e this to give
the man as he moved domestically to the admiration of the court and of
his friends in a time which missed, for example, the epic character of
the last six lines of "Le Beau Tettin," and which hardly comprehended of
what value his pure lyric enthusiasms would be to a sadder and drier
posterity.

_OF COURTING LONG AGO._

_Au bon vieulx temps un train d'amour regnoit,
Qui sans grand art et dons se demenoit,
Si qu'un boucquet donne d'amour profonde
S'estoit donne toute la terre ronde:
Car seulement au cueur on se prenoit._

_Et si, par cas, a jouyr on venoit,
Scavez-vous bien comme on s'entretenoit?
Vingt ans, trente ans; cela duroit ung monde
Au bon vieulx temps._

_Or est perdu ce qu'amour ordonnoit,
Rien que pleurs fainctz, rien que changes on n'oyt.
Qui vouldra donc qu'a aymer je me fonde,
Il fault, premier, que l'amour on refonde
Et qu'on la meine ainsi qu'on la menoit
Au bon vieulx temps._

NOEL.
(_The Second of the Chansons._)

But here, upon the contrary, is the spontaneity of his happy mind; it
suggests a song; one can hardly read it without a tune in one's head, so
simple is it and so purely lyrical: there is a touch of the dance in it,
too.

In these little things of Marot, which are neither learned (and he
boasted of learning) nor set and dry (and his friends especially praised
his precision), a great poet certainly appears--in short revelations,
but still appears. Unfortunately there are not enough of them.

That he thought "like a Southerner," as I have maintained and as I shall
show by a further example, is made the more probable from the value he
lends to the feminine e. The excellent rhythm of this poem you will only
get by giving the feminine e the value of a drawn out syllable:

"L'effect
Est faict:
La bel-le
Pucel-le," etc.

So Spaniards, Gascons, Provencaux, Italians, rhyme, and all those of the
south who have retained their glorious "a's" and "o's".

As for the spirit of it--God bless him!--it is a subject for perpetual
merriment to think of such a man's being taken for a true Huguenot and
enmeshed, even for a while, in the nasty cobweb of Geneva. But in the
last thing I shall quot