Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/346

302 This is the beginning, modest as yet, of the ridiculous latinism which Villon and Rabelais satirized. This insufferable manner reappears whenever authors exert themselves to be exceptionally brilliant, in dedications, discourses, or literary correspondence. In this vein Chastellain will write "vostre trés humble et obéissante serve et ancelle, la ville de Gand," "la viscérale intime douleur et tribulation," La Marche "nostre francigène locution et langue vernacule," Molinet "abreuvé de la doulce et melliflue liqueur procédant de la fontaine caballine," "ce vertueux duc scipionique," "gens de mulièbre courage."

This far-fetched rhetoric testifies both to an ideal of literary conversation and to an ideal of style. Like the troubadours of yore, the rhetoricians and the humanists cultivated literature in the form of an all-round game. Literary correspondence of a rather strange kind springs up. A fervent admirer of Georges Chastellain, Jean Robertet, secretary to three dukes of Bourbon and to three kings of France, tried to enter into correspondence with the poet-historiographer of the Burgundian court, by the good offices of a certain Montferrant who lived at Bruges. The latter, to soften the old author, who was at first rather reserved, had recourse to the time-honoured device of allegory. He evoked the "twelve dames of rhetoric," Science, Eloquence, Gravity of Meaning, Profundity, etc., who appeared to him in a vision and told him to exert himself in behalf of the correspondence desired by Robertet. In the exchange of poetical and rhetorical compliments which followed, Chastellain's verses are sober, when compared with the hyperbolic effusions of Robertet.