Danesius), Arnyot, Ramus (Peter la
Ramee), Robert Estienne (Stephanus), Vatable (Watebled), Cujas, and
Turnebius make up the tale of literature specially belonging to and
originating in the reign of Francis I., just as the foundation of the
College Royal, which became the College de France, is his chief personal
claim to renown in the service of science and letters.

Let us return to the poets of the actual reign of Francis I. The first
we encounter speaks thus of himself:--

"I am not rich; that, certes, I confess;
But, natheless, well born and nobly bred;
I'm read by both the people and noblesse,
Throughout the world: 'That's Clement,' it is said.
Men live their span; but I shall ne'er be dead.
And thou--thou hast thy meadow, well, and spring,
Wood, field, and castle--all that wealth can bring.
There's just that difference 'twixt thee and me.
But what I am thou couldst not be: the thing
Thou art, why, anybody else might be."

Now who was this who, with perfect confidence, indulged in such proud
language? Was it a Homer, a Dante, a Corneille, one of those great
poetical geniuses whose works can move a whole people, are addressed to
all the world, and "will live forever"? No; it was a poet of the court
and of the fashionable world of Paris, of Blois, and of Amboise, in the
sixteenth century, a groom-of-the-chamber to Marguerite de Valois, and
one of Francis I.'s favorites, who had written elegies, eclogues,
epistles, complaints, roundelays, and epigrams on the incidents and for
his masters and mistresses of the hour; France owed to him none of those
great poetical works consecrated to description of the grand destinies
and grand passions of man, and to the future as well as to the writer's
own time.

[Illustration: Clement Marot----162]

Clemont Marot, the son of a petty burgess of Cahors, named John Marot,
himself a poet in a small way, who had lived some time at the court of
Louis XII., under the patronage of Queen Anne of Bretagne, had a right to
style himself, "well born and nobly bred;" many of the petty burgesses of
Cahors were of noble origin, and derived therefrom certain privileges;
John Marot, by a frugal and regular life, had acquired and left to his
son two estates in the neighborhood of Cahors, where, no doubt, Clement
resided but little, for he lived almost constantly at the court, or
wandering about Europe, in every place where at one time the fortunes of
the king his protector and at another t