's own, and that he had a faculty of
grave ironic satire, going deeper and ranging wider than her
"sensibility" would allow. There is one on the fatal and irremediable
effects of disappointing ladies in their expectations, wherein there is
something more than the mere _grivoiserie_, which in other hands it
might easily have remained. The very curious Novel XIII.--on King
Solomon and the philosopher's stone and the reason of the failure of
alchemy--is of quite a different type from most things in these
story-collections, and makes one regret that there is not more of it,
and others of the same kind. For sheer amusement, which need not be
shocking to any but the straitest-laced of persons, the story (XXXIV.)
of a curate completely "scoring off" his bishop (who did not observe the
caution given by Ophelia to Laertes) has not many superiors in its
particular kind.

[Sidenote: Other tale-collections.]

The fancy for these collections of tales spread widely in the sixteenth
century, and a respectable number of them have found a home in histories
of literature. Sometimes they present themselves honestly as what they
are, and sometimes under a variety of disguises, the most extravagant of
which is the title of the rather famous work of Henri Estienne,
_Apologie pour Herodote_. Others, more or less fantastic, are the
_Propos Rustiques_ and _Baliverneries_ of Noel Du Fail, a Breton squire
(as we should say), and his later _Contes d'Eutrapel_; the _Escraignes
Dijonnaises_ and other books of Tabourot des Accords; the _Matinees_ and
_Apres Dinees_ of Cholieres, and, the largest collection of all, the
_Serees_ [Soirees] of the Angevin Guillaume Bouchet,[117] while after
the close of the actual century, but probably representing earlier work,
appeared the above-mentioned _Moyen de Parvenir_, by turns attributed
and denied to Beroalde de Verville. In all these, without exception, the
imitation of Rabelais, in different but unmistakable ways, is to be
found; and in not a few, that of the _Heptameron_ and of Desperiers;
while not unfrequently the same tales are found in more than one
collection. The _fatrasie_ character--that is to say, the stuffing
together of all sorts of incongruous matter in more or less burlesque
style--is common to all of them; the licence of subject and language to
most; and there are hardly any, except a few mere modernisings of old
_fabliaux_, in which you will not find the famous farrago of the
Renaissance--l