al
subjects.

[Sidenote: Brantome.]

The complement and counterpart of this moralising on human business and
pleasure is necessarily to be found in chronicles of that business and
that pleasure as actually pursued. In these the sixteenth century is
extraordinarily rich. Correspondence had hardly yet attained the
importance in French literature which it afterwards acquired, but
professed history and, still more, personal memoirs were largely
written. The name of Brantome[219] has been chosen as the central and
representative name of this section of writers, because he is on the
whole the most original and certainly the most famous of them. His work,
moreover, has more than one point of resemblance to that of the great
contemporary author with whom he is linked at the head of this chapter.
Brantome neither wrote actual history nor directly personal memoirs. His
work rather consists of desultory biographical essays, forming a curious
pendant to the desultory moral essays of Montaigne. But around him rank
many writers, some historians pure and simple, some memoir-writers pure
and simple, of whom not a few approach him in literary genius, and
surpass him in correctness and finish of style, while almost all exceed
him in whatever advantage may be derived from uniformity of plan, and
from regard to the decencies of literature.

Pierre de Bourdeilles (who derived the name by which he is, and indeed
was during his lifetime, generally known from an abbacy given to him by
Henri II. when he was still a boy) was born about 1540, in the province
of Perigord, but the exact date and place of his birth have not been
ascertained. He was the third son of Francois, Comte de Bourdeilles, and
his mother, Anne de Vivonne de la Chataigneraie, was the sister of the
famous duellist whose encounter with Jarnac his nephew has described in
a well-known passage. In the court of Marguerite d'Angouleme, the
literary nursery of so great a part of the talent of France at this
time, he passed his early youth, went to school at Paris and at
Poitiers, and was made Abbe de Brantome at the age of sixteen. He was
thus sufficiently provided for, and he never took any orders, but was a
courtier and a soldier throughout the whole of his active life. Indeed
almost the first use he made of his benefice was to equip himself and a
respectable suite for a journey into Italy, where he served under the
Marechal de Brissac. He accompanied Mary Stuart to Scotland, ser