Songs of Old France

at period marked by an unaffected naturalness of sentiment that is found neither in the cruder productions of the preceding hundred years nor in the more developed works of later times. This is the more remarkable because during this century the literary muse of France?with the one notable exception of Frangois Villon, of whom I shall say more later on?had abandoned nature and simplicity in favour of " the art and science of rhetoric " and had wandered away, as M. Gaston Paris puts it, " to wearisome allegory and heavy imitation of the latin." The poet and prosaist who so dominated the first half of the fifteenth century as to win for himself the posthumous title of " The Father of French Eloquence," was Alain Chartier. Born in Normandy in 1386, during the reign of Charles V., he became Secretary to Kings Charles VI. and Charles VII., dying in 1458. He was the uncontested master of that style32 SONGS OF OLD FKANCE of French poetry which consisted in a blend of the lyrical and didactic, and was the first to introduce the octo-syllabic stanza of eight lines that was adopted by Fraois Villon in his " Testaments " and followed by nearly all the poets of the century. Yet, although the name of Alain Chartier is well known to the majority of English readers, it is a remarkable fact that his fame owes less to the intrinsic merit of his work?great though that undoubtedly is?than to the well known incident that I repeat here in the quaint phraseology ...