t chapter. Some, however, of its
greatest lights belonged to the present period. Such were Robertet, a
heavy versifier and the author of letters not easily to be excelled in
pedantic coxcombry, who enjoyed much patronage, royal and other;
Molinet, a direct disciple of Chastellain, and, like him, of the
Burgundian party; and Meschinot (died 1509), a Breton, who has left us
an allegorical work on the 'Spectacles of Princes,' and poems which can
be read in thirty different ways, any word being as good to begin with
as any other. Such also was the father of a better poet than himself,
Octavien de Saint Gelais (1466-1502), who died young and worn out by
debauchery. Jean Marot, the father of Clement, was a not inconsiderable
master of the ballade, and has left poems which do not show to great
disadvantage by the side of those of his accomplished son. But the
leader of the whole was Guillaume Cretin (birth and death dates
uncertain), whom his contemporaries extolled in the most extravagant
fashion, and whom a single satirical stroke of Rabelais has made a
laughing-stock for some three hundred and fifty years. The rondeau
ascribed to Raminagrobis, the 'vieux poete francais' of
_Pantagruel_[163], is Cretin's, and the name and character have stuck.
Cretin was not worse than his fellows; but when even such a man as Marot
could call him a _poete souverain_, Rabelais no doubt felt it time to
protest in his own way. Marot himself, it is to be observed, confines
himself chiefly to citing Cretin's _vers equivoques_, which of their
kind, and if we could do otherwise than pronounce that kind hopelessly
bad, are without doubt ingenious. His poems are chiefly occasional
verse, letters, _debats_, etc., besides ballades and rondeaux of all
kinds.

[Sidenote: Chansons du XV'eme Siecle.]

One charming book which has been preserved to us gives a pleasant
contrast to the formal poetry of the time. The _Chansons du XV'eme
Siecle_, which M. Gaston Paris has published for the Old French Text
Society[164], exhibit informal and popular poetry in its most agreeable
aspect. They are one hundred and forty-three in number, some of them no
doubt much older than the fifteenth century, but certainly none of them
younger. There are _pastourelles_, war-songs, love-songs in great
number, a few patriotic ditties, and a few which may be called pure
folksongs, with the story half lost and only a musical tangle of words
remaining. Nothing can be more natural and