Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume I.djvu/23

Rh can be called, was written day by day and recounted each day's exploits. Brantôme's life and work leave little trace of his own personality, beyond the impression of a genial, smiling, witty man of the world. I will be as plain and discreet as himself, and will make no effort to separate the Author from his book.

Brantôme possesses one of those happy, gentle, well ordered natures, which systematically avoid every form of excess and exaggeration. His book Des Dames Galantes is from beginning to end a protest against immoderate passion. It is above all a work of taste. Its seven Discourses are devoted exclusively to stories of love and passion, yet a man must be straightlaced indeed to feel any sort of repulsion. Another extraordinary merit! in spite of the monotony of the subject matter, everlastingly the same, the reader's attention never flags, and one tale read, he is irresistibly drawn on to make acquaintance with the next.

Such praise, I am aware, is very high; and especially when we possess such masterpieces in this genre as the Tales of Boccaccio, of Pietro Aretino, some of those of Ariosto, those of Voltaire, the short stories of Tallemant des Réaux and the indiscretions of the Histoire amoureuse des Gaules. I name only the most familiar examples. Of course all these works do not offer a complete resemblance to the Vies des Dames Galantes, but they all belong to the same race and family. I propose to say a few passing words of each of these productions.

The most remarkable among all these chroniclers of the frailties of the female heart is undoubtedly Boccaccio. Pietro Aretino has done himself an irreparable wrong by writing in such a vein that no decent man dare confess