Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/33

Rh however, is merely a re-hash of Brantôme himself. Neither must one over-estimate his reflections regarding the author of the Fair and Gallant Ladies.

There is a great difference between the two Livres des Dames. What is an advantage in the one is a disadvantage in the other. Undoubtedly Brantôme's genius is best expressed in the Dames Galantes. In this book the large number of symbolical anecdotes is the best method of narration. In the other they are more or less unimportant. Of course, Brantôme could not escape the questionable historical methods of that period, but shares these faults with all of his contemporaries. Besides, he was too good an author to be an excellent historian. The devil take the historical connection, as long as the story is a good one.

The courtier Brantôme sees all of history from the perspective of boudoir-wit. Therefore his portraits of famous ladies of his age are mere mosaics of haphazard observations and opinions. He is a naïve story-teller and therefore his ideas are seldom coherent. The value of his biographical portraits consists in the fact that they are influenced by his manner of writing, that they are the result of scandal and gossip which he heard in the Louvre, or of conversations in the saddle or in the trenches. He always preserves a respectful attitude and restrains himself from spicing things too freely. He did not allow himself to become a purveyor of malicious gossip, he took great care not to offend his high connections by unbridled speech, but his book lost interest on that account.

If we wish to do justice to Brantôme as the author of Fair and Gallant Ladies, we must try and picture his position in his age and in his society. It is not to be understood that he suddenly invented all of these stories during his long illness. Let us try and follow the origin of these memoirs. At that time the most primitive conceptions of literary work in general prevailed. The actual writing down of the stories was the least. An author laboriously working out his stories