Pour appui de ma foible vie,
Dont vous n'auriez deuil ni envie,
Si vous sçaviez, O blonds cheveux !
Quel est le bien que je vous veux.

Le moindre de vous m'est plus cher
Qu'autre amie entière toucher,
Ni que les trésors assemblés
Du fin or à quoi ressemblez.
Et toutefois, pour être miens,
N'ayez peur de n'estre point siens:
Elle ne connoist rien à soi

Plus sien que ce qui est à moi."

The story of the Charlatan who undertook to shew the devil to the people is well-known. When the crowd is assembled, he produces a purse :

"Une bourse large et profonde,

Il leur desploye et leur dit-'Gens de bien,
Ouvrez vos yeux: voyez, y a-t-il rien?'
'Non,' dit quelqu'un des plus près regardans.
'Et c'est,' dit il, 'le Diable, oyez vous bien
Ouvrir sa bourse et ne voir rien dedans.'

The following Quatrain is one which he wrote in the Psalm-book of Mademoiselle d' Autheville :

"Plus divine œuvre en plus petit espace

Trouver enclose il seroit difficile:

Encores plus voir tant de bonne grace

Et de beauté ailleurs, qu'en Autheville."

These four lines might have been written by Sedley or Rochester, and quoted by Charles :

"Ne tardez plus à consentir,

Ni à tel ami satisfaire.

Vaut mieux faire et se repentir
Que se repentir et rien faire."

In Mellin de Saint Gelais and Clément Marot we see the conquest, at last, of language. Here, with as much ease as has ever been attained in French, thought finds expression; no longer tied, as in the days of Charles of Orleans, to a cold and frigid style; nor, as in the taste of Molinet, diluted by a flood of words and bound by fetters of useless rules. The clouds that hung over the East have cleared away, and the sun has risen. The poets that come after Clément and Mellin are moderns, with new thought and new tastes. But while Clément is the last of the old school, Mellin de Saint Gelais is the first of the new. It is greatly to be wished that a new edition of his works were given to the world. The last edition was in 1719-unless one has been printed lately, which I have not been able to discover. If, further, the edition was accompanied by one of those careful and exhaustive études that only French editors seem able to produce, we should have a most valuable addition to the story of French poetical literature.

"Mellin, nostre plus grande gloire,

Mellin, nostre commun bonheur

Est en bas sua la rive noyre.

De dire plus oultre son nom,

Et son sçavoir et son merite,
Et ses vertus et son renom,
Ce seroit chose trop redicte,"

says a contemporary, lamenting his death.

Poets, as

Addison insinuates of women, are greatly given to praising

their rivals when they are dead.

I cannot resist quoting a little Latin couplet, given by Thevet in his quaint old "Vies des Hommes illustres." Mellin being sick has to take asses' milk, whereat he says:

"Trojam evertit equus-Persas genus auxit equorum-
Nolo ego equos-fatis sat sit Asella meis."

CHAPTER XI.

FRANCIS AND MARGARET.

No account of the early French poets would be complete without some mention of the two who did so much for the cause of letters. This branch of the Valois family, whatever their faults, has the merit of being the first intelligent promoters of letters. Intelligent because they were themselves poets and authors, and in one case at least the best of the time. Their literary proclivities are traced to Valentine the accomplished mother of Charles Duke of Orleans. Francis and Margaret, children of Charles Count of Angoulême, grandchildren of Jean Count of Angoulême, had Charles for their great uncle. There are few families who can boast of so many authors in a hundred years as this of Valois. Charles of Orleans, Francis I., Margaret of Valois, Henry II., Charles IX., Renée of France, like Margaret, an esprit fort; Henry IV., Margaret's grandson; Margaret of France, daughter of Francis; Margaret of France, daughter of Henry II., and first wife of Henry IV; and, if we may reckon her among the number, Mary Queen of Scots. None of them poets of the first rank, but all of

them writers of verse or prose of that kind which can only spring from culture and taste.

The lives of Francis and Margaret belong to the History of France. We have only to do with their literary fame.

Margaret, the first and best of the three Margarets, was two years older than her brother Francis, to whom she was passionately attached, and for whose sake she sacrificed her own happiness and gave up her time and labour. Forced into a political marriage with the Duke of Alençon at an early age, she voluntarily, on his death, married a man whom she disliked, and who illtreated her, the King of Navarre, for the promotion of her brother's objects. Francis, a man of many faults, knew at least how to recompense this devotion by his own love. He, who never deserted a friend, who loved his mother to the extent of committing an injustice for her sake which brought disaster upon France, was not likely to receive coldly a life-long sacrifice from a sister. He suffered himself to be guided by her counsels; he never did anything, so long as she was in Paris, without consulting her: through her he was nearly joining the Reformed party,—perhaps would have done so, had it not been for the battle of Pavia; and, in the very height of the popular frenzy against the Lutherans, sent to prison Beda, syndic of the Theological faculty, for reflecting on Margaret's orthodoxy, and kept him there till he died.

"She was," says a contemporary, "not only the wisest of all the women in France, but of all the men. In all affairs of state there was no counsel so sure as hers to listen to. In the doctrine of Christianity she was so well versed that few people knew better how to treat of it."