The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1877-03-17

iudeed-legacies of the Latin prose upon which
it was founded.
The passing Of the trouveres, the birth of the
drama, the establishment of French prose,
pring us near to the Renaissance. But before
emerging from the Middle Ages our attention
is arrested by three poets, a trio of which
france has reason to be proud. The first of
tnese is Charles of Orleans, the son of Valen-
Tine de Milan, and the author of the famous
rondeau.
"Le temps laisse son manteau SC.
The second is Rene, Count of Provence, and
latest to wear the Crown of Thorns; for among
other shadowy titles he held that of King OF
Jerusalem, by descent from the stout old cru
sader who won it. He is best known to Eng
lish speaking people as the father OF Margaret
of Anjou. The last and greatest of the trio is
Francois Villon, author of the Grand and the
Petit Testament and of the
Mais GU sont les neiges d'antan?
man whose strength and weakness
are precisely the strength and weakness
of the French light literature of to-day;
who sang with Astounding genius and philoso
ply and lightness of heart; whose ''poems are
sermons in dishabille, moralities in the garb of
looseness, history in romance, philosophy in
love-songs." With lingering mention of him,
its not unworthy forerunner Van Laun reaches
The Renaissance, and to it the remaining pages
OF the volume are given.
1t was in the sixteenth century that the
great awakening came to France. 1t started
on Italian soil, but all nations felt its influence.
IL its strong light old beliefs faded away, and
new ones, sometime written in sympathetic
ink, grew apparent TO the view. The maps of
the universe had to be changed. Copernicus
and Calico explored the heavens and hung the
revolving world in space. Columbus crossed
the deep and found new earth. Luther and
Calvin liberated the soul, Rabelais and Mon
taigne liberated the mind, Shakespeare and
Cervantes gave wings to the imagination; and
the types of Caxton made the new knowledge
free to all men and recorquered the lost learn
ing of the world. Upon the phases of the rev.
olution in France Mr., Van Laun in the present
volume scarcely more than enters. He has yet
to trace it in all its manifold energy. But he
steps so far across its threshold IS to bring US
face to face with its militant vigor and inten-
sity. Already in his pages evidence is given of
the development of the highest faculties and
capabilities of the national mind. Marguerite
Of Navarro in the Heptameron furnishes Illus
tration of keen-edged and polished satire.
Clement Marot follows in her footsteps, exhib-
ting versatility which is genuinely French
editing Villon, undermining Jean de Meung,
translatipg the Penitential Psalms and Ovid's
Metamorphoses, writing the praises of st.
Christina and singing the triumphs of Cupid,
but always in prison or in exile because of
satire, and even under the ban of the Sorbonpe.
To him succeeded Rabelais. whose fame rests
upon the rough, coarse and unmerciful satire of
two works in which he dashed his age and his
profession. In another direction we find the
elegant and shrewd RESPONSIVENESS, the cold,
light, good-tempered banter of Montague In
this time too the fathers Of French jurispru-
dence, Etenne and Nicolas Pasquin, Michel de
pHopital and Pierre la Rance, did their work.
All these men come within the scope of the
present volume, and greater than them all
John Calvin, with whom French prose attained
its manhood, is treated. The Reformation was
the most significant outcome of the Renais-
sance, the most powerful development of the
intellectual revolution which distinguishes the
sixteenth century. Ia France Calvin was its
apostle, and to him is due not only great re-
ligious wakening, but powerful influence
upon national literature. The lofty and seri.
Gus prose of the sixteenth and seventeenth Gen.
turtles, says Mr.. Van Laun, bears his mark
visibly impressed upon it; and not only upon
its style but upon its method and argument
For the Christian Institution was the first
French work of importance which prominently
DISPLAYED the severe logical reasoning, well sus-
tanned and clearly enunciated, which has ever
since distinguished the national French litera-
ture What Villehardouin and Joinville did
for history, Calvin did for theology; and more,
for he not only showed his cou ntry men how to
treat the most elevated of all themes, but he
gave them at the outset masterpiece and
model.
Calvin is Mr.. Van Lauh's last word. With
him he closes the volume. The succeeding vol
ume will be eagerly welcomed for it brings us
to one of the most interesting phases of French
literature, to the age of the Pleiade and of the
Ligue, of the Hotel de Rambouillet and the
Port-Royal, of the Satire Menippee and of the
Pfeceuses. If the completed work sustains
the promise of the opening pages it will be of
great aud lasting worth.