The Sun.
London, England, 1849-10-17 00:00:00

LITERATURE

THE COURT AND REIGN OF FRANCIS
1., KING OF FRANCE. By Miss Pardoe.
2 Vols.
To those who have perused Miss Pardoe's "Louis
XIV.," any particular description of this work will
be almost superfluous. " Francis I." is characterised
by the same peculiarities, and recommended by the
'same attractions. It combines the same pleasing
admixture of truth and fiction—the realities of hh-
tory arrayed in the garb of romance. Miss Pardoe's
pen is happily adapted to this peculiar style of com-
position ; her historical narrations are given with
the utmost clearness and simplicity, and her " court
scenes" are gracefully and ingeniously introduced.
To the majority of readers these gay scenes and
sketches will probably prove the most attractive
portion of the work ; they are well adapted to throw
light upon the times of Francis 1., although other-
wise their general tenor is trifling and profitless.
Yet, if more fit for the pages of a novel than for
introduction in an historical work, these seemingly
trivial incidents appear, as Miss Pardoe has depicted
them, invested with no inconsiderable importance.
Thus, for example, when Francis inquires the cause
of the Countess of Chateaubriand's melancholy,
her brother becomes entrusted with the com-
mand of the Milanese; and when the Queen
transmits a mark of her approbation to the
Constable de Montmorenci, that officer loses favour
in the eye of the King. "Trifles make the sum of
human things," says the adage, and the saying is
continually verified in the history of Courts ; therefore
the compiler of these memoirs of the Court of Francis
I. has judiciously chronicled not only great events
but momentous trifles. A fascinating interest beguiles
the reader as he turns over the pages of the varied
narrative, yet on its conclusion his impressions are
those of melancholy. No sermon ever enforced so
effectually the magnitude of human weakness and
the vanity of earthly grandeur. Francis 1., the
chivalrous king, the hero of romance, stands before us
stripped of the gorgeous attractions with which fiction
has invested him. Miss Fardoe thus emphatically sums
up the characteristics of the " chivalrous King:"—"He
was vain even to puerility in his youth, sensual even
to profligacy in. his manhood, and bigoted even
to brutality in his :decline." A fitful gleam
of the old romance plays round the " chivalrous"
King in some few instances, as when, abasing the pride
of the monarch, he knelt on the battle-field to receive
knighthood at the hands of Captain Bayard, or when,
again, (honouring himself by the act rather than
him he meant to honour) he supported the
dying artist, Da Vinci, in his arms, or,
again, at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, when naturally
indignant of the unworthy suspicions by which the
attendants of both kings were scrupulously confined
to the same number, Francis rode almost alone into
the head-quarters of Henry, braving the danger his
ministers dreaded in order to vindicate his faith in the
honour of his brother king; in these, and some similar
instances, we recognise the chivalrous Francis, whose
name has been cherished by the lovers of romance.
And yet we cannot pursue the revelations of his his •
tory without finding our admiration dwindle into
contempt. How the chivalry of knighthood dis-
appears from the image of Francis when we find
him writing to a discarded mistress to demand
back the jewels he had bestowed on her to
gratify the pride of her successor I As a contrast,
we gladly turn from the revolting details of
Court intrigues to the contemplation of martial scenes,
rendered especially attractive by the graceful presence
of " the good Knight" Bayard. The following ex-
tract is a happy specimen of the interesting manner
in which Miss Fardoe describes such scenes, intro-
ducing extracts from old chronicles when they tend
to increase the effect of the picture :