Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/325

Rh Another ballad, of the same tenor, has the refrain: "Tous ces poins a rebours retien"; a third ends with the words:

Prince, s'il est par tout generalment Comme je say, toute vertu habonde; Mais tel m'orroit qui diroit: 'Il se ment'..."

A wit of the end of the fifteenth century entitles an epigram: "Soubz une meschante paincture faicte de mauvaises couleurs et du plus meschant peinctre du monde, par manière d'yronnie par maître Jehan Robertet."

When dealing with love, on the other hand, irony had already often attained a high degree of refinement. In this region it blended with the gentle despondency and the languishing tenderness which renewed the erotic poetry of the fifteenth century. For the first time we hear the poet voice his melancholy with a smile about his own misfortune, such as Villon giving himself the air of "l'amant remis et renié" or Charles of Orleans singing his little songs of disillusion. Nevertheless the figure "Je riz en pleurs" is not Villon's invention. Long before him the scripture word, risus dolore miscebitur et extrema gaudii luctus occupat, had given a text for poetical application. Othe de Granson, for example, had said:

Veillier ou lit et jeuner à la table Rire plourant et en plaignant chanter."

And again:

Je prins congié de ce tresdoulz enfant Les yeulx mouilliez et la bouche riant."

Alain Chartier made use of the same motif in various ways: