[Sidenote: Prose Writers of the Renaissance.]

It has been pointed out that Rabelais, in his capacity of representative
author of the French Renaissance, exhibits all the characteristics of
that Renaissance--its interest, half-enthusiastic and half-sceptical, in
religious and philosophical questions, its devotion to ancient
literature and learning, and the ardent zest with which it attacked at
once the business and the pleasures of the world. The four most
remarkable of the remaining prose authors of the century illustrate
these characteristics as vividly but less universally. Montaigne indeed
is almost as complete a representative of the entire character for the
last half of the century as Rabelais is of the first. But even in him
one note, the note of sceptical philosophy, is more dominant than any to
be found in Rabelais. In the same way Calvin was the first, if not the
most distinguished, of theologians who wrote modern French prose; Amyot
the representative of erudition; and Brantome of that attention to
mundane business and pleasure which produced so many admirable
memoir-writers. Round each of the four, but especially round Amyot and
Brantome, numerous figures, sometimes of hardly less magnitude, have to
be grouped. Chronological reasons, and the convenience of subdividing
the subject, make it, however, advisable to take Calvin and Amyot first,
leaving the authors of the _Essais_ and the _Dames Galantes_ with their
train for another chapter.

[Sidenote: Calvin.]

Jean Calvin[209] was born in 1509, at Noyon, in Picardy, where his
father held the post of procurator-fiscal to the bishop. He took orders
very early, and obtained some preferment. Before long, by a transition
very usual in that age, he exchanged divinity for law; but his interest
was still in the former study, and he eagerly embraced the Reformed
doctrines. Like other French reformers, he was at first rewarded by the
favour of Francis and his sister Marguerite, but the tide soon turned,
and he left France in 1534 for Basle. It is said that it was not till
then that he learnt Hebrew. At Basle his _Institution_ was published.
After a year or two he went to Italy, where he was received by the
Duchess of Ferrara, Renee of France, the steadiest of all the royal
patrons of the French reformers. At last he established himself at
Geneva, where, as is well known, he succeeded in setting up a kind of
theocratic tyranny, which was for centuries the model and