. There even were signs, as in some writers already mentioned and in Roger de Collérye, a lackpenny but light-hearted singer of the early part of the century, of definite enfranchisement in verse. But the first note of the new literature was sounded by Clément Marot (1496/7-1544). The son of an elder poet, Jehan des Mares called Marot (1463-1523), Clément at first wrote, like his father's contemporaries, allegorical and mythological poetry, afterwards collected in a volume with a charming title, L'Adolescence clémentine. It was not till he was nearly thirty years old that his work became really remarkable. From that time forward till his death, about twenty years afterwards, he was much involved in the troubles and persecutions of the Huguenot party to which he belonged; nor was the protection of Marguerite d'Angoulême, the chief patroness of Huguenots and men of letters, always efficient. But his troubles, so far from harming, helped his literary faculties; and his epistles, epigrams, blasons (descendants of the medieval dits), and coq-àl'âne became remarkable for their easy and polished style, their light and graceful wit, and a certain elegance which had not as yet been even attempted in any modern tongue, though the

Marot.

The Pléiade

Italian humanists had not been far from it in some of their Latin compositions. Around Marot arose a whole school of disciples and imitators, such as Victor Brodeau (1470 ?-1540), the great authority on rondeaux, Maurice Scève, a fertile author of blasons, Salel, Marguerite herself (1492-1549), of whom more hereafter, and Mellin de Saint Gelais (1491-1558). The last, son of the bishop named above, is a courtly writer of occasional pieces, who sustained as well as he could the style marotique against Ronsard, and who has the credit of introducing the regular sonnet into French. But the inventive vigour of the age was so great that one school had hardly become popular before another pushed it from its stool, and even of the Marotists just mentioned Scève and Salel are often regarded as chief and member respectively of a Lyonnese coterie, intermediate between the schools of Marot and of Ronsard, containing other members of repute such as Antoine Heroët and Charles Fontaine and claiming Louise Labé (v. inf:) herself. Pierre de Roasard. Ronsard (1524-1585) was the chief of this latter. At first a courtier and a diplomatist, physical disqualification made him change his career. He began to study the classics under Jean Daurat (1508-1588), and with his master and five other writers, Etienne Jodelle (1532-1573), Rémy Belleau (1528-1577), Joachim du Bellay (1525-1560), Jean Antoine de Baif (15321589), and Pontus de Tyard (d. 1605, bishop of Châlons-surSaône), composed the famous "Pléiade." The object of this band was to bring the French language, in vocabulary, constructions and application, on a level with the classical tongues by borrowings from the latter. They would have imported the Greek licence of compound words, though the genius of the French language is but little adapted thereto; and they wished to reproduce in French the regular tragedy, the Pindaric and Horatian ode, the Virgilian epic, &c. But it is an error (though one which until recently was very common, and which perhaps requires pretty thorough study of their work completely to extirpate it) to suppose that they advocated or practised indiscriminate borrowing. On the contrary both in du Bellay's famous manifesto, the Defense et illustration de la langue française, and in Ronsard's own work, caution and attention to the genius and the tradition of French are insisted upon. Being all men of the highest talent, and not a few of them men of great genius, they achieved much that they designed, and even where they failed exactly to achieve it, they very often indirectly produced results as important and more beneficial than those which they intended. Their ideal of a separate poetical language distinct from that intended for proseuse was indeed a doubtful if not a dangerous one. But it is certain that Marot, while setting an example of elegance and grace not easily to be imitated, set also an example of trivial and, so to speak, pedestrian language which was only too imitable. If France was ever to possess a literature containing something besides fabliaux and farces, the tongue must be enriched and strengthened. This accession of wealth and vigour it received from Ronsard and the Ronsardists. Doubtless they went too far and provoked to some extent the reaction which Malherbe led. Their importations were sometimes unnecessary. It is almost impossible to read the Franciade of Ronsard, and not too easy to read the tragedies of Jodelle and Garnier, fine as the latter are in parts. But the best of Ronsard's sonnets and odes, the finest of du Bellay's Antiquités de Rome (translated into English by Spenser), the exquisite Vanneur of the same author, and the Avril of Belleau, even the finer passages of d'Aubigné and du Bartas, are not only admirable in themselves, and of a kind not previously found in French literature, but are also such things as could not have been previously found, for the simple reason that the medium of expression was wanting. They constructed that medium for themselves, and no force of the reaction which they provoked was able to undo their work. Adverse criticism and the natural course of time rejected much that they had added. The charming diminutives they loved so much went out of fashion; their compounds (sometimes it must be confessed, justly) had their letters of naturalization promptly cancelled; many a gorgeous adjective, including some which could trace

their pedigree to the earliest ages of French literature, but which bore an unfortunate likeness to the new-comers, was proscribed. But for all that no language has ever had its destiny influenced more powerfully and more beneficially by a small literary clique than the language of France was influenced by the example and disciples of that Ronsard whom for two centuries it was the fashion to deride and decry.

The Ronsardists.

In a sketch such as the present it is impossible to give a separate account of individual writers, the more important of whom will be found treated under their own names. The effort of the " Pléiade " proper was continued and shared by a considerable number of minor poets, some of them, as has been already noted, belonging to different groups and schools. Olivier de Magny (d. 1560) and Louise Labé (b. 1526) were poets and loyers, the lady deserving far the higher rank in literature. There is more depth of passion in the writings of "La Belle Cordière," as this Lyonnese poetess was called, than in almost any of her contemporaries. Jacques Tahureau (1527-1555) scarcely deserves to be called a minor poet. There is less than the usual hyperbole in the contemporary comparison of him to Catullus, and he reminds an Englishman of the school represented nearly a century later by Carew, Randolph and Suckling. The title of a part of his poemMignardises amoureuses de l'admirée-is characteristic both of the style and of the time. Jean Doublet (c. 1528-c.1580), Amadis Jamyn (c. 1530-1585), and Jean de la Taille (1540-1608) deserve mention at least as poets, but two other writers require a longer allusion. Guillaume de Salluste, seigneur du Bartas (1544-1590), whom Sylvester's translation, Milton's imitation, and Du Bartas. the copious citations of Southey's Doctor, have made known if not familiar in England, was partly a disciple and partly a rival of Ronsard. His poem of Judith was eclipsed by his better-known La Divine Sepmaine or epic of the Creation. Du Bartas was a great user and abuser of the double compounds alluded to above, but his style possesses much stateliness, and has a peculiar solemn eloquence which he shared with the other French Calvinists, and which was derived from the study partly of Calvin and partly of the Bible. Théodore Agrippa d'Aubigné (1552-1630), like du Bartas, was a Calvinist. His genius was of a more varied character. He wrote sonnets and odes as became a Ronsardist, but his chief poetical work is the satirical poem of Les Tragiques, in which the author brands the factions, corruptions and persecutions of the time, and in which there are to be found alexandrines of a strength, vigour and original cadence hardly to be discovered elsewhere, save in Corneille and Victor Hugo. Towards the end of the century, Philippe Desportes (1546-1606) and Jean Bertaut (1552-1611), with much enfeebled strength, but with a certain grace, continue the Ronsardizing tradition. Among their contemporaries must be noticed Jean Passerat (1534-1602), a writer of much wit and vigour and rather resembling Marot than Ronsard, and Vauquelin de la Fresnaye (1536-1607), the author of a valuable Ars poëtica and of the first French satires which actually bear that title. Jean le Houx (fl. c. 1600) continued, rewrote or invented the vaux de vire, commonly known as the work of Olivier Basselin, and already alluded to, while a still lighter and more eccentric verse style was cultivated by Etienne Tabourot des Accords (1549-1590), whose epigrams and other pieces were collected under odd titles, Les Bigarrures, Les Touches, &c. A curious pair are Guy du Faur de Pibrac (1529-1584) and Pierre Mathieu (b. 1563), authors of moral quatrains, which were learnt by heart in the schools of the time, replacing the distichs of the grammarian Cato, which, translated into French, had served the same purpose in the middle ages.

D'Aubigné.

The nephew of Desportes, Mathurin Regnier (1573-1613), marks the end, and at the same time perhaps the climax, of the Regnier.

poetry of the century. A descendant at once of the older Gallic spirit of Villon and Marot, in virtue of his consummate acuteness, terseness and wit, of the school of Ronsard by his erudition, his command of language, and his scholarship, Regnier is perhaps the best representative of French poetry at the critical time when it had got together all its materials, had

lost none of its native vigour and force, and had not yet submitted to the cramping and numbing rules and restrictions which the next century introduced. The satirical poems of Regnier, and especially the admirable epistle to Rapin, in which he denounces and rebuts the critical dogmas of Malherbe, are models of nervous strength, while some of the elegies and odes contain expression not easily to be surpassed of the softer feelings of affection and regret. No poet has had more influence on the revival of French poetry in the last century than Regnier, and he had imitators in his own time, the chief of whom was Courval-Sonnet (Thomas Sonnet, sieur de Courval) (1577–1635), author of satires of some value for the history of manners.

16th-Century Drama.-The change which dramatic poetry underwent during the 16th century was at least as remarkable as that undergone by poetry proper. The first half of the period saw the end of the religious mysteries, the licence of which had irritated both the parliament and the clergy. Louis XII., at the beginning of the century, was far from discouraging the disorderly but popular and powerful theatre in which the Confraternity of the Passion, the clerks of the Bazoche, and the Enfans sans souci enacted mysteries, moralities, soties and farces. He made them, indeed, an instrument in his quarrel with the papacy, just as Philippe le Bel had made use of the allegorical poems of Jehan de Meung and his fellows. Under his patronage were produced the chief works of Gringore or Gringoire (c. 14801547), by far the most remarkable writer of this class of composition. His Prince des sots and his Mystère de St Louis are among the best of their kind. An enormous volume of composition of this class was produced between 1500 and 1550. One morality by itself, L'Homme juste et l'homme mondain, contains some 36,000 lines. But in 1548, when the Confraternity was formally established at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, leave to play sacred subjects was expressly refused it. Moralities and soties dragged on under difficulties till the end of the century, and the farce, which is immortal, continually affected comedy. But the effect of the Renaissance was to sweep away all other vestiges of the medieval drama, at least in the capital. An entirely new class of subjects, entirely new modes of treatment, and a different kind of performers were introduced. The change naturally came from Italy. In the close relationship with that country which France had during the early years of the century, Italian translations of the classical masterpieces were easily imported. Soon French translations were made afresh of the Electra, the Hecuba, the Iphigenia in Aulis, and the French humanists hastened to compose original tragedies on the classical model, especially as exhibited in the Latin tragedian Seneca. It was impossible that the "Pléiade" should not eagerly seize such an opportunity of carrying out its principles, and one of its members, Jodelle (1532-1573), devoting himself mainly to dramatic composition, fashioned at once the first tragedy, Cléopatre, and the first comedy, Eugène, thus setting the example of the style of composition which for two centuries and a half Frenchmen were to regard as the highest effort of literary ambition. The amateur performance of these dramas by Jodelle and his friends was followed by a Bacchic procession after the manner of the ancients, which caused a great deal of scandal, and was represented by both Catholics and Protestants as a pagan orgy. The Cléopâtre is remarkable as being the first French tragedy, nor is it destitute of merit. It is curious that in this first instance the curt antithetic orixouveia, which was so long characteristic of French plays and plays imitated from them, and which Butler ridicules in his Dialogue of Cat and Puss, already appears. There appears also the grandiose and smooth but stilted declamation which came rather from the imitation of Seneca than of Sophocles, and the tradition of which was never to be lost. Cleopâtre was followed by Didon, which, unlike its predecessor, is entirely in alexandrines, and observes the regular alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes. Jodelle was followed by Jacques Grévin (1540 ?-1570) with a Mort de César, which shows an improvement in tragic art, and two still better comedies, Les Ébahis and La Trésorière by Jean de la Taille (1540-1608), who made still further progress

Regular tragedy and

comedy.

Garnier.

towards the accepted French dramatic pattern in his Saul furieux and his Corrivaux, Jacques, his brother (1541-1562), and Jean de la Péruse (1529-1554), who wrote a Médée. A very different poet from all these is Robert Garnier (15451601). Garnier is the first tragedian who deserves a place not too far below Rotrou, Corneille, Racine, Voltaire and Hugo, and who may be placed in the same class with them. He chose his subjects indifferently from classical, sacred and medieval literature. Sédécie, a play dealing with the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, is held to be his masterpiece, and Bradamante deserves notice because it is the first tragi-comedy of merit in French, and because the famous confidant here makes his first appearance. Garnier's successor, Antoine de Monchrétien or Montchrestien (c. 1576-1621), set the example of dramatizing contemporary subjects. His masterpiece is L'Ecossaise, the first of many dramas on the fate of Mary, queen of Scots. While tragedy thus clings closely to antique models, comedy, as might be expected in the country of the fabliaux, is more independent. Italy had already a comic school of some originality, and the French farce was too vigorous and lively a production to permit of its being entirely overlooked. The first comic writer of great merit was Pierre Larivey (c. 1550-c. 1612), an Italian Larivey. by descent. Most if not all of his plays are founded on Italian originals, but the translations or adaptations are made with the greatest freedom, and almost deserve the title of original works. The style is admirable, and the skilful management of the action contrasts strongly with the languor, the awkward adjustment, and the lack of dramatic interest found in contemporary tragedians. Even Molière found something to use in Larivey.

16th-Century Prose Fiction.-Great as is the importance of the 16th century in the history of French poetry, its importance in the history of French prose is greater still. In poetry the middle ages could fairly hold their own with any of the ages that have succeeded them. The epics of chivalry, whether of the cycles of Charlemagne, Arthur, or the classic heroes, not to mention the miscellaneous romans d'aventures, have indeed more than held their own. Both relatively and absolutely the Franciade of the 16th century, the Pucelle of the 17th, the Henriade of the 18th, cut a very poor figure beside Roland and Percivale, Gerard de Roussillon, and Parthenopex de Blois. The romances, ballads and pastourelles, signed and unsigned, of medieval France were not merely the origin, but in some respects the superiors, of the lyric poetry which succeeded them. Thibaut de Champagne, Charles d'Orléans and Villon need not veil their crests in any society of bards. The charming forms of the rondel, the rondeau and the ballade have won admiration from every competent poet and critic who has known them. The fabliaux give something more than promise of La Fontaine, and the two great compositions of the Roman du Renart and the Roman de la rose, despite their faults and their alloy, will always command the admiration of all persons of taste and judgment who take the trouble to study them. But while poetry had in the middle ages no reason to blush for her French representatives, prose (always the younger and less forward sister) had far less to boast of. With the exception of chronicles and prose romances, no prose works of any real importance can be quoted before the end of the 15th century, and even then the chief if not the only place of importance must be assigned to the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, a work of admirable prose, but necessarily light in character, and not yet demonstrating the efficacy of the French language as a medium of expression for serious and weighty thought. Up to the time of the Renaissance and the consequent reformation, Latin had, as we have already remarked, been considered the sufficient and natural organ for this expression. In France as in other countries the disturbance in religious thought may undoubtedly claim the glory of having repaired this disgrace of the vulgar tongue, and of having fitted and taught it to express whatever thoughts the theologian, the historian, the philosopher, the politician and the savant had occasion to utter. But the use of prose as a vehicle for lighter themes was more continuous with the literature that preceded,

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and serves as a natural transition from poetry and the drama to history and science. Among the prose writers, therefore, of the 16th century we shall give the first place to the novelists and romantic writers.

Among these there can be no doubt of the precedence, in every sense of the word, of François Rabelais (c. 1490-1553), the one French writer (or with Molière one of the two Rabelais, whom critics the least inclined to appreciate the characteristics of French literature have agreed to place among the few greatest of the world. With an immense erudition representing almost the whole of the knowledge of his time, with an untiring faculty of invention, with the judgment of a philosopher, and the common sense of a man of the world, with an observation that let no characteristic of the time pass unobserved, and with a tenfold portion of the special Gallic gift of good-humoured satire, Rabelais united a height of speculation and depth of insight and a vein of poetical imagination rarely found in any writer, but altogether portentous when taken in conjunction with his other characteristics. His great work has been taken for an exercise of transcendental philosophy, for a concealed theological polemic, for an allegorical history of this and that personage of his time, for a merely literary utterance, for an attempt to tickle the popular ear and taste. It is all of these, and it is none-all of them in parts, none of them in deliberate and exclusive intention. It may perhaps be called the exposition and commentary of all the thoughts, feelings, aspirations and knowledge of a particular time and nation put forth in attractive literary form by a man who for once combined the practical and the literary spirit, the power of knowledge and the power of expression. The work of Rabelais is the mirror of the 16th century in France, reflecting at once its comeliness and its uncomeliness, its high aspirations, its voluptuous tastes. its political and religious dissensions, its keen criticism, its eager appetite and hasty digestion of learning, its gleams of poetry, and its ferocity of manners. In Rabelais we can divine the "Pléiade" and Marot, the Cymbalum mundi and Montaigne, Amyot and the Amadis, even Calvin and Duperron.

It was inevitable that such extraordinary works as Gargantua and Pantagruel should attract special imitators in the direction of their outward form. It was also inevitable that this imitation should frequently fix upon these Rabelaisian characteristics which are least deserving of imitation, and most likely to be depraved in the hands of imitators. It fell within the plan of the master to indulge in what has been called fatrasie, the huddling together, that is to say, of a medley of language and images which is best known to English readers in the not always successful following of Sterne. It pleased him also to disguise his naturally terse, strong and nervous style in a burlesque envelope of redundant language, partly ironical, partly the result of superfluous crudition, and partly that of a certain childish wantonness and exuberance, which is one of his raciest and pleasantest characteristics. In both these points he was somewhat corruptly followed. But fortunately the romancical writers of the 16th century had not Rabelais for their sole model, but were also influenced by the simple and straightforward style of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles. The joint influence gives us some admirable work. Nicholas of Troyes, a saddler of Champagne, came too early (his Grand Parangon des nouvelles nouvelles appeared in 1536) to copy Rabelais. But Noël du Fail (d. c. 1585?), a judge at Rennes, shows the double influence in his Propos rustiques and Contes d'Eutrapel, both of which, especially the former, are lively and well-written pictures of contemporary life and thought, as the country magistrate actually saw and dealt with them. In 1558, however, appeared two works of far higher literary and social interest. These are the Heptameron of the queen of Navarre, and the Conics et joyeux devis of Bonaventure des Periers (c. 1500-1544). Des Periers, who was a courtier of Marguerite's, has sometimes been thought to have had a good deal to do with the first-named work as well as with the second, and was also the author of a curious Lucianic satire, strongly sceptical in cast, the Cymbalum mundi. Indeed, not merely

Des

Perlers.

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