The second in date of the French possessors of copies of Shakespeare was, strange to say, no less a person than the patron of Racine and Boileau, the Roi-Soleil himself. Looking over, some time ago, at the Bibliothèque Nationale, the original manuscript slips made in 1684 by the royal librarian, Nicolas Clément, for his catalogue of the books confided to his care, I found one inscribed: "Will. Shakspeare, poeta Anglicus. Opera poetica, continentia tragoedias, comoedias et historiolas, Anglice, Londres, Th. Cotes, 1632, fol." And to this, considering that he had to deal with a thoroughly unknown person, Clément was careful to add a note that people might be informed what was to be thought of the poet. This is (so far as now known) the earliest French allusion to Shakespeare: "Ce poète anglois a l'imagination assès belle, il pense naturellement; mais ces belles qualitez sont obscurcies par les ordures qu'il mêle dans ses comédies."
[243] Vol. xv. published in 1731.
[244] "Essai sur la pastorale," prefacing "Estelle."
CHAPTER VI.
THOMAS NASH; THE PICARESQUE AND REALISTIC NOVEL.
I.
"There is nothing beside the goodnesse of God, that preserves health so much as honest mirth, especially mirth used at dinner and supper, and mirth toward bed.... Therefore, considering this matter, that mirth is so necessary a thing for man, I published this booke ... to make men merrie.... Wherefore I doe advertise every man in avoiding pensivenesse, or too much study or melancholic, to be merrie with honesty in God and for God, whom I humbly beseech to send us the mirth of heaven. Amen."[245] Such was the advice attributed to a man whose opinion should carry weight, for he had been a "doctor of physicke" and had published with great success a "Breviary of helth" which was a household book in his time.