chool not a little grace and elegance
is discoverable, and this quality manifests itself most strongly in the
poet who may be regarded as closing the strictly mediaeval series,
Charles d'Orleans[118]. The life of this poet has been frequently told.
As far as we are concerned it falls into three divisions. In the first,
when after his father's death he held the position of a great feudal
prince almost independent of royal control, it is not recorded that he
produced any literary work. His long captivity in England was more
fruitful, and during it he wrote both in French and in English. But the
last five-and-twenty years of his life, when he lived quietly and kept
court at Blois (bringing about him the literary men of the time from
Bouciqualt to Villon, and engaging with them in poetical tournaments),
were the most productive. His undoubted work is not large, but the
pieces which compose it are among the best of their kind. He is fond, in
the allegorical language of the time, of alluding to his having 'put his
house in the government of Nonchaloir,' and chosen that personage for
his master and protector. There is thus little fervency of passion
about him, but rather a graceful and somewhat indolent dallying with the
subjects he treats. Few early French poets are better known than Charles
d'Orleans, and few deserve their popularity better. His Rondeaux on the
approach of spring, on the coming of summer and such-like subjects,
deserve the very highest praise for delicate fancy and formal skill.

Of poets of less importance, or whose names have not been preserved, the
amount of this formal poetry which remains to us is considerable. The
best-known collection of such work is the _Livre des Cent
Ballades_[119], believed, on tolerably satisfactory evidence, to have
been composed by the famous knight-errant Bouciqualt and his companions
on their way to the fatal battle of Nicopolis. Before, however, the
fifteenth century was far advanced, poetry of this formal kind fell into
the hands of professional authors in the strictest sense, _Grands
Rhetoriqueurs_ as they were called, who, as a later critic said of
almost the last of them, 'lost all the grace and elegance of the
composition' in their elaborate rules and the pedantic language which
they employed. The complete decadence of poetry in which this resulted
will be treated partly in the summary following the present book, partly
in the first chapter of the book which succeeds it.