Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/255

Rh V I L V I L 233 life would not be in themselves a reason for the minute investiga tion to which the events of that life have been subjected, and the result of which has been summed up here. But his poetical work, scanty as the certainly genuine part of it is, is of such extraordinary interest, and marks such an epoch in the history of European liter ature, that he has been at all times an interesting figure, and, like all very interesting figures, has been often praised for qualities quite other than those which lie really possessed. Boileau s famous verses, in which Villon is extolled for having first known how to smooth out the confused art of the old romancers, are indeed a prodigy of blundering or ignorance or both. As far as art, or the technical part of poetry goes, Villon made not the slightest advance on his predecessors, nor stood in any way in front of such contemporaries as his patron Charles d Orleans. His two Testaments (so called by the application to them of a regular class-name of mediaeval poetry) consist of eight-line stanzas of eight-syllabled verses, varied in the case of the Grand Testament by the insertion of ballades and rondeanx of very great beauty and interest, but not formally differ ent in any way from poems of the same kind for more than a century past. What really distinguishes Villon is the intenscr quality of his poetical feeling and expression, and what is perhaps arrogantly called the modern character of his subjects and thought. Mediaeval poetry, with rare exceptions, and, with exceptions not quite so rare, classical poetry, are distinguished by their lack of what is now called the personal note. In Villon this note sounds, struck with singular force and skill. Again, the simple joy of living which distinguishes both periods the mediaeval, despite a common opinion, scarcely less than the ancient has disappeared. Even the riot and rollicking of his earlier days arc mentioned with far less relish of remembrance than sense of their vanity. This sense of vanity, indeed, not of the merely religious, but of the purely mundane and even half pagan kind, is Villon s most prominent characteristic. It tinges his narrative, despite its burlesque bequests, all through ; it is the very keynote of his most famous and beautiful piece, the &quot;Ballade des Dames dn Temps Jadis,&quot; with its refrain &quot;Mais ou sont les neiges d antan ? &quot; as well as of his most daring piece of realism, the other ballade of &quot; La Grosse Margot,&quot; with its burden of hope less entanglement in shameless vice. It is nowhere more clearly sounded than in the piece which ranks with these two at the head of his work, the &quot;Regrets de la Belle Heanlmiere,&quot; in which a woman, once young and beautiful, now old and withered, laments her lost charms. So it is almost throughout his poems, including the grim &quot;Ballade des Pendus,&quot; and hardly excluding the very beautiful &quot; Ballade pour sa Mere,&quot; with its description of sincere and humble piety. It is in the profound melancholy which the dominance of this note has thrown over Villon s work, and in the suitableness of that melancholy to the temper of all generations since, that his charm and power have consisted, though it is difficult to conceive any time at which his poetical merit could be ignored. His certainly genuine poems consist of the two Testaments with their codicil (the latter containing the &quot; Ballade des Pendus,&quot; or more properly &quot; Epitaphe en Forme de Ballade,&quot; and some other pieces of a similarly grim humour), a few miscellaneous poems, chiefly ballades, and an extraordinary collection (called Le Jargon) of poems in argot, the greater part of which is now totally unintelligible, if, which may perhaps be doubted, it ever was otherwise. Besides these, certain poems of no inconsiderable interest are usually printed with Villon s works, though they are certainly, or almost certainly, not his. The chief are &quot;Les Kepues Franches,&quot; a curious series of verse stories of cheating tavern-keepers, &c., having some resemblance to those told of George Peele, but of a broader and coarser humour. These are beyond doubt, if not the poet s work, nearly contemporary with him, and may have some foundation in fact. Another of these spurious pieces is the extremely amusing monologue of the &quot; Franc Archier de Bagnolet,&quot; in which one of the newly constituted archers or regularly trained and paid soldiery, who were extremely unpopular in France, is made to expose his own poltroonery. The third most important piece of this kind is the &quot; Dialogue de Mallepaye et de Baillevent,&quot; a dramatic conversation between two penniless spendthrifts, which is not without merit. These poems, however, were never attributed to Villon or printed with his works till far into the 16th century. It has been said that the first dated edition of Villon is of 1489, though some have held one or more than one undated copy to be still earlier. Between the first, whenever it was, and 1542 there were no less than twenty seven editions, the most famous being that of Clement Marot in 1533, one of whose most honourable distinc tions is the care he took of his poetical predecessors. The Pleiade movement and the classicizing of the grand sitdc put Villon rather out of favour, and he was not again reprinted till early in the 18th century, when he attracted the attention of students of old French like Duchat, La Monnoye, and Prosper Marchand. The first critical edition in the modern sense that is to say, an edition founded on MSS. (of which there are in Villon s case several, chiefly at Paris and Stockholm) was that of the Abbe Prompsault in 1832. The next and on the whole the most important was that of the bibliophile Jacob (P. Lacroix) in the Bibliotheque Elzevirienne (Paris, 1854). Since then Villon has been frequently reprinted, Very great interest having been shown in him ; but not much has been done to the text till the recent and uncompleted labours of a Dutch scholar, Dr Bijvanck, who is occupied especially on the Stock holm MS. On the other hand, from the literary and biographical view, Villon has been exhaustively studied of late, especially by MM. Campaux, Vitu, and Longnon, the researches of the last-named (Paris, 1877) having probably ascertained everything that there is to know. In England, too, attempts have been made to translate his work, especially by the late D. G. Rossetti, by Mr Swinburne, and by Mr Andrew Lang, while a complete translation has been pro duced by Mr John Payne. (G. SA.) VILNA, or WILNO, a Lithuanian government of west Russia, has the Polish province of Suwatki on the W., Kovno and Vitebsk on the N. and E., and Minsk and Grodno on the E. and S. Its area is 16,421 square miles. Vilna lies on the broad marshy swelling, dotted with lakes, which separates POLAND (q.v.) from East Prussia and stretches east-north-east towards the Valdai Plateau. Its highest parts are a little more than 1000 feet above sea-level. On its western and eastern boundaries Vilna is deeply trenched by the valleys of the Niemen and the Dwina. Devonian limestones crop out in the north east. Elsewhere they are concealed by the marine and freshwater limestones and sandstones of the Eocene period, which cover nearly the whole of Vilna ; and these in their turn are overlain by thick layers of boulder clay, sands, and lacustrine deposits. The soil is for the most part clayey or sandy, fertile loam appearing only in the depres sion watered by the Vilia. Numerous lakes and marshes, partly covered with forests, and scarcely passable except when frozen, as well as wet meadow-land, occupy a large area in the central parts of Vilna. The Niemen, which flows along the southern and western borders for more than 200 miles, is the chief artery of trade for the govern ment, and its importance in this respect is enhanced by its tributary the Vilia, which flows west for more than 200 miles through the central parts of Vilna, receiving many affluents on its course. Among the tributaries of the Niemen is the Berezina, which acquired renown during Napoleon s retreat in 1812; it flows in a marshy valley in the south-east. The Dwina for 50 miles of its course separates Vilna from Vitebsk. The combined traffic on the Niemen and the Dwina was valued at nearly 200,000 in 1883. The climate of the government is only slightly tempered by its proximity to the Baltic Sea (January 21 8 Fahr. ; July 64 - 5) ; the average temperature at the town of Vilna is only 43 5. But in winter the thermometer descends very low, the minimum observed during the last sixty years being - 30. The flora and fauna are inter mediate between those of Poland and middle Russia. The population of Vilna, which amounted to 1,223,260 in 1883, consists chiefly of Lithuanians (35 per cent.) in the west and north and White Russians (45 per cent.) in the south and east. Jews make up 1 1 per cent, of the popula tion ; and the Poles, who constitute the landed aristocracy and the artisan classes of the towns, reach 7 per cent. A few Great Russians and Tatars, descendants of Crimean prisoners, must be added to the above. Roman Catholicism is the prevailing creed among the Lithuanians and Poles ; and the White Russians belong for the most part to the Greek and Nonconformist Churches. In spite of the unfertile soil, sufficient cereals are_grown for the needs of the population and to supply the distilleries. The average crops of 1882-1885 were 1,010,000 quarters of rye, 44.000 of wheat, 790,000 of various kinds of grain, and 9,840,000 bushels of potatoes. Apart from finer breeds kept by a few landowners, the cattle of the peasantry belong to inferior varieties. In 1883 there were 203,620 horses, 303,100 horned cattle, 277,800 sheep, and 238,800 pigs. More than one-third of the area is covered with forests, whence a considerable quantity of timber is exported, partly to Germany, for -shipbuilding. A variety of petty trades are carried on in the villages of the forest region, sledges, cars, wheels, and wooden ware being made by the peasants. Tar, XXIV. - 30