a thought or a feeling, certainty and grace
in poetic evolution, skill in handling the decasyllabic line. A great
poet Marot was not, and could not be; but, coming at a fortunate moment,
his work served literature in important ways; it was a return from
laboured rhetoric to nature. In the classical age his merit was
recognised by La Bruyere, and the author of the _Fables_ and the
_Contes_--in some respects a kindred spirit--acknowledged a debt to
Marot.

From Marot as a poet much was learned by Marguerite of Navarre. Of
his contemporaries, who were also disciples, the most distinguished
was MELIN DE SAINT-GELAIS, and on the master's death Melin passed
for an eminent poet. We can regard him now more justly, as one who
in slender work sought for elegance, and fell into a mannered
prettiness. While preserving something of the French spirit, he
suffered from the frigid ingenuities which an imitation of Italian
models suggested to him; but it cannot be forgotten that Saint-Gelais
brought the sonnet from Italy into French poetry. The school of Marot,
ambitious in little things, affected much the _blason_, which
celebrates an eyebrow, a lip, a bosom, a jewel, a flower, a precious
stone; lyrical inspiration was slender, but clearness and grace were
worth attaining, and the conception of poetry as a fine art served
to lead the way towards Ronsard and the Pleiade.

The most powerful personality in literature of the first half of the
sixteenth century was not a poet, though he wrote verses, but a great
creator in imaginative prose, great partly by virtue of his native
genius, partly because the sap of the new age of enthusiasm for science
and learning was thronging in his veins--FRANCOIS RABELAIS. Born
about 1490 or 1495, at Chinon, in Touraine, of parents in a modest
station, he received his education in the village of Seuille and at
the convent of La Baumette. He revolted against the routine of the
schools, and longed for some nutriment more succulent and savoury.
For fifteen years he lived as a Franciscan monk in the cell and
cloisters of the monastery at Fontenay-le-Comte. In books, but not
those of a monastic library, he found salvation; mathematics,
astronomy, law, Latin, Greek consoled him during his period of
uncongenial seclusion. His criminal companions--books which might
be suspected of heresy--were sequestrated. The young Bishop of
Maillezais--his friend Geoffroy d'Estissac, who had aided his
studies--and the great