Chapter XXIX: Francis I. and the Renaissance (1)

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.

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.

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?