ry in point
of ordinary progress, Charles d'Orleans is Marot's equal in elegance and
grace, and his superior in sentiment, while Marot is not comparable to
Villon in passion or in humour. His limitation, and at the same time his
great merit, was that he was a typical Frenchman. A famous epigram,
applied to another person two centuries later, might be applied with
very little difficulty or alteration to Marot. He had more than anybody
else of his time the literary characteristics which the ordinary
literary Frenchman has. We constantly meet in the history of literature
this contrast between the men who are simply shining examples of the
ordinary type, and men who cross and blend that type with new
characters and excellences. Unquestionably the latter are the greater,
but the former cannot on any equitable scheme miss their reward. It must
be added that the positive merit of much of Marot's work is great,
though, as a rule, his longer pieces are very inferior to his shorter.
Many of the epigrams are admirable; the Psalms, which have been unjustly
depreciated of late years by French critics, have a sober and solemn
music, which is almost peculiar to the French devotional poetry of that
age; the satirical ballade of _Frere Lubin_ is among the very best
things of its kind; while as much may be said of the rondeaux 'Dedans
Paris' in the lighter style, and 'En la Baisant' in the graver. Perhaps
the famous line--

Un doux nenny avec un doux sourire,

supposed to have been addressed to the Queen of Navarre, expresses
Marot's poetical powers as well as anything else, showing as it does
grace of language, tender and elegant sentiment, and suppleness, ease,
and fluency of style.

[Sidenote: The School of Marot.]

Marot formed a very considerable school, some of whom directly imitated
his mannerisms, and composed _blasons_[171] and _Coq-a-l'Ane_ in
emulation of their master and of each other, while others contented
themselves with displaying the same general characteristics, and setting
the same poetical ideals before them. Among the idlest, but busiest
literary quarrels of the century, a century fertile in such things, was
that between Marot and a certain insignificant person named Francois
Sagon, a belated _rhetoriqueur_, who found some other rhymers of the
same kind to support him. One of Marot's best things, an answer of which
his servant, Fripelipes, is supposed to be the spokesman, came of the
quarrel; but of the othe