Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/689

 SIXTEENTH CENTURY FICTION.] FRANCE 653 been called fatrasie, the huddling together, that is to say, of a medley of language and images which is best known to English readers in the not always successful following of Sterne. It pleased him also to disguise his naturally terse, strong, and nervous style in a burlesque envelope of redun dant language, which is partly ironical, partly the result of superfluous erudition, and partly that of a certain childish wantonness and exuberance, which is one of his raciest and pleasantest characteristics. In both these points he was somewhat corruptly followed. Rut fortunately the roman- cical writers of the 16th century had not Rabelais for their sole model, but were also influenced by the simple and straightforward style of the Cent Nonvelles Nouvelles and the Histoire dcs Sept Sayes. The joint influence gives us some admirable work. Nicholas of Troyes, a saddler of Champagne, came too early to copy Rabelais. But Noel du Fail (1520-1591), a judge at Rennes, shows the double in fluence in his Propos Kusti^ies and Contes d Eutrapel, both of which are lively and well-written pictures of contem porary life and thought, as the country magistrate actually saw and dealt with them. In 1558, however, appeared two works of far higher literary and social interest. These arc the Ileptamerou of the queen of Navarre, and the Contes et Joyeux Devis of Bonaventure des Periers (1500-1544). iers. Des Periers, who was a courtier of Marguerite s, is thought to have had a good deal to do with the first-named work as well as with the second. Indeed, not merely the queen s prose works, but also the poems gracefully entitled Les Marguerites &amp;lt;le la Marguerite, are often attributed to the literary men whom the sister of Francis I. gathered round her. However this may be, some single influence of pow r er eron. enough to give unity and distinctness of savour evidently presided over the composition of tQHeptameron. Composed as it is on the model of Boccaccio, its tone and character are entirely different, and few works have a more individual charm. The Tales of Des Periers are shorter, simpler, and more homely ; there is more wit in them and less refinement. But both works breathe more powerfully perhaps than any others the peculiar mixture of cultured and poetical volup tuousness with a certain religiosity and a vigorous spirit of action which characterizes the French Renaissance, and dis tinguishes it equally from the effeminate languor and mere bookishncss of the earlier Italian movement and the more serious, sterner, and almost uncouth characteristics of the later poetical outburst in England. Later in time, but too closely connected with Rabelais in form and spirit to be here omitted, came the Jfoyen de Farvenir of Beroalde de Vorville (1550-1612), a singular fatrasie, uniting wit, wis dom, learning, and indecency, and crammed with anecdotes which are. always amusing though rarely decorous. At the same time a fresh vogue was given to the chival-
 * a&amp;lt;lis ric romance by Herberay s translation of Amadis de Gaula.

laul. French writers, relying partly on tradition and partly on a general assumption that the romance of chivalry is essen tially French in origin, have supposed a French original for the Amadis in some lost roman d aventures. It is of course impossible to say that this is not the case, but there is not one tittle of evidence to show that it is, and there seems no reason to dpubt the accepted statement that Vasco dc Lobeira wrote a lost Portuguese original in the 14th cen tury, which Garciordonez de Montalvo adapted in Spanish a century later. Montalvo found many continuators, and the adventures of Amadis were prolonged through genera tion after generation of his descendants. This vast work Herberay in 1540 undertook to translate or re-translate, but it was not without the assistance of several followers that the task w y as completed. Southey has charged Herberay with corrupting the simplicity of the original, a charge which does not concern us here. It is sufficient to say that the French Amadis is an excellent piece of literary work, and that Herberay deserves no mean place among the fathers of French prose. His book had an immense popu larity ; it was translated into many foreign languages, and for some time it served as a favourite reading book for foreigners studying French. Nor is it to be doubted that the romancers of the Scudery and Calprenede type in the next century were much more influenced both for good and harm by these Amadis romances than by any of the earlier tales of chivalry. 16th Century Historians. As in the case of the tale tellers so in that of the historians, the writers of the 16th century had traditions to continue. It is doubt ful indeed whether many of them can risk comparison as artists with the great names of Villehardouin and Join- ville, Froissart and Comines. The 16th century, how ever, eet the example of dividing the functions of the chronicler, setting those of the historian proper on one side, and of the anecdote-monger and biographer on the other. The efforts at regular history made in this century were not of the highest value. But on the other hand the practice of memoir-writing, in which the French were to ex cel every nation in the world, and of literary correspondence, in which they were to excel even their memoirs, was solidly founded. One of the earliest historical writers of the century was Claude de Seyssel (1450-1520), whose history of Louis XII. aims not unsuccessfully at style. But it is not till close upon the end of the century that much effort was made at methodical history. Only one work falls properly to be mentioned here, and that is DuHaillan s (1537-1610) Histoire de France, a history composed on Thucydidean principles, but Thucydidean principles transmitted through the successive mediums of Polybius, Guicciardini, and Paulus ^Emilius. The instance invariably quoted after Thierry of Du Haillan s method is his introduction, with appropriate speeches, of two Merovingian statesmen, who argue out the relative merits of monarchy and oligarchy on the occasion of the election of Pharamond. Besides Du Haillan, La Popeliniere (fl. 1580), who less ambitiously attempted a history of Europe during his own time, and ex pended immense labour on the collection of information and materials, deserves mention. There is no such poverty of writers of memoirs. La Mark Du Bellay, Marguerite d Angouleme, Villars, Tavannes, La Tour d Auvergne, and many others, composed commentaries and autobiographies. Vincent Carloix (fl. 1550), the Liecretary of the Marshal de Yielleville, composed some memoirs abounding in detail and incident. But there are four collections of memoirs concerning this time which far exceed all others in interest and importance. The turbu lent dispositions of the time, the loose dependence of the nobles and even the smaller gentry on any single or central authority, the rapid changes of political situations, and the singularly active appetite, both for pleasure and for busi ness, for learning and for war, which distinguished the French gentleman of the 16th century, place the memoirs of Lanoue (1531-1591), Monluc (1503-1577), D Aubignc, and Brantome (1540-1614) almost at the head of the literature of their class. The name of the latter, indeed, is known to all who have the least tincture of French litera ture, and the works of the others are not inferior in interest, and perhaps superior in spirit and conception, to the Dames Galantcs, the Grands Capitaines, and the Homines Illustres. The commentaries of Monluc, which Henri Quatre is said to have called the soldier s Bible, are exclusively military, and deal with affairs only. Monluc was governor in Guienne, where he repressed the savage Huguenots of the south with a savagery worse than their own. He war, however, a partisan of order, not of Catholicism. He hung and shot both parties with perfect impartiality, and refused