more than that
of Marot and other poets of the time and school, composed for the most
part of very short pieces, epigrams, rondeaux, dizains, huitains, etc.
These pieces display more merit than most recent critics have been
disposed to allow to them. The style is fluent and graceful, free from
puns and other faults of taste common at the time. The epigrams are
frequently pointed, and well expressed, and the complimentary verse is
often skilful and well turned. Mellin de Saint Gelais is certainly not a
poet of the highest order, but as a court singer and a skilful master of
language he deserves a place among his earlier contemporaries only
second to that of Marot.

[Sidenote: Miscellaneous Verse. Anciennes Poesies Francaises.]

Something of the same sort may be said of all the writers in verse of
the first half of the century. Their importance is chiefly relative. Few
of their works are conceived or executed on a scale sufficient to
entitle them to the rank of great poets, and, saving always Marot, the
excellence even of the trifling compositions to which they confined
themselves is very unequal and intermittent. But all are evidences of a
general diffusion of the literary spirit among the people of France, and
most of them in their way, and according to their powers, helped in
perfecting the character of French as a literary instrument. The advance
which the language experienced in this respect is perhaps nowhere better
shown than in the miscellaneous and popular poetry of the time, a vast
collection of which has been made accessible by the reprinting of rare
or unique printed originals in the thirteen volumes of MM. de Montaiglon
and de Rothschild's _Anciennes Poesies Francaises_, published in the
_Bibliotheque Elzevirienne_[176]. This flying literature, as it is well
called in French, lacks in most cases the freshness and spontaneity of
mediaeval folk-song. But it has in exchange gained in point of subject a
wide extension of range, and in point of form a considerable advance in
elegance of language, absence of commonplace, and perfection of
literary form and style. The stiffness which characterises much
mediaeval and almost all fifteenth-century work has disappeared in great
measure. The writers speak directly and to the point, and find no
difficulty in so using their mother tongue as to express their
intentions. The tools in short are more effective and more completely
under the control of the worker. A certain tri