llard, paillardise me suit--

are examples in point; of the latter the line in the rondeau to Death--

Deux etions et n'avions qu'un coeur.

No one has bolder strokes of the picturesque, as for instance--

De Constantinoble
L'emperier aux poings dores;

and no one can render the sombre horror of a scene better than Villon
has rendered it in the famous epitaph of the gibbeted corpses--

La pluie nous a debues et laves,
Et le soleil desseches et noircis,
Pies, corbeaulx nous out les yeux caves
Et arraches la barbe et les sourcils.

These are some of Villon's strongest points. Yet in his comparatively
limited work--limited in point of bulk and peculiar in style and
subject--he has contrived to show perhaps more general poetical power
than any other writer who has left so small a total of verse. The note
of his song is always true and always sweet; and despite the intensely
allusive character of most of it, and the necessary loss of the key to
many of the allusions, it has in consequence continued popular through
all changes of language and manners. Of very few French poets can it be
said as of Villon that their charm is immediate and universal, and the
reason of this is that his work is full of touches of nature which are
universally perceived, as well as distinguished by consummate art of
expression. In the great literature which we are discussing, the latter
characteristic is almost universally present, the former not so
constantly.

[Sidenote: Comines.]

The literary excellence of Comines[157] is of a very different kind from
that of Villon, but he represents the changed attitude of the modern
spirit towards practical affairs almost as strongly as Villon does the
change in its relations to art and sentiment. Philippe de Comines was
born, not at the chateau of the same name which was then in the
possession of his uncle, but at Renescure, not very far from Hazebrouck.
His family name was Vandenclyte, and his ancestors (Flemings, as their
name implies) had been citizens of Ghent before they acquired seignorial
position and rank. The education of Comines was neglected (he never
possessed any knowledge of Latin), and his heritage was heavily
encumbered. He was born before 1447, and entered the service of Philip
of Burgundy and of his son Charles of Charolais, the future Charles le
Temeraire. Comines was present at Montlhery and at the siege of Liege,
while he played a con