but the work on the whole has merit, and abounds in
curious local traits. The _Propos Rustiques_, too, are interesting
because they underwent a singular travesty in the next century, and
appeared under a new and misleading title. Much later, near forty years
afterwards in fact, Du Fail produced the _Contes d'Eutrapel_[187], which
are rather critical and satirical dialogues than tales. There is a good
deal of dry humour in them. The provinciality to be noticed in Du Fail
was still a feature of French literature; and in this particular
department it long continued to be prominent, perhaps owing to the
example of Rabelais, who, wide as is his range, frequently takes
pleasure in mixing up petty local matters with his other materials.
Thus, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, Guillaume Bouchet (to
be carefully distinguished from Jean Bouchet, the poet of the early
sixteenth century) wrote a large collection of _Serees_[188] (Soirees),
containing gossip on a great variety of subjects, mingled with details
of Angevin manners; and Tabourot des Accords composed his _Escraignes
Dijonnaises_. A singular book, or rather two singular books[189], _Les
Matinees_ and _Les Apres-Dinees_, were produced by a person, the
Seigneur de Cholieres, of whom little else is known. Cholieres is a bad
writer, and a commonplace if not stupid thinker; but he tells some
quaint stories, and his book shows us the deep hold which the example of
Rabelais had given to the practice of discussing grave subjects in a
light tone.

[Sidenote: Apologie pour Herodote.]

[Sidenote: Moyen de Parvenir.]

There remain two books of sufficient importance to be treated
separately. The first of these is the _Apologie pour Herodote_[190]
(1566) of the scholar Henri Estienne. In the guise of a serious defence
of Herodotus from the charges of untrustworthiness and invention
frequently brought against him Estienne indulges in an elaborate
indictment against his own and recent times, especially against the
Roman Catholic clergy. Much of his book is taken from Rabelais, or from
the _Heptameron_; much from the preachers of the fifteenth century. Its
literary merit has been a good deal exaggerated, and its extreme
desultoriness and absence of coherence make it tedious to read for any
length of time, but it is in a way amusing enough. Much later (1610) the
last--it may almost be said the first--echo of the genuine spirit of
Rabelais was sounded in the _Moyen de Parven