Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/448

436 Burgundy. In addition to such duties ai these offices entailed upon their holder, Chastelain vas often em- ployed diplomatically, and was also accustomed to direct the dramatic entertainments designed for the amusement of the ducal court. A heavy but insolent opuscule in verse, published by him in 1455, had nearly compromised his safety, as it was held to contain reflections injurious to the honour of the king and nobility of France ; Chastelain, however, extricated himself from the difficulty by issuing a sort of reply (in prose) to his own libel. About this time, too, at the request of Philip, he began his most important work, the Grande Chronique. Philip s son, Charles the Bold, continued to confide in and favour Chastelain as his father had done, and conferred on him the order of the Golden Fleece, with the title of Indiciairc a designation intended as descriptive of one who &quot; d^mo astro it par escripture authentique les admirables gestes dss chevaliers et confreres de 1 ordre.&quot; At the beginning of the new reign, however, Chastelain retired to Valenciennes, where he busied himself till his death in the production of his Chroniqne (in which he was assisted by Jean Molinet, his disciple and continuator) and of other works, imaginative and historical. Among his contemporaries, Georges Chastelain acquired by his verses the style and title of a second Homer ; but posterity, in relegating hi3 poetry to eternal oblivion, has been careful of his memory. As an historian, Chastelain is deserving of more attention. He was a soldier and traveller, who had yet been trained to letters, the favourite of a splendid prince, and personally acquainted with most of the actors in the great scenes which his position enabled him to study on the very theatre of their action. His method of n-riting history, to judge by a declaration of his own yet extant, was not such as would have occurred to the mere compiler or writer from dictation. The vast mass of material collected during his long and busy life was intended to be fused and shaped as his own conclusions, his own great experience of men and years, should determine, and not altogether according to the requirements of party and feudal feeling. Impartiality, however, must not be considered o .ie of his virtues. A brilliant satirist, and at the same time, a master of eulogy, it was his interest to use all his gift in his master s service, and he did so use it. Only three fragments of the Chronique, which was to have filled six volumes, in folio are known to exist the first ex- tendingfrom 1419 to 1422, and the second, withlarge breaks in the text, from 14G1 to 1474. A third mutilated frag ment is understood to refer to the period uncovered by the larger chapters, but it neither tells a connected story nor fills the great gap between the other two.

1em  CHASTELARD, (1540-15G3), a French poet whose name is inseparably connected with that of Mary Queen of Scots, was born in Dauphine, and was a scion of the house of Bayard. From the service of the Constable Montmorency, Chastelard, then a page, passed to the household of Marshal Damville, whom he accompanied in his journey to Scotland in escort of Mary (1561). He returned to Paris in the marshal s train, but left for Scotland again shortly afterward, bearing letters of recommendation to Mary from his old protector, Montmorency, and the Regrets addressed to the ex-queen of France by Pierre Ronsard, his master in the art of song. He is also understood to have undertaken the charge, for transmission to the poet, of the service of plate with which Mary rewarded him. But he had fallen in love with the queen, who is said to have encouraged his passion. Copies of verse passed between them ; she, lost no occasion of showin i herself partial to his person and conversation. The young man hid himself under her bed, where lie was discovered by her maids of honour. Mary pardoned the ofl ence, and the old familiar terms between them were resumed. Chastelard was so rash as again to violate her privacy. He was discovered a second time, seized, sentenced, and hanged the next morning. He met his fate valiantly and consistently, reading, on his way to the scaffold, his mas ter s noble Ilymne de la Mori Tres-bien fait et propre pour ne point faire abhorer la mort&quot; and turning at the instant of doom towards the palace of Holyrood, to address to his unseen mistress the famous farewell &quot; Adieu, tui si belle et si crnclle, qui me tues et que je ne puis ccsser d aimer/ This at least is the version of Brantome, who is, however, as notoriously untrustworthy as an authority as he is charming as a writer. Another account is that the plaint was a reproach, contained in the exclamation &quot; Cruelle reine! and emphasized by a threatening gesture addressed to Mary s apartments. Swordcr and amorist, audacious and irreligious, with a strong sense of the nobility of art and some taste fur its practice, Chastelard is a favourable specimen of the golden youth of the French Renaissance. As a poet lie is not remarkable merely one of &quot; the mob of gentle men who wrote with case,&quot; in spite of the notes of truth and passion occasionally to be distinguished through the clink and fa.ll of his verse. But for his madness of love, indeed, it is possible that he would have left no shadow or shred of himself behind. As it is, however, his life and death are of interest as illustrating the wild days in which his lot was cast.

1em  CHATEAUBRIAND, (17G3-1848), the most brilliant representative of the reaction against the ideas of the French Revolution, and the most conspicuous figure in French literature during the First Empire, was born at St Male, September 4, 17G8. Here, as beautifully narrated by himself, his naturally poetical temperament was fostered by picturesque influences, the mysterious reserve of his morose father, the ardent piety of his mother, the traditions of his ancient family, the legends and antiquated customs of the sequestered Breton district, above all, the vagueness and solemnity of the neighbouring ocean. He received his education at Dol and llennes, and after declining to enter the church from an absence of vocation, obtained a commission in the army when on the point of proceeding to try his fortune in India (1788). His thirst for distinction, further excited by the political convulsions of the following year, found vent in a romantic scheme for the discovery of the North West Passage, in pursuance of which he departed for America in 171/0. The passage was not found or even attempted, but the adventurei returned enriched with the to him more important discover; of his own powers and vocation, conscious of his marvellous* faculty for the delineation of nature, and stored with ideas and imagery, the material of much of his future work. Hi.- return coincided with the execution of Louis XVI. Chateau briand, a Breton and a soldier, could net do otherwise than throw himself into the ranks of the emigrants. After the failure of the duke of Brunswick s invasion he retired to England, where he lived obscurely for several years, gaining an intimate acquaintance with English literature, and elaborating The Natchez, a prose epic designed to portray the life of the Red Indian tribes, and inspired by reminis cences of his American travels. Two brilliant episodes of 