d
he himself was able, by marriage with a cousin who was an heiress, to
live without any profession, and to purchase an estate and seignory of
some importance. Little, however, is known of his life except that he
was much at the Hotel de Rambouillet in his youth, and that in his old
age he underwent some not clearly defined misfortune or disgrace. The
_Historiettes_ were written in the years immediately preceding 1660, and
form an almost complete commentary on the persons most celebrated in
society and literature for three quarters of a century before that date.
There is no other book to which they can be exactly compared, though
they have, with much less literary excellence, a certain resemblance in
form to the work of Brantome. They are, as published by Monmerque, 376
in number, filling five (nominally ten) stout volumes. Each is as a rule
headed with the name of a single person, though there are a few general
or subject headings. The articles themselves are not regular
biographies, but collections of anecdotes, not unfrequently of the most
scandalous kind. Tallemant, though by no means of small ability, appears
to have been a somewhat malicious person, and not too careful to examine
the value of the stories he tells, especially when they bear heavily on
the old nobility, of whom, as a new man, he was very jealous. Yet his
sources of information were in many cases good, and his statements are
confirmed by independent evidence sufficiently often to show that, if
they are in other cases to be accepted with caution, they are not the
work of a mere libeller. No one, even in that century of unstinted
personal revelations, has taken us so much behind the scenes, and
certainly no one has left a more amusing book of its kind or (with the
proper precautions) a more valuable one.

[Sidenote: Historical Antiquaries.]

[Sidenote: Du Cange.]

The class of learned investigators into the sources of history cannot be
omitted in any account of French literature; though their work was
chiefly in Latin, and though even when it was not it was rather of value
as material for future literature than as literature itself. This
century and the earlier part of the succeeding one were the palmy time
of really laborious erudition--the work of the Benedictines and
Bollandists, and of many isolated writers worthy of being ranked with
the members of these famous communities. The individuals composing this
class are, however, too numerous, and, f