to-day. Hither, to his house in
the cloister, he brought the boy, a waif whom he had found much at the
time when Willoughby capitulated and the French recaptured the city. He
had him taught, he designed him for the University, he sheltered him in
his vagaries, he gave him asylum. The young man took his name and called
him "more than father." His anxious life led on to 1468, long after the
poet had disappeared.

For it is in 1461, in his thirtieth year, that Villon last writes down a
verse. It is in 1463 that his signature is last discovered. Then not by
death or, if by death, then by some death unrecorded, he leaves history
abruptly--a most astonishing exit!... You may pursue fantastic legends,
you will not find the man himself again. Some say a final quarrel got
him hanged at last--it is improbable: no record or even tradition of it
remains. Rabelais thought him a wanderer in England. Poitou preserves a
story of his later passage through her fields, of how still he drank and
sang with boon companions, and of how, again, he killed a man.... Maybe,
he only ceased to write; took to teaching soberly in the University, and
lived in a decent inheritance to see new splendours growing upon Europe.
It may very well be, for it is in such characters to desire in early
manhood decency, honour, and repose. But for us the man ends with his
last line. His body that was so very real, his personal voice, his
jargon--tangible and audible things--spread outward suddenly a vast
shadow upon nothingness. It was the end, also, of a world. The first
Presses were creaking, Constantinople had fallen, Greek was in Italy,
Leonardo lived, the stepping stones of the Azores were held--in that new
light he disappears.

* * * * *

Of his greatness nothing can be said; it is like the greatness of all
the chief poets, a thing too individual to seize in words. It is
superior and exterior to the man. Genius of that astounding kind has all
the qualities of an extraneous thing. A man is not answerable for it. It
is nothing to his salvation; it is little even to his general character.
It has been known to come and go, to be put off and on like a garment,
to be lent by Heaven and taken away, a capricious gift.

But of the manner of that genius it may be noted that, as his vigour
prepared the flood of new verse, so in another matter his genius made
him an origin. Through him first, the great town--and especially
Paris--appear