semi-religious nature of the ceremony, apt to comfort the soul of a sinner, all would have their charms for him, and I am half-disposed to think that there may have been some grounds for the story of the signal example of Friar Tickletoby.

The great dramatic rage, however, during the life of Villon was for moralities. These pieces, at which our poet must have yawned drearily, were allegorical and elaborate. The virtues and vices contended with each other. Nothing so vulgar as a devil daintily hung round with tenter-hooks, calves' skins and suchlike ornaments was admitted. The performances appear to have been strictly moral, and fearfully, inexpressibly dull.

Then came a livelier time, and an indignant populace, weary of moral allegory, demanded something in a lighter style. But this was after Villon. Would that he had been in the prime of his years, when Patelin inaugurated a new era for popular dramatic literature !

Was François Villon the actual prototype of Pierre Gringoire? Did Victor Hugo, when he wrote Nôtre Dame de Paris, take Villon for his Gringoire, and find his vocabulary of Parisian slang in Villon's Jargon? Certainly, all his words, and an immense number more, are in the Jargon. And there are many points of curious resemblance between Gringoire and Villon-only, Villon would not, could not have earned his livelihood by balancing chairs on his chin. I leave this point for the investigation of the curious. There was, however, a Pierre Gringoire of the sixteenth century, who wrote much poetry, of a sort now forgotten, and curious plays, still remembered.

CHAPTER VI.

ROGER DE COLLERYE-BAUDE-GUILLAUME ALEXIS.

COLLERYE was the great poet of the Fête aux fous; the friend of Basochiens and the Clercs du Chastelet; the joyous spirit of a small country circle; the illustrious Roger Bontemps. Time has somewhat tarnished the lustre of his fame, but he is not yet without an admirer, and he has found in these latter days an editor who does him more than justice. Hear what M. Charles de Héricault writes of him. "He has left," he says, "a mark in history which will never be effaced; his is the most singular personality among the poets of the commencement of the sixteenth century; his life and his genius furnish documents most useful to the philosophy of the literary history of his time. He has created a national type, a type dear to the French esprit; that which represents this esprit in its condition of calm and joyous leisure, the type of Roger Bontemps. In this personage he has introduced, so to speak, the symbol of joy among the vine-growers of Burgundy. All the followers of the Abbé des Fous of Auxerre; all the Basochiens, clerks of the Chastelet, enfans sans souci; all

the grand family of philosophers, shoeless and hungry; all the acolytes of the Mère Folle were his comrades; and all those fools, arch-fools, lunatics, heteroclytes, poets of nature, and the rest of the legitimate children of Roger Bontemps recognised their idol in the joviality and joyous poverty of Roger de Collerye."

Less enthusiastic

Thus far M. Charles d'Héricault. readers of Roger de Collerye may be disposed to think this praise exaggerated. Certainly, in the town where he lived, and his own district, he seems to have enjoyed great reputation, and to have been the leader of all those country fêtes when rough wit and license had their full swing. But when he deserts his own line, when he tries to fall in with the fashion of the time, and to write after the style of Marot, he fails. He is Roger Bontemps, or he is nothing. His life is soon told. He was a genuine Bohemian; one of that happy class who love to feast one day, if they have to starve six; to be Perpetual Grand of the Glorious Apollos, the roystering leader of all the songs, and the chief maker of all the jokes, careless that next day will bring headache and repentance, dry bread and cold water; with bitter accusations against Fortune, who will not let men eat their cake and have it. Poor Roger could not endure with patience the evil which naturally fell upon him, and bellowed loudly when his credit failed him. Like almost all the verse-writers of his time, he laments, in his old age, the sins of his youth, and bewails, not without reason, the folly of his misspent time.

He appears to have been a native of Paris, though he says himself:

L

"Je suis Bontemps, qui d'Angleterre
Suis ici venu de grant erre

En ce pays de l'Auxerrois."

Which must be taken dramatically. But why should Bontemps be said to come from England? Was it from some popular rumours of the plenty and good cheer of the English?

He spent most of his life at Auxerre, where he was secretary to two successive bishops. This semi-ecclesiastical post did not inspire him with gravity. Quite the contrary. His youth was reckless, joyous, orageuse; enemies Plate Bourse and Faulte d'Argent not yet being in sight. At Gurgy, the residence of a patron, Monseigneur de Gurgy, whom he calls Bacchus, he fell in with some of the members of la Basoche, for whom he made his cris in after time. There, we may understand, were great roysterings and singings. There was arranged in verses, for the grand day of the 18th of July, the fête aux Fous, all the little gossip of the town, to be spouted in front of the cathedral by my Lord the Abbé des Fous and his band. This day Roger called Débride-gosier, or Tongue-let-loose. At Auxerre Roger falls in love. His love M. Héricault declares to have been of the purest and loftiest order. I do not know why, except that he addresses his mistress an acrostic and sundry verses in the modern style. Her name was Gilleberte de Beaurepaire. But, alas! ambition, ever the most fatal to the purest and the loftiest souls, stung our Roger, and not content with the distinctions he had won in the country, he must needs sigh for the good things of the court. The way of it was this. In an evil moment Roger indited a

letter to Marot, the king of poets, as he calls him. He congratulates him on his works, which he styles à peu près déificques, and especially commends his fortune, because "le roy ne manque à bien remplir sa bourse." Marot answered affably, even with compliments, and Roger, giving up his secretaryship, packed up his poems-one easily imagines that he had not much else to pack—and went off to Paris. Here the usual story has to be told; waiting, hope, flattery, and disappointment. M. d'Héricault finds that he fell from what he would have us believe was his pristine purity; that he contracted a new love, by no means so pure as that of Gilleberte, and that his mind, degraded by this alliance, lost its old ideal of woman, and fell back upon material, coarse, and vulgar notions. The truth, as I apprehend it, was that Roger never had that lofty ideal; that, in writing to Gilleberte, he wrote in the fashion of the day, and not from his own heart; and that his ideas on all subjects were coarse and material, in youth as well as in age. Then he went back, in disgust and poverty, to Auxerre, where, Plate Bourse and Faulte d' Argent finding him out, he lost credit at the taverns, had no money to buy him wine, and began to lament over his empty coffers and thirsty throat. As his editor says: "Roger n'a connu que cette sorte de souffrance qui pique le corps.... les combinaisons matérielles qui peuvent produire la souffrance font le siège de sa maigre échine."

His writings are not very numerous. Doubtless a great number have perished. There remains, however, a collection of Epistles, Rondeaux, Complaints, Ballads, Epithetons, Dictons, and Epitaphs; a Satyre for the people of Auxerre,