le--that of a curious
section of humanists who entertained an exclusive and exaggerated
devotion to Cicero. Then, becoming himself a master-printer, he wrote
several small treatises on French grammar, some poems, a short history
of Francis the First, and finally, a translation of the Platonic or
Pseudo-Platonic _Axiochus_, which was the proximate cause of his death.
He was one of the earliest of the French humanist students to devote
himself to the vernacular, and, though his short and troubled life did
not enable him to perfect his French style, he is very interesting as a
specimen. His friendship with Marot and Rabelais had in each case an
unhappy end. In the latter this was due to a pirated edition of
_Pantagruel_ and _Gargantua_, which reproduced expressions that
Rabelais, in the rising storm of persecution, had been anxious to
modify. As a Latin scholar Dolet was accurate and sound. His
translations suffer somewhat from the want of a sufficiently definite
and flexible French style, but the striving after such a style is
apparent in them.

Dolet and the other persons just mentioned had translated for the most
part prose into prose. Sanxon, Hugues Salel, Lazare de Baif, Sibilet,
and others, translated verse into verse; but the theory of French
versification had not as yet been sufficiently studied to make the
attempt really profitable. After the innovations of the Pleiade many of
Ronsard's followers bent themselves to the same task with a better
equipment and with more success. Almost all the poets mentioned
elsewhere executed translations of more or less merit.

[Sidenote: Fauchet.]

From a literary point of view, however, the exercises of the century, in
what may be called applied scholarship, were, leaving out of sight for
the moment Amyot's work, and also that, presently to be mentioned, of
Herberay, of greater merit than its pure translations. All the mediaeval
legends, assigning classical or semi-classical origins to the
populations of France, were resumed and amplified by Jean Lemaire de
Belges, in the first years of the century, in his _Illustrations des
Gaules_. Lemaire belongs, as has been said elsewhere, for the most part
to the earlier school of the Rhetoriqueurs, but his literary power was
considerable. The style of research, mingling as it did antiquarian and
historical elements with a strong infusion of what was purely literary,
was illustrated during the period by three persons who deserve special