od luck to be reprinted
in the 18th century (_Vigilles_ 1724, _Arrets_ 1731), but he has not
recently found an editor, though an edition of the _Amant rendu
Cordelier_ has been for some time due from the Societe des Anciens
Textes. The notice by M. de Montaiglon (the promised editor of the
edition just mentioned) in Crepet's _Poetes Francais_, i. 427, has been
chiefly used here for facts.

[162] Ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, as previously cited. For the remainder
of the poets reviewed in this paragraph, few of whom have found modern
editors, see Crepet, _Poetes Francais_, vol. i.

[163] iii. 21.

[164] Paris, 1876.

CHAPTER II.

MAROT AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

[Sidenote: Hybrid School of Poetry.]

The beginnings of the Renaissance in France manifest, as we should
expect, a mixture of the characteristics of the later middle ages and of
the new learning. In those times the influence of reforms of any kind
filtered slowly through the dense crust of custom which covered the
national life of each people, and there is nothing surprising in the
fact that while Italy felt the full influence of the influx of classical
culture in the fifteenth century, that influence should be only
partially manifest in France during the first quarter of the sixteenth,
while it was not until the century was more than half over that it
showed itself in England. The complete manifestation of the combined
tendencies of mediaeval and neo-pagan thought was only displayed in
Shakespeare, but by that time, as is the wont of all such things, it had
already manifested itself partially, though in each part more fully and
characteristically, elsewhere. It is in the literature of France that we
find the most complete exposition of these partial developments. Marot,
Ronsard, Rabelais, Calvin, Garnier, Montaigne, will not altogether make
up a Shakespeare, yet of the various ingredients which go to make up the
greatest of literary productions each of them had shown, before
Shakespeare began to write, some complete and remarkable embodiment. It
is this fact which gives the French literature of the sixteenth century
its especial interest. Italy had almost ceased to be animated by the
genius of the middle ages before her literature became in any way
perfect in form, and the survival of the classical spirit was so strong
there that mediaeval influence was never very potent in the moulding of
the national letters. England had lost the mediaeval different