earning, religious partisanship, war, law, love, almost
everything. All the writers are far below their great master,[118] and
none of them has the appeal of the _Heptameron_. But the spirit of
tale-telling pervades the whole shelf-ful, and there is one more special
point of importance "for us."

[Sidenote: The "provincial" character of these.]

It will be observed that some of them actually display in their titles
(such as that of Tabouret's book as quoted) the fact that they have a
definite provinciality in no bad sense: while Bouchet is as clearly
Angevin and Du Fail as distinctly Breton as Des Accords is Burgundian
and as the greatest of all had been Tourangeau. It can scarcely be
necessary to point out at great length what a reinforcement of vigour
and variety must have been brought by this plantation in the different
soils of those provinces which have counted for so much--and nearly
always for so much good[119]--in French literature and French things
generally. The great danger and defect of mediaeval writing had been its
tendency to fall into schools and ruts, and the "printed book"
(especially such a printed book as Rabelais) was, at least in one way,
by no means unlikely to exercise this bad influence afresh. To this the
provincial differences opposed a salutary variety of manners, speech,
local colour, almost everything. Moreover, manners themselves
generally--one of the fairest and most fertile fields of the
novel-kingdom--became thus more fully and freely the object and subject
of the tale-teller. Character, in the best and most extensive and
intensive sense of the word, still lagged behind; and as the drama
necessarily took that up, it was for more reasons than one encouraged,
as we may say, in its lagging. But meanwhile Amyot and Calvin[120] and
Montaigne were getting the language more fully ready for the
prose-writer's use, and the constant "sophistication" of literature with
religion, politics, knowledge of the physical world in all ways,
commerce, familiarity with foreign nations--everything almost that
touched on life--helped to bring on the slow but inevitable appearance
of the novel itself. But it had more influences to assimilate and more
steps to go through before it could take full form.

[Sidenote: The _Amadis_ romances.]

No more curious contrast (except, perhaps, the not very dissimilar one
which will meet us in the next chapter) is to be found in the present
_History_, or perhaps in any o