Jehan Bouchet[168], a lawyer of Poitiers (not to be confounded with
Guillaume Bouchet, author of the _Serees_), imitated the _rhetoriqueurs_
for the most part in form, and surpassed them in length, excelling
indeed in this respect even the long-winded and long-lived poets of the
close of the fourteenth century. Bouchet is said to have composed a
hundred thousand verses, and even M. d'Hericault avers that he read
two-thirds of the number without discovering more than six quotable
lines. Such works of Bouchet as we have examined fully confirm the
statement. Still, he was an authority in his way, and had something of a
reputation. His fanciful _nom de plume_ 'Le Traverseur des Voies
Perilleuses' is the most picturesque thing he produced, and is not
uncharacteristic of the later middle age tradition. Rabelais himself,
who was a fair critic of poetry when his friends were not concerned, but
who was no poet, and was even strikingly deficient in some of the
characteristics of the poet, admired and emulated Bouchet in heavy
verse; and a numerously attended school, hardly any of the pupils being
worth individual mention, gathered round the lawyer. Charles de Bordigne
is only remarkable for having, in his _Legende de Pierre Faifeu_, united
the _rhetoriqueur_ style with a kind of Villonesque or rather
pseudo-Villonesque subject. The title of the chief poems of Symphorien
Champier, _Le Nef des Dames Amoureuses_, sufficiently indicates his
style. But Champier, though by no means a good poet, was a useful and
studious man of letters, and did much to form the literary _cenacle_
which gathered at Lyons in the second quarter of the century, and which,
both in original composition, in translations of the classics, and in
scholarly publication of work both ancient and modern, rendered
invaluable service to literature. Gratien du Pont[169] continued the now
very stale mediaeval calumnies on women in his _Controverses des Sexes
Masculin et Feminin_. Eloy d'Amerval, a Picard priest, also fell into
mediaeval lines in his _Livre de la Deablerie_, in which the personages
of Lucifer and Satan are made the mouthpieces of much social satire.
Jean Parmentier, a sailor and a poet, combined his two professions in
_Les Merveilles de Dieu_, a poem including some powerful verse. A
vigorous ballade, with the refrain _Car France est Cymetiereaux
Anglois_, has preserved the name of Pierre Vachot. But the remaining
poets of this time could only find a place