s a very voluminous work when, in 1540,
Herberay undertook to give a French version of it. He, in his turn, had
continuators, but none who equalled his popularity or power. Readers of
the Spanish complain that Herberay has not been a faithful translator,
and, in particular, that he has been guilty of no few anachronisms. He
probably troubled himself very little about exact fidelity or strict
local and temporal colour. But he ranks, in order of time, second only
to Calvin in the production of a clear, elegant, and scholarly French
prose style. The book became immensely popular. It is said that it was
the usual reading book for foreign students of French for a considerable
period, and it was highly thought of by the best critics (such as
Pasquier) of its own and the next generation. It had moreover a great
influence on what came after it. To no single book can be so clearly
traced the heroic romances of the early seventeenth century.

[Sidenote: Palissy.]

It may seem somewhat premature to speak of scientific writers in the
sixteenth century. Yet there are three who usually and deservedly hold a
place in French literary history, and who cannot be conveniently classed
under any other head. There are few better known names of the time than
Bernard Palissy. His famous enamels are no doubt partly the cause of
this, but other artists as great or greater are not nearly so living to
us as this maker of pottery. He was born in or about 1510, at a village,
Chapelle Broin, near Agen, and he died in the Bastile, in 1589, a
prisoner for his Protestantism. Catherine de Medicis had saved him from
the massacre of St. Bartholomew. His long life was occupied mainly in
art and scientific researches, partly also in lecturing on natural
history and physics, and in writing accounts of his investigations,
which are not very voluminous, but which possess an extraordinary
vividness of style and description. His treatise on pottery, the _Art de
la Terre_, contains the passage which has become classical, describing
his desperate efforts to discover the secret of the Italian enamellers.
He also wrote a _Recepte veritable par laquelle tous les hommes de la
France pourront apprendre a multiplier et a augmenter leurs Tresors_,
and, some ten years before his death, a _Discours admirable de la Nature
des Eaux et Fontaines_. His literary work is an almost unique mixture of
research with genuine literary fancy.

[Sidenote: Pare.]

Ambroise Pare, also