mention. Claude Fauchet is a name of great importance in French literary
history. So long as mediaeval literature actually flourished we should
expect to find, and we do find, no attention paid to its history and
development. Fauchet was the first person, so far as is known, who
devoted himself to something like a critical examination of its
results; and as many of the materials which he had at his disposal have
perished, his work, with all its drawbacks, is still very valuable. His
_Antiquites Gauloises et Francoises_ are purely historical, but display
a sound spirit of criticism. His _Recueil de l'Origine de la Langue et
Poesie Francoise, Ryme et Romans, plus les Noms et Sommaires des
Oeuvres de CXXVII Poetes Francois vivans avant l'an MCCC_, is a work
for its period (1581) almost unique. Philologically, of course, Fauchet
is far from infallible, as, for instance, in his theory, obviously
indefensible, that French is a cross between the tongues of the Gauls
and the Romans. But his 'Noms et Sommaires' are actually taken from the
study of manuscripts; and, as the works of the Trouveres had, with few
exceptions, long dropped out of sight, except in late fifteenth-century
prose versions, the attempt to make them known was as salutary as it was
bold.

[Sidenote: Pasquier.]

Fauchet unfortunately was not a good writer. This cannot be said of his
principal rival, or rather successor, Etienne Pasquier. Pasquier was
born at Paris in 1529, and early devoted himself to legal studies, which
he pursued all through his life. His most famous performance as an
advocate was his speech for the University of Paris against the Jesuits
in 1565. He afterwards took a vigorous part in the Royalist polemic
against the League. He did not die till 1615. His works, as yet
unpublished in a complete form, are in modern times accessible chiefly
in the selection of M. Leon Feugere[212]. They are voluminous, but by
far the most important (with the exception perhaps of the valuable
_Letters_) is the _Recherches de la France_. This is a somewhat
desultory but very interesting collection of remarks on politics,
history, social changes, and last, not least, literature. To us the most
attractive part of Pasquier's literary history is the account he gives
of the great poetical and literary movement of his own day, the
revolution of the Pleiade, or, as he describes it picturesquely, 'De la
Grande Flotte de Poetes que produisit le Regne du Roi Henry Deuxie