1829] ( 
653) 
MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE, DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN, 
The Life and Times of Francis I., 
King of France. 2 vols. 8vo. 1829.— 
This is a careful and spirited survey of 
Francis and his Times, well considered and 
well executed; indicating a good deal of 
research in the less frequented sources, and 
conducted throughout with good taste, and, 
at the bottom, with all fairness, though a 
desire to detect favourable circumstances is 
sometimes too visible, accompanied with an 
anxiety to exhibit and spread them out, 
which throws obliquities (never evaded) into 
the shade, and produces occasionally the 
effect almost of designed misrepresentation. 
Of misrepresentation, however, we entirely 
acquit the author ; it is perfectly natural for 
one who is ferretting among old books and 
papers to make much of what has been over- 
looked by those who have gone before, and 
thus insensibly to give undue weight to 
mere novelty. 
Mixed up, as are the actions of Francis, 
almost wholly, and for the most part insepa- 
‘tably, with those of Charles the Fifth, and 
well and unexceptionably ‘as the life of 
‘Charles has been written, and in every 
_body’s hands also as that life certainly is, 
it required no common degree of courage to 
go over a ground which had been tracked 
in almost every direction. Nothing appa- 
rently was left but the interior history of 
the country, of which not much is known, 
and that not of much interest, and the per- 
sonal, or rather private conduct of the 
' monarch, which was any thing but com- 
manding and respectable. To make the 
story, however, complete and independent, 
» the author has industriously gone over the 
whole series of his acts of government ; and, 
moreover, omitted nothing to exhibit the 
gay but heartless monarch and his court, 
in the most attractive, and to the very fur- 
thest point that kindliness and charity would 
permit, in the most amiable light. This, 
however, was a difficult anda trying matter. 
Take away the frankness, the freedom, the 
occasional chivalry, which are admirable 
qualities—take away, too, the gaiety and 
Spirit of the man, which are qualities of 
very equivocal value, and what have we left 
—profligacy in domestic life, cruelty and 
carelessness in public, and in both, caprice, 
_ indolence, intemperance, and a degree of 
_ subjugation to wayward women—to a 
mother and a mistress, or rather to many 
mistresses, who forced him to protect their 
unworthy favourites, and share in the ex- 
cesses of a guilty revenge. “ Je n’aime 
guere Francois ler,” says Voltaire, in his 
exquisite manner, when glancing over sub- 
jects which he has before minutely consi- 
dered, “ Je ne vois guére dans Francois 
ler. que des actions ou injustes, ou honteu- 
ses, ou folles. Rien n’est plus injuste que le 
procés intenté au connéctable qui s’en vengea 
a” 
si bien, et que le supplice de Samblangai qui 
ne fut vengé par personne. L/atrocité et 
la bétise d’accuser un pauyre chimiste italien 
d’avoir empoisonné le dauphin son maitre, 
a Vinstigation de Charles-Quint, doit cou- 
vrir Francois ler. d’une honte éternelle. I 
ne sera jamais honorable d’ayoir envoyé ses 
deux enfans en Espagne, pour avoir le 
loisir de violer sa parole en France,” &c. 
Conflicting with Charles for thirty years 
(for our Henry’s caprice and coxcombry, 
and Wolsey’s avarice, made them compa- 
ratively insignificant opponents), no experi- 
ence was of service to him; he was never 
ready, or beforehand with his enemy, and 
always without money, without system, 
without efficient combination. Nothing 
but the Emperor’s undertaking perpetually 
more than he could accomplish, with his un- 
united and unusually scattered forces, could 
have saved Francis from final ruin, and the 
dismemberment of his kingdom. Any 
thing like consistency, or steadiness of pur- 
pose, was not to be expected from one whose 
adventurousness and indiscretion were con- 
tinually plunging him into difficulties ; but 
why, when protecting, or rather undertaking 
to protect, Protestants in Germany, treat 
them at home with a severity and savage- 
ness which was utterly uncalled for by any 
peculiar hazards? Nay, he could even su- 
perintend in person their executions on 
gibbets suspended over flames, and com- 
mand the wretched victims, after’scorching, 
to be run up, and let down again, and 
this repeatedly for hours, to protract the 
miseries of martyrdom, for the edifica- 
tion of the spectators, or their sport. If his 
own son, he declared, would not believe in 
transubstantiation, he would burn him too. 
This is not to be accounted for, and lightly 
passed over, by confounding it with the 
spirit of the age (superiority is shewn in re- 
sisting such spirit), it proceeded from a 
reckless humour—a hard and unsympathizing 
bosom, with a disposition—a mixture of the 
ape and tiger—to cruelty, that required 
only a little more opposition to break out 
into a Nero. 
To counterbalance—the story of his life 
presents nothing worthy of admiration, even 
to the most disposed to admire, but’a little 
reformation in the administration of justice, 
by the revival of circuit-courts to check the 
tyranny of the nobles—which, however, 
soon fell again into disuse— and the projec- 
tion of a royal college, and the intention of 
endowing it with a rental of 100,000 livres 
for the gratuitous instruction of 600 scholars, 
but which terminated with him in the 
appointment of sundry learned professors, 
with salaries, irregularly, or, more correctly, 
rarely paid. ‘T'o these must be added what 
is called. his patronage of the arts, which 
amounts to the occasional employment of 
