stics of Fifteenth-century Literature.]

To determine at what period exactly mediaeval literature ceases in
France and modern literature begins, is not one of the easiest problems
of literary history. It has sometimes been solved by the obvious
expedient of making out of the fifteenth century a period of transition,
sometimes by continuing the classification of 'mediaeval' until the time
when Marot and Rabelais gave unmistakeable evidence of the presence and
working of the modern spirit. Perhaps, however, there may, after all,
have been something in the instinct which, in words clumsily enough
chosen, made Boileau date modern French poetry from Villon[153], and
there can hardly be any doubt that, as far as spirit if not form goes,
modern French prose dates from Comines. These two contemporary authors,
moreover, have in them the characteristic which perhaps more than any
other distinguishes modern from mediaeval literature, the predominance
of the personal element. In their works, especially if Villon be taken
with the immediately preceding and partially contemporary Charles
d'Orleans, a difference of the most striking kind is noticeable at once.
It is not that the prince who served the god Nonchaloir so piously is
deficient in personal characteristics or personal attractiveness, but
that his personality is still, so to speak, generic rather than
individual. He is still the Trouvere of the nobler class, dallying with
half-imaginary woes in the forms consecrated by tradition to the record
of them. Not so the vagabond whose words after four centuries appeal
directly to the spirit of the modern reader. That reader is cut off from
Charles d'Orleans' world by a gulf across which he can only project
himself by a great effort of study or of sympathetic determination. The
barriers which separate him from Villon are slight enough, consisting
mostly of trifling changes in language and manners which a little
exertion easily overcomes.

The latter portion of the fifteenth century, or, to speak more
correctly, its last two-thirds, have frequently been described as a
'dead season' in French literature. The description is not wholly just.
Even if, according to the plan just explained, we throw Charles
d'Orleans and Antoine de la Salle, two names of great importance, back
into the mediaeval period, and if we allow most of the chroniclers who
preceded Comines to accompany them, there are still left, before the
reign of Francis the First