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, Early sermon-writers. 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, whose 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 Comines. or of any one else. The last of the quartette of great 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. It had already long possessed a respectable position as a vehicle of romance, and the end of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th centuries were pre-eminently the time when The Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles. the epics of chivalry were re-edited and extended in 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 Heptaméron, 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 Antoine de la Salle. 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 literature. La Salle’s one acknowledged work is the story of Petit Jehan de Saintré, a short romance exhibiting great command 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 literature, but very observable in it. The old forms of literature Influence of the Renaissance. 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.
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 Marot. 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-à-l’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 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 Ronsard. claiming Louise Labé (v. inf.) herself. Pierre de 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, Étienne Jodelle (1532-1573), Rémy Belleau (1528-1577), Joachim du Bellay (1525-1560), Jean Antoine de Baïf (1532-1589), and Pontus de Tyard (d. 1605, bishop of Châlons-sur-Saône), composed the famous “Pléiade.” The object of this band was to bring the French language, in vocabulary, The Pléiade. 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 Deffense 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 prose use 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.
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 The Ronsardists. 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 lovers, 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 poem—Mignardises 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), Du Bartas. whom Sylvester’s translation, Milton’s imitation, and 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 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 Étienne 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.
The nephew of Desportes, Mathurin Regnier (1573-1613), marks the end, and at the same time perhaps the climax, of the poetry of the century. A descendant at once of the older Gallic spirit of Villon and Marot, in virtue of his Regnier. 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. 1480-1547), 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 Regular tragedy and comedy. 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 στιχομυθία, 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. Cléopâtre 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 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 Garnier. different poet from all these is Robert Garnier (1545-1601). 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’Écossaise, 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 Larivey. merit was Pierre Larivey (c. 1550-c. 1612), an Italian 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, 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) whom critics the least inclined to appreciate the Rabelais. 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 erudition, 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 Des Periers. the Heptaméron of the queen of Navarre, and the Contes 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 the queen’s prose works, but also the poems gracefully entitled Les Marguerites de la Marguerite, are often attributed to the literary men whom the sister of Francis I. gathered round her. However this may be, some single influence of power enough to give unity and distinctness of savour evidently The Heptaméron. presided over the composition of the Heptaméron. Composed as it is on the model of Boccaccio, its tone and character are entirely different, and few works have a more individual charm. The Tales of des Periers are shorter, simpler and more homely; there is more wit in them and less refinement. But both works breathe, more powerfully perhaps than any others, the peculiar mixture of cultivated and poetical voluptuousness with a certain religiosity and a vigorous spirit of action which characterizes the French Renaissance. Later in time, but too closely connected with Rabelais in form and spirit to be here omitted, came the Moyen de parvenir of Béroalde de Verville (1558?-1612?), a singular fatrasie, uniting wit, wisdom, learning and indecency, and crammed with anecdotes which are always amusing though rarely decorous.