CHAPTER XXIX.----FRANCIS I. AND THE RENAISSANCE.

[Illustration: FRANCIS I.----137]

Francis I., in his life as a king and a soldier, had two rare pieces of

good fortune: two great victories, Melegnano and Ceresole, stand out at

the beginning and the end of his reign; and in his direst defeat, at

Pavia, he was personally a hero. In all else, as regards his government,

his policy was neither an able nor a successful one; for two and thirty

years he was engaged in plans, attempts, wars, and negotiations; he

failed in all his designs; he undertook innumerable campaigns or

expeditions that came to nothing; he concluded forty treaties of war,

peace, or truce, incessantly changing aim, and cause, and allies; and,

for all this incoherent activity, he could not manage to conquer either

the empire or Italy; he brought neither aggrandizement nor peace to

France.

Outside of the political arena, in quite a different field of ideas and

facts, that is, in the intellectual field, Francis I. did better and

succeeded better. In this region he exhibited an instinct and a taste

for the grand and the beautiful; he had a sincere love for literature,

science, and art; he honored and protected, and effectually too, their

works and their representatives. And therein it is that more than one

sovereign and more than one age have found their purest glory to consist.

Virgil, Horace, and Livy contributed quite as much as the foundation of

the empire to shed lustre on the reign of Augustus. Bossuet, Pascal, and

Fenelon, Corneille, Racine, Boileau, Moliere, and La Fontaine, count for

quite as much as his great warriors and his able administrators in regard

to the splendor of the age of Louis XIV. People are quite right to set

this estimate upon the heroes of the human mind and upon their works;

their portion in the history of mankind is certainly not the most

difficult, but it is that which provides both those who give and those

who take with the purest delights, and which is the least dear in respect

of what it costs the nation.

The reign of Francis I. occupies the first half of the century (the

sixteenth), which has been called the age of Renaissance. Taken

absolutely, and as implying a renaissance, following upon a decay of

science, literature, and art, the expression is exaggerated, and goes

beyond the truth; it is not true that the five centuries which rolled by

between the establishment of the Capetians and the accession of Francis

I. (from 987 to 1515), were a period of intellectual barrenness and

decay; the middle ages, amidst the anarchy, violence, and calamities of

their social condition, had, in philosophy, literature, and art, works of

their own and a glory of their own, which lacked not originality, or

brilliancy, or influence over subsequent ages. There is no idea of

telling their history here; we only desire to point out, with some sort

of precision, their special character and their intellectual worth.

At such a period, what one would scarcely expect to find is intellectual

ambition on a very extensive scale and great variety in the branches of

knowledge and in the scope of ideas. And yet it is in the thirteenth

century that we meet for the first time in Europe and in France with the

conception and the execution of a vast repertory of different scientific

and literary works produced by the brain of man, in fact with a veritable

Encyclopaedia. It was a monk, a preaching friar, a simple Dominican

reader (lector qualiscumque), whose life was passed, as he himself says,

by the side and under the eye of the superior-general of his order, who

undertook and accomplished this great labor. Vincent of Beauvais, born

at Beauvais between 1184 and 1194, who died at his native place in 1264,

an insatiable glutton for books (librorum helluo), say his

contemporaries, collected and edited what he called _Bibliotheca Mundi,

Speculum majus_ (Library of the World, an enlarged Mirror), an immense

compilation, the first edition of which, published at Strasbourg in 1473,

comprises ten volumes folio, and would comprise fifty or sixty volumes

octavo. The work contains three, and, according to some manuscripts,

four parts, entitled _Speculum naturale_ (Mirror of Natural Science),

_Speculum historiale_ (Mirror of Historical Science), _Speculum

doctrinale_ (Mirror of Metaphysical Science), and _Speculum morale_

(Mirror of Moral Science). M. Daunou, in the notice he has given to it

[in the xviiith volume of the _Histoire litteraire de la France,_ begun

by the Benedictines and continued by the _Academie des Inscriptions et

Belleslettres de l’Institut,_ pp. 449-519], disputes, not without reason,

the authenticity of this last part. Each of these Specula contains a

summary, extracted from the various writings which have reference to the

subject of it, and the authors of which Vincent of Beauvais takes care to

name. M. Daunou, at the end of his learned notice, has described the

nature, the merit, and the interest of the work in the following terms:

“The writings and documents which we have to thank Vincent of Beauvais

for having preserved to us are such as pertain to veritable studies, to

doctrines, to traditions, and even to errors which obtained a certain

amount of credit or exercised a certain amount of influence in the course

of ages. . . . Whenever it is desirable to know what were in France,

about 1250, the tendency and the subjects of the most elevated studies,

what sciences were cultivated, what books, whether ancient, or, for the

time, modern, were or might have been read, what questions were in

agitation, what doctrines were prevalent in schools, monasteries,

churches, and the world, it will be to Vincent of Beauvais, above all,

that recourse must be had.” There is nothing to be added to this

judicious estimate; there is no intention of entering here into any sort

of detail about the work of Vincent of Beauvais; only it is desirable to

bring some light to bear upon the intellectual aspirations and activity

of the middle ages in France previously to the new impulse which was to

be communicated to them by the glorious renaissance of Greek and Roman

antiquity. A scientific, historical, and philosophical encyclopaedia of

the thirteenth century surely deserves to find a place in the preface to

the sixteenth.

After the encyclopaedist of the middle ages come, naturally, their

philosophers. They were numerous; and some of them have remained

illustrious. Several of them, at the date of their lives and labors,

have already been met with and remarked upon in this history, such as

Gerbert of Aurillac, who became Pope Sylvester II., St. Anselm, Abelard,

St. Bernard, Robert of Sorbon, founder of the Sorbonne, and St. Thomas

Aquinas.

[Illustration: St. Thomas Aquinas and Abelard----140]

To these names, known to every enlightened man, might be added many

others less familiar to the public, but belonging to men who held a high

place in the philosophical contests of their times, such as John Scot

Erigena, Berenger, Roscelin, William of Champeaux, Gilbert of La Poree,

&c. The questions which always have taken and always will take a

passionate hold of men’s minds in respect of God, the universe, and man,

in respect of our origin, our nature, and our destiny, were raised and

discussed, from the eleventh to the fifteenth century, if not with so

much brilliancy, at any rate with as much boldness and earnest thought,

as at any other period. The middle ages had, in France, their

spiritualists, their materialists, their pantheists, their rationalists,

their mystics, and their sceptics, not very clear or refined in their

notions, but such as lacked neither profundity in their general view of

the questions, nor ingenious subtilty in their argumentative process. We

do not care to give in this place any exposition or estimate of their

doctrines; we shall simply point out what there was original and

characteristic in their fashion of philosophizing, and wherein their

mental condition differed essentially from that which was engendered and

propagated, in the sixteenth century, by the resuscitation of Greek and

Roman antiquity.

It is the constant idea of the philosophers and theologians of that

period to affirm and to demonstrate the agreement between Christian faith

and reason. They consider themselves placed between two fixed points,

faith in the Christian truths inculcated from the very first or formally

revealed by God to man, and reason, which is the faculty given to man to

enable him to recognize the truth. “Faith,” wrote Hildebert, Archbishop

of Tours, in the eleventh century, “is not contrary to reason, but it is

above reason. If, like the philosophers, one willeth not to believe

anything but what reason comprehends, faith, in this case, hath no merit.

The merit is in believing that which, without being contrary to reason,

is above it. . . . Faith is certainty in respect of things which fall

not under the perceptions of the body; it is below knowledge, for to

believe is less than to know; and it is above opinion, for to believe is

more than to imagine.” “I do not seek to understand in order to

believe,” says St. Anselm; “I believe in order to understand. . . .

Authority requires faith in order to prepare man for reason.” But

“authority,” said St. Columban, in the sixth century, “proceeds from

right reason, not at all reason from authority. Every authority whereof

the decrees are not approved of by right reason appears mighty weak.”

Minds so liberal in the face of authority, and at the same time attached

to revealed and traditional faith, could not but be sometimes painfully

perplexed. “My wounded spirit,” said Adam of the Premontre-order (le

premontre), in the twelfth century, “calls to her aid that which is the

source of all grace and all life. But where is it? What is it? In her

trouble the spirit hath love abiding; but she knows no longer what it is

she loves, what she ought to love. She addresseth herself to the stones

and to the rocks, and saith to them, ‘What are ye?’ And the stones and

the rocks make answer, ‘We are creatures of the same even as thou art.’

To the like question the sun, the moon, and the stars make the like

answer. The spirit doth interrogate the sand of the sea, the dust of the

earth, the drops of rain, the days of the years, the hours of the days,

the moments of the hours, the turf of the fields, the branches of the

trees, the leaves of the branches, the scales of fish, the wings of

birds, the utterances of men, the voices of animals, the movements of

bodies, the thoughts of minds; and these things declare, all with one

consent, unto the spirit, ‘We are not that which thou demandest; search

up above us, and thou wilt find our Creator!’” In the tenth century,

Remigius the theologian had gone still farther: “I have resolved,” said

he, “to make an investigation as to my God; for it doth not suffice me to

believe in Him; I wish further to see somewhat of Him. I feel that there

is somewhat beyond my spirit. If my spirit should abide within herself

without rising above herself, she would see only herself; it must be

above herself that my spirit will reach God.”

God, creator, lawgiver, and preserver of the universe and of man,

everywhere and always present and potent, in permanent connection, nay,

communication, with man, at one time by natural and at another by

supernatural means, at one time by the channel of authority and at

another by that of free-agency, this is the point of departure, this the

fixed idea of the philosopho-theologians of the middle ages. There are

great gaps, great diversities, and great inconsistencies in their

doctrines; they frequently made unfair use of the subtile dialectics

called scholastics (la scolastique), and they frequently assigned too

much to the master’s authority (l’autorite du maitre); but Christian

faith, more or less properly understood and explained, and adhesion to

the facts, to the religious and moral precepts, and to the primitive and

essential testimonies of Christianity, are always to be found at the

bottom of their systems and their disputes. Whether they be pantheists

even or sceptics, it is in an atmosphere of Christianity that they live

and that their thoughts are developed.

A breath from the grand old pagan life of Greece and Rome heaved forth

again and spread, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, throughout

this Christian atmosphere of the middle ages. Greek and Roman antiquity,

with its ideas and its works, had never been completely forgotten

therein. Aristotle and Plato, Seneca, Epictetus, Boetius, and other

ancients had taken their place amongst the studies and philosophical

notions of that period; but their influence had been limited to

professional scholars, and had remained without any social influence.

In spite of the stateliness of its ceremonies and the charm of its

traditions, paganism had never been, in plain truth, a religion; faith

and piety had held but a paltry place in it; instead of a God, the

creator and acting sovereign of the world, its gods were of human

invention and human nature: their adventures and the parts they played

were pleasing to the imagination, but gave no sort of satisfaction to the

deep instincts and higher aspirations of the soul. Christianity is God

hovering over, watching over, and descending to earth; paganism is earth,

its children and the stories of their lives transported, with their vices

rather than their virtues, to heaven. Olympus was peopled with nothing

but personages belonging to popular tradition, mythology, or allegory;

and in the fifteenth century this mythology was in full course of decay;

all that it might have commanded of credence or influence had vanished;

there remained of it nothing but barren memories or a contemptuous

incredulity. Speaking from the religious point of view, the Renaissance

was but a resurrection of paganism dying out before the presence of the

Christian world, which was troubled and perplexed, but full of life and

futurity.

The religious question thus set on one side, the Renaissance was a great

and happy thing, which restored to light and honor the works and glories

of the Greek and Roman communities, those two communities which, in

history anterior to the sixteenth century, had reached the greatest

prosperity and splendor under a civil regimen, in the midst of a more or

less stormy but real and strong political freedom, and had attained by

the mere development of human thought and human energy the highest degree

of civilization yet known in Europe, and, one would be inclined to say,

in the world. The memorials and monuments of this civilization, which

were suddenly removed, at the fall of the Greek empire, to Italy first

and then from Italy to France, and throughout the whole of Western

Europe, impressed with just admiration people as well as princes, and

inspired them with the desire of marching forward in their turn in this

attractive and glorious career. This kind of progress, arrived at by the

road of imitation, often costs dear in the interruption it causes to the

natural course of the peculiar and original genius of nations; but this

is the price at which the destinies of diverse communities get linked

together and interpenetrate, and the general progress of humanity is

accomplished.

It was not only in religious questions and by their philosopho-

theologians that the middle ages, before the Renaissance, displayed their

activity and fecundity. In literature and in art, in history and in

poesy, in architecture and in sculpture, they had produced great and

beautiful works, which were quite worthy of surviving, and have, in fact,

survived the period of their creation. Here, too, the Renaissance of

Greek and Roman antiquity came in, and altered the originality of the

earliest productions of the middle ages, and gave to literature and to

art in France a new direction. It will be made a point here to note with

some exactness the peculiar and native character of French literature at

its origin. It is a far cry from the middle ages to the time of Louis

XIV.; but the splendors of the most lovely days do not efface the charm

belonging to the glimmerings of dawn.

The first amongst the literary creations of the middle ages is that of

the French language itself. When we pass from the ninth to the

thirteenth century, from the oath of Charles the Bald and Louis the

Germanic at Strasbourg, in 842, to the account of the conquest of

Constantinople in 1203, given by Geoffrey de Villehardouin, seneschal of

Champagne, what a space has been traversed, what progress accomplished in

the language of France! It was, at first, nothing but a coarse and

irregular mixture of German and Latin, the former still in a barbarous

and the latter already in a corrupted state; and amidst this mixture

appear some fragments of the Celtic idioms of Gaul, without any literary

tradition to regulate this mass of incoherence and confusion. As for

following the development, regulation, and transformation of the French

national language during these three centuries, and marking how it issued

from this formless and vulgar chaos, there are not facts and documents

enough for our guidance throughout that long travail; but when the

thirteenth century begins, when Villehardouin tells the tale of the

crusade, which put, for seventy years, Constantinople and the Greek

empire of the East in the hands of the Latin and German warriors of the

West, the French language, though still rude and somewhat fluctuating,

appears already rich, varied, and capable of depicting with fidelity and

energy events, ideas, characters, and the passions of men. There we have

French prose and French poesy in their simple and lusty youth; the

_Conquest of Constantinople_ by Geoffrey de Villehardouin, and the _Song

of Roland_ by the unknown poet who collected and put together in the form

of an epopee the most heroic amongst the legends of the reign of

Charlemagne, are the first great and beautiful monuments of French

literature in the middle ages.

The words are French literature; and of that alone is there any intention

of speaking here. The middle ages had, up to the sixteenth century, a

Latin literature; philosophers, theologians, and chroniclers all wrote in

Latin. The philosophers and theologians have already been spoken of.

Amongst the chroniclers some deserve the name of historians; not only do

they alone make us acquainted with the history of their times, but they

sometimes narrate it with real talent as observers and writers. Gregory

of Tours, Eginhard, William of Tyre, Guibert of Nogent, William of

Jumieges, and Orderic Vital are worthy of every attention from those

whose hearts are set upon thoroughly understanding the history of the

periods and the provinces of which those laborers of the middle ages

have, in Latin, preserved the memorials. The chief of those works have

been gathered together and translated in a special collection bearing the

name of Guizot. But it is with the reign of Francis I. that, to bid a

truce to further interruption, we commence the era of the real grand

literature of France, that which has constituted and still constitutes

the pride and the noble pleasure of the French public. Of that alone we

would here denote the master-works and the glorious names, putting them

carefully at the proper dates and places in the general course of events;

a condition necessary for making them properly understood and their

influence properly appreciated. As to the reign of Francis I., however,

it must be premised as follows: several of the most illustrious of French

writers, in poesy and prose, Ronsard, Montaigne, Bodin, and Stephen

Pasquier, were born during that king’s lifetime and during the first half

of the sixteenth century; but it is to the second half of that century

and to the first of the seventeenth that they belong by the glory of

their works and of their influence; their place in history will be

assigned to them when we enter upon the precise epoch at which they

performed and shone. We will at present confine ourselves to the great

survivors of the middle ages, whether in prose or poesy, and to the men

who shed lustre on the reign of Francis I. himself, and led French

literature in its first steps along the road on which it entered at that

period.

The middle ages bequeathed to French literature four prose-writers whom

we cannot hesitate to call great historians: Villehardouin, Joinville,

Froissart, and Commynes. Geoffrey de Villehardouin, after having taken

part, as negotiator and soldier, in the crusade which terminated in the

capture of Constantinople, and having settled in Thessaly, at

Messinopolis, as holder of considerable fiefs, with the title of Marshal

of Romania (Roumelia), employed his leisure in writing a history of this

great exploit. He wrote with a dignified simplicity, epic and at the

same time practical, speaking but little of himself, narrating facts with

the precision of one who took part in them, and yet without useless

detail or personal vanity, finding pleasure in doing justice to his

comrades, amongst others the veteran Doge of Venice, Henry Dandolo, and

sometimes intermingling with his story the reflections of a judicious and

sincere Christian, without any pious fanaticism and without ostentation.

Joinville wrote his History of St. Louis at the request of Joan of

Navarre, wife of Philip the Handsome, and five years after that queen’s

death; his manuscripts have it thus: “The things which I personally saw

and heard were written in the year of grace 1309, in the month of

October.” He was then eighty-five, and he dedicated his book to Louis le

Hutin (the quarreller), great-grandson of St. Louis. More lively and

more familiar in style than Villehardouin, he combines the vivid and

natural impressions of youth with an old man’s fond clinging to the

memories of his long life; he likes to bring himself upon the scene,

especially as regards his relations towards and his conversations with

St. Louis, for whom he has a tender regard and admiration, at the same

time that he maintains towards him a considerable independence of ideas,

conduct, and language; he is a valiant and faithful knight, who forms a

very sensible opinion as to the crusade in which he takes part, and who

will not enter upon it a second time even to follow the king to whom he

is devoted, but whose pious fanaticism and warlike illusions he does not

share; his narrative is at one and the same time very full of himself

without any pretension, and very spirited without any show of passion,

and fraught with a graceful and easy carelessness which charms the reader

and all the while inspires confidence in the author’s veracity.

Froissart is an insatiable Fry, who revels in all the sights of his day,

events and personages, wars and galas, adventures of heroism or

gallantry, and who is incessantly gadding about through all the dominions

and all the courts of Europe, everywhere seeking his own special

amusement in the satisfaction of his curiosity. He has himself given an

account of the manner in which he collected and wrote his Chronicles.

“Ponder,” says he, “amongst yourselves, such of ye as read me, or will

read me, or have read me, or shall hear me read, how I managed to get and

put together so many facts whereof I treat in so many parts. And, for to

inform you of the truth, I began young, at the age of twenty years, and I

came into the world amidst the deeds and adventures, and I did always

take great delight in them, more than in aught else. And God gave me

such grace that I was well with all parties, and with the households of

the kings, and, especially, the household of King Edward of England, and

the noble queen his wife, Madame Philippa of Hainault, unto whom, in my

youth, I was clerk, and I did minister unto her with beautiful ditties

and amorous treatises. And for love of the service of the noble and

valiant dame with whom I was, all the other lords, kings, dukes, counts,

barons, and knights, of whatsoever nation they might be, did love me and

hear me and see me gladly, and brought me great profit. . . . Thus,

wherever I went, I made inquiry of the old knights and squires who had

been at deeds of arms, and who were specially fit to speak thereof, and

also of certain heralds in good credit for to verify and justify all

matters. Thus have I gotten together this lofty and noble history.”

This picture of Froissart and his work by his own hand would be

incomplete without the addition of a characteristic anecdote. In one of

his excursions in search of adventures and stories, “he fell in at

Pamiers with a good knight, Messire Espaing of Lyons, who had been in all

the wars of the time, and managed the great affairs of princes. They set

out to travel together, Messire Espaing telling his comrade what he knew

about the history of the places whereby they passed, and Froissart taking

great care to ride close to him for to hear his words. Every evening

they halted at hostels where they drained flagons full of white wine as

good as the good canon had ever drunk in his life; then, after drinking,

so soon as the knight was weary of relating, the chronicler wrote down

just the substance of his stories, so as to better leave remembrance of

them for time to come, as there is no way of retaining so certain as

writing down.”

There is no occasion to add to these quotations; they give the most

correct idea that can be formed of Froissart’s chronicles and their

literary merit as well as their historical value.

Philip de Commynes is quite another affair, and far more than Froissart,

nay, than Joinville and Villehardouin. He is a politician proficient in

the understanding and handling of the great concerns and great personages

of his time. He served Charles the Rash and Louis XI.; and, after so

trying an experience, he depicted them and passed judgment upon them with

imperturbable clearsightedness and freedom of thought. With the recital

of events, as well as the portrayal of character, he mingles here and

there the reflections, expressed in precise, firm, and temperate

language, of a profound moralist, who sets before himself no other aim

but that of giving his thoughts full utterance. He has already been

spoken of in the second volume of this History, in connection with his

leaving the Duke of Burgundy’s service for that of Louis XI., and with

his remarks upon the virtues as well as the vices of that able but

unprincipled despot. We will not go again over that ground. As a king’s

adviser, Commynes would have been as much in place at the side of Louis

XIV. as at that of Louis XI.; as a writer, he, in the fifteenth century,

often made history and politics speak a language which the seventeenth

century would not have disowned.

Let us pass from the prose-writers of the middle ages to their poets.

The grand name of poesy is here given only to poetical works which have

lived beyond their cradles and have taken rank amongst the treasures of

the national literature. Thanks to sociability of manners, vivacity of

intellect, and fickleness of taste, light and ephemeral poesy has

obtained more success and occupied more space in France than in any other

country; but there are successes which give no title to enter into a

people’s history; quality and endurance of renown are even more requisite

in literature than in politics; and many a man whose verses have been

very much relished and cried up in his lifetime has neither deserved nor

kept in his native land the beautiful name of poet. Setting aside, of

course, the language and poems of the troubadours of Southern France, we

shall find, in French poesy previous to the Renaissance, only three works

which, through their popularity in their own time, still live in the

memory of the erudite, and one only which, by its grand character and its

superior beauties, attests the poetical genius of the middle ages and can

claim national rights in the history of France. _The Romance of the

Rose_ in the erotic and allegorical style, the _Romances of Renart_ in

the satirical, and the _Farce of Patelin,_ a happy attempt in the line of

comedy, though but little known nowadays to the public, are still and

will remain subjects of literary study. _The Song of Roland_ alone is an

admirable sample of epic poesy in France, and the only monument of

poetical genius in the middle ages which can have a claim to national

appreciation in the nineteenth century. It is almost a pity not to

reproduce here the whole of that glorious epopee, as impressive from the

forcible and pathetic simplicity of its sentiments and language as from

the grandeur of the scene and the pious heroism of the actors in it. It

is impossible, however, to resist the pleasure of quoting some fragments

of it. The best version to refer to is that which has been given almost

word for word, from the original text, by M. Leon Gaultier, in his

beautiful work, so justly crowned by the _Academie des Inscriptions et

Belles-lettres, on Lee Epopees Francaises_.

In 778 Charlemagne was returning from a great expedition in Spain, during

which, after having taken Pampeluna, he had failed before Saragossa, and

had not considered himself called upon to prolong his struggle with the

Arab Mussulmans. He with the main body of his army had crossed the

Pyrenees, leaving as rearguard a small division under his nephew Roland,

prefect of the Marches of Brittany, Anselm, count of the palace, Oliver,

Roland’s comrade, Archbishop Turpin, and several other warriors of

renown. When they arrived at the little valley of Roncesvalles, between

the defiles of Sizer and Val Carlos, this rearguard was unexpectedly

attacked by thousands of Basque mountaineers, who were joined by

thousands of Arabs eager to massacre and plunder the Christians and

Franks, who, indeed, perished to a man in this ambuscade. “The news of

this disaster,” says Eginhard, in his Annales, “obscured the glory of the

successes the king had but lately obtained in Spain.” This fact, with

large amplifications, became the source of popular legends and songs,

which, probably towards the end of the eleventh century, became embodied

in the _Song of Roland,_ attributed, in two manuscripts, but without any

certainty, to a certain Thuroulde (Turold), Abbot of Malmesbury and

Peterborough under William the Conqueror. It must suffice to reproduce

here only the most beautiful and most characteristic passages of this

little national epopee, a truly Homeric picture of the quasi-barbarous

times and manners of knightly Christendom.

The eighty-second strophe of the poem commences thus:

“‘Of Paynim yonder, saw I more,’

Quoth Oliver, ‘than e’er before

The eye of man hath seen

An hundred thousand are a-field,

With helm and hauberk, lance and shield,

And pikes and pike-heads gleaming bright;

Prepare for fight, a fiercer fight

Than ever yet hath been.

Blow Olifant, friend Roland, blow,

That Charles and all his host may know.’

“To whom Sir Roland in reply:

‘A madman, then, good faith, were I

For I should lose all countenance

Throughout the pleasant land of France

Nay, rather, facing great and small,

I’ll smite amain with Durandal,

Until the blade, with blood that’s spilt,

Is crimson to the golden hilt.’

‘Friend Roland, sound a single blast

Ere Charles beyond its reach hath passed.’

‘Forbid it, God,’ cried Roland, then,

‘It should be said by living men

That I a single blast did blow

For succor from a Paynim foe!’

When Roland sees what moil will be,

Lion nor pard so fierce as he.

“Archbishop Turpin looks around,

Then forward pricks to higher ground

He halts, he speaks; the French give ear:

‘Lords barons, Charles hath left us here,

And for our king we’re bound to die;

For him maintain the Christian cause;

Behold! how near the battle draws;

Behold! where yonder Paynim lie;

Confess to God; and I will give

Absolvement, that your souls may live.

Pure martyrs are ye if ye fall;

And Paradise awaits ye all.’

“Down leap the French, on bended knee

They fall for benison; and he

Doth lay on all a penance light--

To strike their hardest in the fight.

“The French have risen to their feet;

They leap upon their chargers fleet;

Into the defiles rides their chief

On his good war-horse, Veillantif.

O, in his harness he looks grand!

On, on he goes with lance on high

Its tip is pointed to the sky;

It bears a snow-white pennon, and

Its golden fringes sweep his hand.

He scans the foe with haughty glance,

With meek and sweet the men of France

‘Lords barons, gently, gently ride;

Yon Paynim rush to suicide;

No king of France could ever boast

The wealth we’ll strip from yonder host.’

And as the words die off his lips,

Christian and Paynim are at grips.

“A wondrous fight! The men of France

Thrust fiercely with the burnished lance!

O, ‘twas a sight of grief and dread,

So many wounded, bleeding, dead!

On back or face together they,

One on another falling, lay!

The Paynim cannot choose but yield,

And, willy-nilly, quit the field

The eager French are on their track,

With lances pointed at the back. . . .

“Then pricketh forth a Saracen,

Abyme by name, but worst of men

No faith hath he in God the One,

No faith in Holy Mary’s Son;

As black as melted pitch is he,

And not for all Galicia’s gold

Could he be bribed his hand to hold

From murder and from treachery;

No merry laugh, no sportive mien

In him was ever heard or seen. . . .

The good archbishop could not brook

On pagan such as he to look;

He saw and fain would strike him dead,

And calmly to himself he said,

‘Yon pagan, as it seems to me,

A grievous heretic must be;

‘There best to slay him, though I died;

Cowards I never could abide.’

“He mounts his steed, won, so they tell,

From Denmark’s monarch, hight Grosselle;

He slew the king and took the steed

The beast is light and built for speed;

His hoofs are neat, his legs are clean,

His thigh is short, his flanks are lean,

His rump is large, his back full height,

His mane is yellow, his tail is white;

With little ears and tawny head,

No steed like him was ever bred.

The good archbishop spurs a-field,

And smites Abyme upon the shield,

His emir’s shield, so thickly sown

With many a gem and precious stone,

Amethyst and topaz, crystals bright,

And red carbuncles flashing light:

The shield is shivered by the blow;

No longer worth a doit, I trow;

Stark dead the emir lies below.

‘Ha! bravely struck!’ the Frenchmen yell:

‘Our bishop guards the Cross right well!’

“To Oliver Sir Roland cried,

‘Sir comrade, can it be denied

Our bishop is a gallant knight?

None better ever saw the light!

How he doth strike

With lance and pike!’

Quoth Oliver, ‘Then in the fight

Haste we to aid him with our might!’

And so the battle is renewed:

The blows are hard, the melley rude;

The Christians suffer sore

Four times they charge and all is well,

But at the fifth--dread tale to tell--

The knights of France are doomed to fall,--

All, all her knights; for of them all

God spareth but threescore.

But O, their lives they dearly sell!

Sir Roland marks what loss is there,

And turns him to Sir Oliver

‘Dear comrade, whom pray God to bless,

In God’s own name see what distress--

Such heaps of vassals lying low--

Fair France hath suffered at a blow

Well may we weep for her, who’s left

A widow, of such lords bereft!

And why, O, why art thou not near,

Our king, our friend, to aid us here?

Say, Oliver, how might we bring

Our mournful tidings to the king?’

Quoth Oliver, ‘I know not, I

To fly were shame; far better die.’

Quoth Roland, ‘I my horn will blow,

That Charles may hear and Charles may know;

And, in the defiles, from their track

The French, I swear, will hasten back.’

Quoth Oliver, ‘‘Twere grievous shame;

‘Twould bring a blush to all thy name

When I said thus thou scornedst me,

And now I will not counsel thee.

And shouldst thou blow, ‘twere no great blast;

Already blood is gushing fast

From both thine arms.’ ‘That well may be,’

Quoth he, ‘I struck so lustily!

The battle is too strong: I’ll blow

Mine Olifant, that Charles may know.’

Quoth Oliver, ‘Had Charles been here,

This battle had not cost so dear;

But as for yon poor souls, I wis,

No blame can rest with them for this.’

‘Why bear me spite?’ Sir Roland said.

‘The fault,’ said he, ‘lies on thy head.

And mark my words; this day will see

The end of our good company;

We twain shall part--not as we met--

Full sadly ere yon sun bath set.’

The good archbishop hears the stir,

And thither pricks with golden spur;

And thus he chides the wrangling lords

‘Roland, and you, Sir Oliver,

Why strive ye with such bitter words

Horns cannot save you; that is past;

But still ‘twere best to sound a blast;

Let the king come: he’ll strike a blow

For vengeance, lest the Paynim foe

Back to their homes in triumph go.’

“With pain and dolor, groan and pant,

Count Roland sounds his Olifant:

The crimson stream shoots from his lips;

The blood from bursten temple drips;

But far, O, far the echoes ring,

And, in the defiles, reach the king;

Reach Naymes, and the French array:

‘Tis Roland’s horn,’ the king doth say;

‘He only sounds when brought to bay.’

How huge the rocks! How dark and steep!

The streams are swift! The valleys deep!

Out blare the trumpets, one and all,

As Charles responds to Roland’s call.

Round wheels the king, with choler mad,

The Frenchmen follow grim and sad;

Not one but prays for Roland’s life,

Till they have joined him in the strife.

But ah! what prayer can alter fate?

The time is past; too late! too late!

As Roland scans both plain and height,

And sees how many Frenchmen lie

Stretched in their mortal agony,

He mourns them like a noble knight:

‘Comrades, God give ye grace to-day,

And grant ye Paradise, I pray!

No lieges ever fought as they.

What a fair land, O France, art thou!

But ah! forlorn and widowed now!

O Oliver, at least to thee,

My brother, I must faithful be

Back, comrade mine, back let us go,

And charge once more the Paynim foe!’

“When Roland spies the cursed race,

More black than ink, without a trace,

Save teeth, of whiteness in the face,

‘Full certified,’ quoth he, ‘am I,

That we this very day shall die.

Strike, Frenchmen, strike; that’s all my mind!’

‘A curse on him who lags behind!’

Quoth gallant Oliver; and so

Down dash the Frenchmen on the foe. . . .

Sir Oliver with failing breath,

Knowing his wound is to the death,

Doth call to him his friend, his peer,

His Roland: ‘Comrade, come thou here;

To be apart what pain it were!’

When Roland marks his friend’s distress,

His face all pale and colorless,

‘My God!’ quoth he, ‘what’s now to do?

O my sweet France, what dole for you,

Widowed of all your warriors true!

You needs must perish!’ At such plaint,

Upon his steed he falls a-faint.

“See Roland riding in a swound:

And Oliver with mortal wound;

With loss of blood so dazed is he

He neither near nor far can see

What manner of man a man may be:

And, meeting with Sir Roland so,

He dealeth him a fearful blow

That splits the gilded helm in two

Down to the very nasal, though,

By luck, the skull it cleaves not through.

With blank amaze doth Roland gaze,

And gently, very gently, says,

‘Dear comrade, smit’st thou with intent?

Methinks no challenge hath been sent

I’m Roland, who doth love thee so.’

Quoth Oliver, ‘Thy voice I know,

But see thee not; God save thee, friend:

I struck thee; prithee pardon me.

No hurt have I; and there’s an end.’

Quoth Roland, ‘And I pardon thee

‘Fore man and God right willingly.’

They bow the head, each to his brother,

And so, in love, leave one another.”

(Oliver dies: Roland and Archbishop Turpin continue the fight.)

“Then Roland takes his horn once more;

His blast is feebler than before,

But still it reaches the emperor

He hears it, and he halts to shout,

‘Let clarions, one and all, ring out!’

Then sixty thousand clarions ring,

And rocks and dales set echoing.

And they, too, hear--the pagan pack;

They force the rising laughter back;

‘Charles, Charles,’ they cry, ‘is on our track!’

They fly; and Roland stands alone--

Alone, afoot; his steed is gone--

Brave Veillantif is gone, and so,

He, willy-nilly, afoot must go.

Archbishop Turpin needs his aid:

The golden helm is soon unlaced,

The light, white hauberk soon unbraced;

And gently, gently down he laid

On the green turf the bishop’s head;

And then beseechingly he said,--

“‘Ah! noble sir, your leave I crave

The men we love, our comrades brave,

All, all are dead; they must not lie

Here thus neglected; wherefore I

Will seek for them, each where he lies,

And lay them out before your eyes.’

‘Go,’ said the bishop, ‘and speed be thine

Thank God! the field is thine and mine.’

“Sir Roland searched the plain, and found

His comrade’s body on the ground;

Unto his heart he strained it tight,

And bore it off, as best he might.

Upon a shield he lays his friend

Beside the rest, and, for an end,

The bishop gives them, all and one,

Absolvement and a benison.

As Roland marks them lying there,

His peers all dead--and Oliver,

His mighty grief he cannot stay,

And, willy-nilly, swoons away.

“The bishop feeleth grief profound

To see Sir Roland in a swound.

Through Roncesvalles, well he knows,

A stream of running water flows,

And fain would he a journey make

To fetch thereof for Roland’s sake,

He totters forth; he makes essay;

But all! his feeble limbs give way;

Breaks his great heart; he falls and lies,

Face downward, in death’s agonies!

So Charles’s soldier-priest is dead

He who with mighty lance and sword

And preacher’s craft incessant warred

Against the scorners of the Lord:

God’s benediction on his head!

Count Roland laid him to his rest

Between his shoulders, on his breast,

He crossed the hands so fine and fair,

And, as his country’s customs were,

He made oration o’er him there

‘Ah! noble knight, of noble race,

I do commend thee to God’s grace

Sure never man of mortal birth

Served Him so heartily on earth.

Thou hadst no peer in any clime

To stoutly guard the Christian cause

And turn bad men to Christian laws,

Since erst the great Apostles’ time.

Now rest thy soul from dolor free,

And Paradise be oped to thee!’”

(A last encounter takes place: a Saracen left wounded on the

battle-field, seeing Roland in a swoon, gets up, and approaches him,

saying, “Vanquished, he is vanquished, the nephew of Charles! There is

his sword, which I will carry off to Arabia!”)

“And as he makes to draw the steel,

A something doth Sir Roland feel;

He opes his eyes, says nought but this,

‘Thou art not one of us, I wis,’

Raises the horn he would not quit,

And cracks the pagan’s skull with it. . .

And then the touch of death that steals

Down, down from head to heart he feels

Under yon pine he hastes away

On the green turf his head to lay

Placing beneath him horn and sword,

He turns towards the Paynim horde,

And, there, beneath the pine, he sees

A vision of old memories

A thought of realms he helped to win,

Of his sweet France, of kith and kin,

And Charles, his lord, who nurtured him.

He sighs, and tears his eyes bedim.

Then, not unmindful of his case,

Once more he sues to God for grace

‘O Thou, true Father of us all,

Who hatest lies, who erst did call

The buried Lazarus from the grave,

And Daniel from the lions save,

From all the perils I deserve

For sinful life my soul preserve!’

Then to his God outstretcheth he

The glove from his right hand; and, see!

St. Gabriel taketh it instantly.

God sends a cherub-angel bright,

And Michael, Saint of Peril hight;

And Gabriel comes; up, up they rise,

And bear the Count to Paradise.”

It is useless to carry these quotations any further; they are sufficient

to give an idea of the grand character of the poem in which so many

traits of really touching affection and so many bursts of patriotic

devotion and pious resignation are mingled with the merest brute courage.

Such, in its chief works, philosophical, historical, and poetical, was

the literature which the middle ages bequeathed to the reign of

Francis I. In history only, and in spite of the new character assumed

afterwards by the French language, this literature has had the honor of

preserving its nationality and its glory. Villehardouin, Joinville,

Froissart, and Commynes have remained great writers. In philosophy and

in poesy a profound revolution was approaching; the religious reform and

the fine literary genius as well as the grand French language of the

seventeenth century were preparing to rise above the intellectual

horizon. But between the moment when such advances dawn and that when

they burst forth there is nearly always a period of uncertain and

unfruitful transition: and such was the first half of the sixteenth

century, that is to say, the actual reign of Francis I.; it is often

called the reign of the Renaissance, which certainly originated in his

reign, but it did not grow and make any display until after him; the

religious, philosophical, and poetical revolution, Calvin, Montaigne, and

Ronsard, born in the earlier half of the seventeenth century, did not do

anything that exercised any power until the later. One single poet, a

third-rate one, Clement Marot, attained lustre under Francis I. Rabelais

is the only great prose writer who belongs strictly to that period. The

scholars, the learned critics of what had been left by antiquity in

general and by Greek and Roman antiquity in particular, Bude (Budaeus),

J. C. Scaliger; Muretus, Danes (Danesius), Arnyot, Ramus (Peter la

Ramee), Robert Estienne (Stephanus), Vatable (Watebled), Cujas, and

Turnebius make up the tale of literature specially belonging to and

originating in the reign of Francis I., just as the foundation of the

College Royal, which became the College de France, is his chief personal

claim to renown in the service of science and letters.

Let us return to the poets of the actual reign of Francis I. The first

we encounter speaks thus of himself:--

“I am not rich; that, certes, I confess;

But, natheless, well born and nobly bred;

I’m read by both the people and noblesse,

Throughout the world: ‘That’s Clement,’ it is said.

Men live their span; but I shall ne’er be dead.

And thou--thou hast thy meadow, well, and spring,

Wood, field, and castle--all that wealth can bring.

There’s just that difference ‘twixt thee and me.

But what I am thou couldst not be: the thing

Thou art, why, anybody else might be.”

Now who was this who, with perfect confidence, indulged in such proud

language? Was it a Homer, a Dante, a Corneille, one of those great

poetical geniuses whose works can move a whole people, are addressed to

all the world, and “will live forever”? No; it was a poet of the court

and of the fashionable world of Paris, of Blois, and of Amboise, in the

sixteenth century, a groom-of-the-chamber to Marguerite de Valois, and

one of Francis I.’s favorites, who had written elegies, eclogues,

epistles, complaints, roundelays, and epigrams on the incidents and for

his masters and mistresses of the hour; France owed to him none of those

great poetical works consecrated to description of the grand destinies

and grand passions of man, and to the future as well as to the writer’s

own time.

[Illustration: Clement Marot----162]

Clemont Marot, the son of a petty burgess of Cahors, named John Marot,

himself a poet in a small way, who had lived some time at the court of

Louis XII., under the patronage of Queen Anne of Bretagne, had a right to

style himself, “well born and nobly bred;” many of the petty burgesses of

Cahors were of noble origin, and derived therefrom certain privileges;

John Marot, by a frugal and regular life, had acquired and left to his

son two estates in the neighborhood of Cahors, where, no doubt, Clement

resided but little, for he lived almost constantly at the court, or

wandering about Europe, in every place where at one time the fortunes of

the king his protector and at another the storm of the nascent religious

reform left him stranded willy-nilly. He was present in 1525 at the

battle of Pavia, where he was wounded and taken prisoner with his king,

but soon released, since the Imperialists let go on easy terms gentlemen

of whom it was impossible to make a rich booty. From that time we do not

meet any more with Clement Marot in war or politics; to Marguerite de

Valois, to adventures of gallantry, and to success in his mundane line of

poesy his life was thenceforth devoted. The scandal of history has often

been directed against his relations with his royal patroness; but there

seems to be no real foundation for such a suspicion; the manners of the

sixteenth century admitted of intimacies in language, and sometimes even

of familiarities in procedure, contrasting strangely with demonstrations

of the greatest respect, nay, humility. Clement Marot was the king of

poesy and set the fashion of wit in his time; Marguerite had a generous

and a lively sympathy with wit, talent, success, renown; the princess and

the poet were mutually pleased with and flattered one another; and the

liberties allowed to sympathy and flattery were great at that time, but

far less significant than they would be in our day.

What were the cause, the degree, and the real value of this success and

this renown of which Clement Marot made so much parade, and for which his

contemporaries gave him credit? What change, what progress effected by

him, during his lifetime, in French literature and the French language

won for him the place he obtained and still holds in the opinion of the

learned?

A poet who no more than Clement Marot produced any great poetical work,

and was very different from him in their small way, Francis Villon, in

fact, preceded him by about three quarters of a century. The most

distinguished amongst the literary critics of our time have discussed the

question as to which of the two, Villon or Marot, should be regarded as

the last poet of the middle ages and the first of modern France.

M. Sainte-Beuve, without attempting to precisely solve that little

problem, has distinguished and characterized the two poets with so much

of truth and tact that there can be no hesitation about borrowing his

words: “Was Villon,” is the question he puts to himself, “an originator?

Did he create a style of poesy? Had he any idea of a literary reaction,

as we should say nowadays? What is quite certain is, that he possessed

original talent; that amidst all the execrable tricks wherein he

delighted and wherein he was a master, he possessed the sacred spark.

. . . A licentious scamp of a student, bred at some shop in the Cite

or the Place Maubert, he has a tone which, at least as much as that of

Regnier, has a savor of the places the author frequented. The beauties

whom he celebrates--and I blush for him--are none else than _la blanche

Savetiere_ (the fair cobbleress), or _la gente Saul cissiere, du coin_

(the pretty Sausage girl at the corner). But he has invented for some of

those natural regrets which incessantly recur in respect of vanished

beauty and the flight of years a form of expression, truthful, charming,

and airy, which goes on singing forever in the heart and ear of whosoever

has once heard it. He has flashes, nothing more than flashes, of

melancholy. . . . It is in reading the verses of Clement Marot that

we have, for the first time as it seems to me, a very clear and distinct

feeling of having got out from the circumbendibus of the old language,

from the Gallic tangle. We are now in France, in the land and amidst the

language of France, in the region of genuine French wit, no longer that

of the boor, or of the student, or of the burgess, but of the court and

good society. Good society, in poesy, was born with Marot, with Francis

I., and his sister Marguerite, with the Renaissance: much will still have

to be done to bring it to perfection, but it exists and will never cease

again. . . . Marot, a poet of wits rather than of genius or of great

talent, but full of grace and breeding, who has no passion, but is not

devoid of sensibility, has a way of his own of telling and saying things;

he has a turn of his own; he is, in a word, the agreeable man, the

gentleman-like man, who is bound to be pleasant and amusing, and who

discharges his duty with an easy air and unexceptionable gallantry.”

There we have exactly the new character which Marot, coming between

Villon and Ronsard, gave in the sixteenth century to French poesy. We

may be more exacting than M. Sainte-Beuve; we may regret that Marot,

whilst rescuing it from the streets, confined it too much to the court;

the natural and national range of poesy is higher and more extensive than

that; the Hundred Years’ War and Joan of Arc had higher claims. But it

is something to have delivered poesy from coarse vulgarity, and

introduced refinement into it. Clement Marot rendered to the French

language, then in labor of progression, and, one might say, of formation,

eminent service: he gave it a naturalness, a clearness, an easy swing,

and, for the most part, a correctness which it had hitherto lacked. It

was reserved for other writers, in verse and prose, to give it boldness,

the richness that comes of precision, elevation, and grandeur.

In 1534, amidst the first violent tempest of reform in France, Clement

Marot, accused of heresy, prudently withdrew and went to seek an asylum

at Ferrara, under the protection of the duchess, Renee of France,

daughter of Louis XII. He there met Calvin, who already held a high

position amongst the Reformers, and who was then engaged on a translation

of the Psalms in verse. The reformer talked to the poet about this grand

Hebrew poesy, which, according to M. Villemain’s impression, “has

defrayed in sublime coin the demands of human imagination.” Marot, on

returning to France, found the College Royal recently instituted there,

and the learned Vatable [Francis Watebled, born at Gamaches, in Picardy,

died at Paris in 1547] teaching Hebrew with a great attendance of pupils

and of the curious. The professor engaged the poet to translate the

Psalms, he himself expounding them to him word by word. Marot translated

thirty of them, and dedicated them to Francis I., who not only accepted

the dedication, but recommended the work and the author to Charles V.,

who was at that time making a friendly passage through France on his way

to put down the insurrection at Ghent. “Charles V. accepted the said

translation graciously” [as appears by a letter in 1559 to Catherine de’

Medici from Villemadon, one of Marguerite of Navarre’s confidential

servants], “commended it both by words and by a present of two hundred

doubloons, which he made to Marot, thus giving him courage to translate

the rest of the Psalms, and praying him to send him as soon as possible

the Psalm _Confitemini Domino, quoniam bonus_ [Trust in the Lord, for He

is good], so fond was he of it.” Singular fellow-feeling between Charles

V. and his great adversary Luther, who said of that same psalm, “It is

my friend; it has saved me in many a strait from which emperor, kings,

sages, nor saints could have delivered me!” Clement Marot, thus aided

and encouraged in this work which gave pleasure to Francis I. and Charles

V., and must have been still more interesting to Calvin and Luther,

prosecuted his work and published in 1541 the first thirty psalms; three

years afterwards, in 1543, he added twenty others, and dedicated the

collection “to the ladies of France,” in an epistle wherein the following

verses occur:

“Happy the man whose favored ear

In golden days to come shall hear

The ploughman, as he tills the ground,

The tarter, as he drives his round,

The shopman, as his task he plies,

With psalms or sacred melodies

Whiling the hours of toil away!

O, happy he who hears the lay

Of shepherd and of shepherdess,

As in the woods they sing and bless,

And make the rocks and pools proclaim

With them their great Creator’s name!

O, can ye brook that God invite

Them before you to such delight?

Begin, ladies, begin! . . .”

A century after Marot’s time, in 1649, a pious and learned Catholic,

Godeau, Bishop of Grasse and member of the nascent French Academy, was in

his turn translating the Psalms, and rendered full justice to the labors

of the poet, his predecessor, and to the piety of the Reformers, in the

following terms “Those whose separation from the church we deplore have

rendered the version they make use of famous by the pleasing airs that

learned musicians set them to when they were composed. To know them by

heart is, amongst them, a sign of the communion to which they belong, and

in the towns in which they are most numerous the airs may be heard coming

from the mouths of artisans, and in the country from those of tillers.”

In 1555, eight years after the death of Francis I., Estienne Pasquier

wrote to Ronsard, “In good faith, there was never seen in France such a

glut of poets. I fear that in the long run people will weary of them.

But it is a vice peculiar to us that as soon as we see anything

succeeding prosperously for any one, everybody wants to join in.”

Estienne Pasquier’s fear was much better grounded after the death of

Francis I., and when Ronsard had become the head of the poet-world, than

it would have been in the first half of the sixteenth century. During

the reign of Francis I. and after the date of Clement Marot, there is no

poet of any celebrity to speak of, unless we except Francis I. himself

and his sister Marguerite; and it is only in compliment to royalty’s name

that they need be spoken of. They, both of them, had evidently a mania

for versifying, even in their most confidential communications, for many

of their letters to one another, those during the captivity of Francis I.

at Madrid amongst the rest, are written in verse; but their verses are

devoid of poesy; they are prose, often long-winded and frigid, and

sometimes painfully labored. There is, however, a distinction to be made

between the two correspondents. In the letters and verses of Marguerite

there is seen gleaming forth here and there a sentiment of truth and

tenderness, a free and graceful play of fancy. We have three collections

of her writings: 1. her _Heptameron, ou les Sept Journees de la Reine de

Navarre,_ a collection of sixty-eight tales more or less gallant,

published for the first time in 1558, without any author’s name; 2. her

_OEuvres poetiques,_ which appeared at Lyons in 1547 and 1548, in

consequence of her being alive, under the title of _Les Marguerites de la

Marguerite des Princesses_ (the Pearls of the Pearl of Princesses), and

of which one of her grooms of the chamber was editor; in addition to

which there is a volume of _Poesies inedites,_ collected by order of

Marguerite herself, but written by the hand of her secretary John Frotte,

and preserved at Paris amongst the manuscripts of the Bibliotheque

nationale; 3. the Collection of her Letters, published in 1841, by M. F.

Genin. This last collection is, morally as well as historically, the

most interesting of the three. As for Francis I. himself, there is

little, if anything, known of his posies beyond those which have been

inserted in the _Documents relatifs a sa Captivite a Madrid,_ published

in 1847 by M. Champollion-Figeac; some have an historical value, either

as regards public events or Francis I.’s relations towards his mother,

his sister, and his mistresses; the most important is a long account of

his campaign, in 1525, in Italy, and of the battle of Pavia; but the

king’s verses have even less poetical merit than his sister’s.

Francis I.’s good will did more for learned and classical literature than

for poesy. Attention has already been drawn to the names of the

principal masters in the great learned and critical school which devoted

itself, in this reign, to the historical, chronological, philological,

biographical, and literary study of Greek and Roman antiquity, both Pagan

and Christian. It is to the labors of this school and to their results

that the word Renaissance is justly applied, and that the honor is

especially to be referred of the great intellectual progress made in the

sixteenth century. Francis I. contributed to this progress, first by the

intelligent sympathy he testified towards learned men of letters, and

afterwards by the foundation of the _College Royal,_ an establishment of

a special, an elevated, and an independent sort, where professors found a

liberty protected against the routine, jealousy, and sometimes

intolerance of the University of Paris and the Sorbonne. The king and

his sister Marguerite often went to pay a visit, at his printing-place in

St. Jean de Beauvais Street, to Robert Estienne (Stephanus), the most

celebrated amongst that family of printer-publishers who had so much to

do with the resurrection of ancient literature. It is said that one day

the king waited a while in the work-room, so as not to disturb Robert

Estienne in the correction of a proof.

[Illustration: Francis I. waits for Robert Estienne----168]

When the violence bred of religious quarrels finally forced the learned

and courageous printer to expatriate himself, his first care was to say,

at the head of his apology, “When I take account of the war I have

carried on with the Sorbonne for a space of twenty years or thereabouts,

I cannot sufficiently marvel how so small and broken-down a creature as I

am had strength to maintain it. When I was seen being harried on all

sides, how often have I been the talk on street and at banquets, whilst

people said, ‘It is all over with him; he is caught, he cannot escape;

even if the king would, he could not save him.’ . . . I wish to

justify myself against the reproach of having left my country, to the

hurt of the public weal, and of not having acknowledged the great

liberality displayed towards me by the king; since it was a high honor

for me that the king, having deigned to make me his printer, always kept

me under his protection, in the face of all who envied me and wished me

ill, and never ceased to aid me graciously in all sorts of ways.”

The _College Royal,_ no less than Robert Estienne, met with obstacles and

ill-wishers; it was William Bude (Budeaus) who first suggested the idea

of the college to the king, primarily with the limited purpose of

securing instruction in Greek and Hebrew, after the fashion of the

College of Young Grecians and the College of the Three Languages (the

Trilingual, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin), of which the former was founded at

Rome by Leo X., the latter at Louvain by Canon Jerome Busleyden. Francis

I. readily surrendered himself to more magnificent projects; he was

anxious to erect a splendid building on the site of the Hotel de Nesle,

and to put Erasmus at the head of the College Royal. War incessantly

renewed and the nascent religious troubles interfered with his

resolutions; but William Bude never ceased to urge upon the king an

extension of the branches of learning in the establishment; and after the

Peace of Cambrai in 1529, chairs of mathematics, Oriental languages,

Latin oratory, Greek and Latin philosophy, and medicine were successively

added to the chairs of Hebrew and Greek which had been the original

nucleus of instruction in the College Royal. It continued to be an

object of suspicion to the Sorbonne and of hesitation in the Parliament,

to which royalty had recourse against the attacks of its adversaries.

But it had no lack of protectors, nevertheless: the Cardinal of Lorraine,

Charles IX., and Catherine de’ Medici herself supported it in its trials;

and Francis I. had the honor of founding a great school of the higher

sort of education, a school, which, throughout all the religious

dissensions and all the political revolutions of France, has kept its

position and independence, whatever may have been elsewhere, in the

matter of public instruction, the system and the regimen of state

establishments.

A few words have already been said about the development of the arts,

especially architecture and sculpture, in the middle ages, and of the

characteristics, original and national, Gallic and Christian, which

belonged to them at this period, particularly in respect of their

innumerable churches, great and small. A foreglance has been given of

the alteration which was brought about in those characteristics, at the

date of the sixteenth century, by the Renaissance, at the same time that

the arts were made to shine with fresh and vivid lustre. Francis I. was

their zealous and lavish patron; he revelled in building and embellishing

palaces, castles, and hunting-boxes, St. Germain, Chenonceaux,

Fontainebleau, and Chambord; his chief councillors, Chancellor Duprat and

Admiral Bonnivet, shared his taste and followed his example; several

provinces, and the banks of the Loire especially, became covered with

splendid buildings, bearing the marks of a complicated character which

smacked of imitations from abroad. Italy, which, from the time of

Charles VIII. and Louis XII., had been the object of French kings’

ambition and the scene of French wars, became also the school of French

art; national and solemn Christian traditions were blended, whilst taking

an altered form, with the Italian resuscitation of Greek and Roman

antiquity. Italian artists, such as Rosso of Florence, Primatice of

Bologna, Niccolo dell’ Abbate of Modena, and Benvenuto Cellini of

Florence, came and settled in France, and there inspired and carried out

the king’s projects and works. Leonardo da Vinci, full of years and

discontented with his Italian patrons, accompanied Francis I. to France,

and died in his arms at the castle of Clou, near Amboise, where he had

fixed his residence. Some great French artists, such as the painter John

Cousin and the sculptor John Goujon, strove ably to uphold the original

character and merits of French art; but they could not keep themselves

entirely aloof from the influence of this brilliant Italian art, for

which Francis I.’s successors, even more than he, showed a zealous and

refined attachment, but of which he was, in France, the first patron.

We will not quit the first half of the sixteenth century and the literary

and philosophical Renaissance which characterizes that period, without

assigning a place therein at its proper date and in his proper rank to

the name, the life, and the works of the man who was not only its most

original and most eminent writer, but its truest and most vivid

representative, Rabelais.

[Illustration: Rabelais----171]

Francis Rabelais, who was born at Chinon in 1495, and died at Paris in

1553, wandered during those fifty-eight years about France and Europe

from town to town, from profession to profession, from good to bad and

from bad to good estate; first a monk of the Cordeliers; then, with Pope

Clement VII.’s authority, a Benedictine; then putting off the monk’s

habit and assuming that of a secular priest in order to roam the world,

“incurring,” as he himself says, “in this vagabond life, the double

stigma of suspension from orders and apostasy;” then studying medicine at

Montpellier; then medical officer of the great hospital at Lyons, but,

before long, superseded in that office “for having been twice absent

without leave;” then staying at Lyons as a corrector of proofs, a

compiler of almanacs, an editor of divers books for learned patrons, and

commencing the publication of his _Vie tres-horrifique du grand

Gargantua, pere de Pantagruel_ (Most horrifying life of the great

Gargantua, father of Pantagruel), which was immediately proceeded against

by the Sorbonne “as an obscene tale.” On grounds of prudence or

necessity Rabelais then quitted Lyons and set out for Rome as physician

attached to the household of Cardinal John Du Bellay, Bishop of Paris and

envoy from France to the Holy See; the which bishop “having relished the

profound learning and competence of Rabelais, and having, besides,

discovered in him fine humor and a conversation capable of diverting the

blackest melancholy, retained him near his person in the capacity of

physician in ordinary to himself and all his family, and held him ever

afterwards in high esteem.” After two years passed at Rome, and after

rendering all sorts of service in his patron’s household, Rabelais,

“feeling that the uproarious life he was leading and his licentious deeds

were unworthy of a man of religion and a priest,” asked Pope Paul III.

for absolution, and at the same time permission to resume the habit of

St. Benedict, and to practise “for piety’s sake, without hope of gain and

in any and every place,” the art of medicine, wherein he had taken, he

said, the degrees of bachelor, licentiate, and doctor. A brief of Pope

Paul III.’s, dated January 17, 1536, granted his request. Seventeen

months afterwards, on the 22d of May, 1537, Rabelais reappears at

Montpellier, and there receives, it is said, the degree of doctor, which

he had already taken upon himself to assume. He pursues his life of

mingled science and adventure, gives lessons, and gads about so much that

“his doctor’s gown and cap are preserved at Montpellier, according to

tradition, all dirty and torn, but objects of respectful reminiscence.”

In 1538 Rabelais leaves Montpellier, and goes to practise medicine at

Narbonne, Castres, and Lyons. In 1540 he tires of it, resumes, as he had

authority to do, the habit of a canon of St. Maur, and settles in that

residence, “a paradise,” as he himself says, “of salubrity, amenity,

serenity, convenience, and all the chaste pleasures of agriculture and

country-life.” Between 1540 and 1551 he is, nevertheless, found once

more wandering, far away from this paradise, in France, Italy, and,

perhaps, England; he completes and publishes, under his own name, the

_Faits et Dicts heroiques de Pantagruel,_ and obtains from Francis I. a

faculty for the publication of “these two volumes not less useful than

delightful, which the printers had corrupted and perverted in many

passages, to the great displeasure and detriment of the author, and to

the prejudice of readers.” The work made a great noise; the Sorbonne

resolved to attack it, in spite of the king’s approbation; but Francis I.

died on the 31st of March, 1547. Rabelais relapsed into his life of

embarrassment and vagabondage; on leaving France he had recourse, first

at Metz and afterwards in Italy, to the assistance of his old and ever

well-disposed patron, Cardinal John Du Bellay. On returning to France he

obtained from the new king, Henry II., a fresh faculty for the printing

of his books “in Greek, Latin, and Tuscan;” and, almost at the same time,

on the 18th of January, 1551, Cardinal Du Bellay, Bishop of Paris,

conferred upon him the cure of St. Martin at Meudon, “which he

discharged,” says his biographer Colletet, “with all the sincerity, all

the uprightness, and all the charity that can be expected of a man who

wishes to do his duty, and to the satisfaction of his flock.”

Nevertheless, when the new holder of the cure at Meudon, shortly after

his installation, made up his mind to publish the fourth book of the

_Faits et Dicts heroiques du bon Pantagruel,_ the work was censured by

the Sorbonne and interdicted by decree of Parliament, and authority to

offer it for sale was not granted until, on the 9th of February, 1552,

Rabelais had given in his resignation of his cure at Meudon, and of

another cure which he possessed, under the title of benefice, in the

diocese of Le Mans. He retired in bad health to Paris, where he died

shortly afterwards, in 1553, “in Rue des Jardins, parish of St. Paul, in

the cemetery whereof he was interred,” says Colletet, “close to a large

tree which was still to be seen a few years ago.”

Such a life, this constant change of position, profession, career, taste,

patron, and residence, bore a strong resemblance to what we should

nowadays call a Bohemian life; and everything shows that Rabelais’

habits, without being scandalous, were not more regular or more dignified

than his condition in the world. Had we no precise and personal

information about him in this respect, still his literary work,

_Gargantua and Pantagruel,_ would not leave us in any doubt: there is no

printed book, sketch, conversation, or story, which is more coarse and

cynical, and which testifies, whether as regards the author or the public

for whom the work is intended, to a more complete and habitual

dissoluteness in thought, morals, and language. There is certainly no

ground for wondering that the Sorbonne, in proceeding against the _Vie

tres-horrifique du grand Gargantua, pere de Pantagruel,_ should have

described it as “an obscene tale;” and the whole part of Panurge, the

brilliant talker of the tale,

“Take him for all in all the best boy in the world,”

fully justifies the Sorbonne. But, by way of striking contrast, at the

same time that the works of Rabelais attest the irregularity of men’s

lives and minds, they also reveal the great travail that is going on and

the great progress that has already been made in the intellectual

condition of his day, in the influence of natural and legitimate

feelings, and in the appreciation of men’s mutual rights and duties.

Sixty-two years ago M. Guizot published, in a periodical collection

entitled _Annales de l’Education,_ a Study of Rabelais’ ideas compared

with the practice and routine of his day in respect of Education; an

important question in the sixteenth as it is in the nineteenth century.

It will be well to quote here from that Study certain fragments which

will give some notion of what new ideas and tendencies were making their

way into the social life of France, and were coincident with that great

religious and political ferment which was destined to reach

bursting-point in the reign of Francis I., and to influence for nearly

a century the fortunes of France.

“It was no easy matter,” were the words used by M. Guizot in 1811, “to

speak reasonably about education at the time when Rabelais wrote. There

was then no idea of home-education and the means of rendering it

practicable. As to public education, there was no extensive range and

nothing really useful to the community in the instruction received by

children at college; no justice and no humanity in the treatment they

experienced; a fruitless and ridiculously prolonged study of words

succeeded by a no less fruitless study of interminable subtilties, and

all this fruitless knowledge driven into the brains of children by help

of chastisements, blows, and that barbarous severity which seems to

regard the _Compelle intrare_ as the principal law and object of

instruction. How proceed, in such a state of things, to conceive a plan

of liberal, gentle, and reasonable education? Rabelais, in his book,

had begun by avoiding the danger of directly shocking received ideas;

by transporting both himself and his heroes to the regions of imagination

and extravagance he had set himself at liberty to bring them up in quite

a different fashion than that of his times; the rectors of colleges could

not pretend that Pantagruel, who was hardly born before he sucked down at

every meal the milk of four thousand six hundred cows, and for whose

first shirt there had been cut nine hundred ells of Chatellerault linen,

was a portrait of any of the little boys who trembled at their ferules.

. . . Pantagruel is in his cradle; he is bound and swathed in it like

all children at that time; but, ere long, Gargantua, his father,

perceives that these bands are constraining his movements, and that he is

making efforts to burst there; he immediately, by advice of the princes

and lords present, orders the said shackles to be undone, and lo!

Pantagruel is no longer uneasy. . . . And thus became he big and

strong full early. . . . There came, however, the time when his

instruction must begin. ‘My will,’ said Gargantua, ‘is to hand him over

to some learned man for to indoctrinate him according to his capacity,

and to spare nothing to that end.’ He, accordingly, put Pantagruel under

a great teacher, who began by bringing him up after the fashion of those

times. He taught him his charte (alphabet) to such purpose that he could

say it by heart backwards, and he was five years and three months about

it. Then he read with him Donotus and Facetus (old elementary works on

Latin grammar), and he was thirteen years, six months, and two weeks over

that. Then he read with him the De Modis significandi, with the

commentaries of Hurtebisius, Fasquin, and a heap of others, and he was

more than eighteen years and eleven months over them, and knew them so

well that he proved on his fingers to his mother that _de modis

signifieandi non erat scientia_. After so much labor and so many years,

what did Pantagruel know? Gargantua was no bigot: he did not shut his

eyes that he might not see, and he believed what his eyes told him. He

saw that Pantagruel worked very hard and spent all his time at it, and

yet he got no good by it. And what was worse, he was becoming daft,

silly, dreamy, and besotted through it. So Pantagruel was taken away

from his former masters and handed over to Ponocrates, a teacher of quite

a different sort, who was bidden to take him to Paris to make a new

creature of him and complete his education there. Ponocrates was very

careful not to send him to any college. Rabelais, as it appears, had a

special aversion for Montaigu College. ‘Tempeste,’ says he, ‘was a great

boy-flogger at Montaigu College. If for flogging poor little children,

unoffending school-boys, pedagogues are damned, he, upon my word of

honor, is now on Ixion’s wheel, flogging the dock-tailed cur that turns

it.’ Pantagruel’s education was now humane and gentle. Accordingly he

soon took pleasure in the work which Ponocrates was at the pains of

rendering interesting to him by the very nature and the variety of the

subjects of it. . . . Is it not a very remarkable phenomenon that at

such a time and in such a condition of public instruction a man should

have had sufficient sagacity not only to regard the natural sciences as

one of the principal subjects of study which ought to be included in a

course of education, but further to make the observation of nature the

basis of that study, to fix the pupil’s attention upon examination of

facts, and to impress upon him the necessity of applying his knowledge by

studying those practical arts and industries which profit by such

applications? That, however, Rabelais did, probably by dint of sheer

good sense, and without having any notion himself about the wide bearing

of his ideas. Ponocrates took Pantagruel through a course of what we

should nowadays call practical study of the exact and natural sciences as

they were understood in the sixteenth century; but, at the same time, far

from forgetting the moral sciences, he assigns to them, for each day, a

definite place and an equally practical character. ‘As soon as

Pantagruel was up,’ he says, ‘some page or other of the sacred Scripture

was read with him aloud and distinctly, with pronunciation suited to the

subject. . . . In accordance with the design and purport of this

lesson, he at frequent intervals devoted himself to doing reverence and

saying prayers to the good God, whose majesty and marvellous judgments

were shown forth in what was read. . . . When evening came, he and

his teacher briefly recapitulated together, after the manner of the

Pythagoreans, all that he had read, seen, learned, and heard in the

course of the whole day. They prayed to God the Creator, worshipping

Him, glorifying Him for his boundless goodness, giving Him thanks for all

the time that was past, and commending themselves to His divine mercy for

all that was to come. This done, they went to their rest.’ And at the

end of this course of education, so complete both from the worldly and

the religious point of view, Rabelais shows us young Pantagruel living in

affectionate and respectful intimacy with his father Gargantua, who, as

he sees him off on his travels, gives him these last words of advice:

Science without conscience is nought but ruin to the soul; it behooves

thee to serve, love, and fear God. Have thou in suspicion the abuses of

the world; set not thine heart on vanity, for this life is transitory,

but the word of God abideth forever. Reverence thy teachers; flee the

company of those whom thou wouldest not resemble. . . . And when thou

feelest sure that thou hast acquired all that is to be learned yonder,

return to me that I may see thee and give thee my blessing ere I die.’”

After what was said above about the personal habits and the works of

Rabelais, these are certainly not the ideas, sentiments, and language one

would expect to find at the end and as the conclusion of his life and his

book. And it is precisely on account of this contrast that more space

has been accorded in this history to the man and his book than would in

the natural course of things have been due to them. At bottom and,

beyond their mere appearances the life and the book of Rabelais are a

true and vivid reflection of the moral and social ferment characteristic

of his time. A time of innovation and of obstruction, of corruption and

of regeneration, of decay and of renaissance, all at once. A deeply

serious crisis in a strong and complicated social system, which had been

hitherto exposed to the buffets and the risks of brute force, but was

intellectually full of life and aspiration, was in travail of a double

yearning for reforming itself and setting itself in order, and did

indeed, in the sixteenth century, attempt at one and the same time a

religious and a political reformation, the object whereof, missed as it

was at that period, is still at the bottom of all true Frenchmen’s trials

and struggles. This great movement of the sixteenth century we are now

about to approach, and will attempt to fix its character with precision

and mark the imprint of its earliest steps.