asionally break through the
stiff wrappings of the longer poems appear with less difficulty and in
fuller measure.

It is, however, undoubtedly curious, and not to be explained merely by
the difference of subject, that the styles of the letters and of the
poems, agreeing well enough between themselves, differ most remarkably
from that of the _Heptameron_. The two former are decidedly open to
the charges of pedantry, artificiality, heaviness. There is a great
surplusage of words and a seeming inability to get to the point. The
_Heptameron_ if not equal in narrative vigour and lightness to Boccaccio
before and La Fontaine afterwards, is not in the least exposed to
the charge of clumsiness of any kind, employs a simple, natural, and
sufficiently picturesque vocabulary, avoids all verbiage and roundabout
writing, and both in the narratives and in the connecting conversation
displays a very considerable advance upon nearly all the writers of the
time, except Rabelais, Marot, and Desperiers, in easy command of the
vernacular. It is, therefore, not wonderful that there has, at different
times (rather less of late years, but that is probably an accident),
been a disposition if not to take away from Margaret all the credit of
the book, at any rate to give a share of it to others. In so far as this
share is attempted to be bestowed on ladies and gentlemen of her Court
or family there is very little evidence for it; but in so far as the pen
may be thought to have been sometimes held for her by the distinguished
men of letters just referred to (there is no reason why Master Francis
himself should not have sometimes guided it), and by others only less
distinguished, there is considerable internal reason to favour the idea.
At all times and in all places--in France perhaps more than anywhere
else--kings and queens, lords and ladies, have found no difficulty (we
need not use the harsh Voltairian-Carlylian phrase, and say in getting
their literary work "buckwashed," but) in getting it pointed and
seasoned, trimmed and ornamented by professional men of letters. The
form of the _Heptameron_ lends itself more than any other to such
assistance; and while I should imagine that the setting, with its strong
colour, both of religiosity and amorousness, is almost wholly Margaret's
work, I should also think it so likely as to be nearly certain that in
some at least of the tales the hands of the authors of the _Cymbalum
Mundi_ and the _Adolescenc