ave drawn them from their obscurity,
but all three made creditable head against what was mistaken and absurd
in the literary fashions of the time. In the writings of all of them
moreover there is to be found something, if not much, which is
positively good, and which deserves the attention, hardly perhaps of the
general reader, but of students of literature. Coquillart[159] was a
native, and for great part of his life an inhabitant, of Rheims. The
extreme dates given for his birth and death are 1421 and 1510, but there
is in reality, as is usual in the case of all men of letters before the
sixteenth century, very little solid authority for his biography. It may
be mentioned that Marot declares him to have cut short his life by
gaming. A life can hardly be said to be cut short at ninety, nor is that
an age at which gaming is a frequent ruling passion. All that can be
said is that he was certainly, as we should now say, in the civil
service of the province of Champagne during the reign of Louis XI., that
like many other men of the time he united ecclesiastical with legal
functions, being not only a town-councillor but a canon, and that he has
left satirical works of some merit and importance. These last alone
concern us much. His chief production is a poem entitled _Les Droits
Nouveaux_, in octosyllabic verses, not arranged in stanzas of definite
length, but, on the other hand, interlacing the rhymes, and not in
couplets after the older fashion. The plan of this poem is by no means
easy to describe. It is partly a social satire, partly a professional
lampoon on the current methods of learning and teaching law, partly a
political diatribe on the alterations introduced into provincial and
national life and polity under Louis XI. Not very different in character
and exactly similar in form, except that it is arranged as the age would
have said _par personnages_, that is to say semi-dramatically, is the
_Plaidoyer de la Simple et de la Rusee_. The _Blason des Armes et des
Dames_ takes up a mediaeval theme in a mediaeval style. The _procureurs_
(advocates) of arms and of ladies endeavour to show each that his
client--war or love--deserves the chief attention of a prince. Here, as
elsewhere with Coquillart, though of course more covertly, satire
dominates. But the best of the pieces attributed to Coquillart are his
monologues. There are three of these, the _Monologue Coquillart_, the
_Monologue du Puys_, and the _Monologue du Gend