360 LANGUAGES. 



and not imposing any check upon his style, which is often heavy and diffuse. 

 The tendency of the language was to become turgid and monotonous. 



The usurpation of the Flemish writers into all branches of French litera- 

 ture was not favourable to the latter, which, becoming affected and involved, 

 finally lapsed into pedantic and fallacious verbosity. Christina de Pisaii 

 (Fig. 301), the historiographer of Charles V., set the example of this fictitious 

 pathos, but she was very soon outdone by the historians of the court of 

 Burgundy, George Chastelain, Olivier de la Marche, and Molinet. Jean 

 d'Auton, the chronicler of Louis XII., appears to have been more than any 

 other writer responsible for the involved style which formed the Gordian 

 knot of the French language. 



Antoine de la Sale, a pleasant chronicler of the court of Burgundy, did 

 not -in any way contribute to tighten this knot, though he did not cut it ; and 

 his romance, " Petit Jehan de Saintre," must have been a welcome change to 

 the reader after he had perused so many compilations written in a style at 

 once pretentious and .involved. Antoine de la Sale wrote French, and this 

 remark applies with even greater truth to the authors of the " Cent Nouvelles 

 nouvelles," who seemed to descend in a direct line from the ancient troiiveres 

 who had set to rhyme so many joyous fabliaux. The French language, spoilt 

 by too much erudition, once more recovered its original force, when put in 

 the mouth of the people at large by a poet who drew from his own inspira- 

 tion, without the aid of Latin words or of declamation, eloquence of a simple 

 and natural kind. This was Francois Villon, who writes the language of the 

 " Romance of the Rose," only with greater force and boldness. "While he 

 was restoring to its place of honour the language of Paris, a statesman and a 

 courtier, Philippe de Comines, was preparing Memoirs which are a perfect 

 model of the grave, sustained, and philosophical language of history. As 

 M. Francis "Wey remarks, "The Seigneur of Argeiiton writes in a style 

 which is flexible, precise, ample, and nervous ; his language seems entirely 

 modern, and, excepting a few differences in spelling and a few obsolete words, 

 separated by only a few years from the reign of Henry IV." Yet there was 

 nearly a century between Philippe de Comines and the King of Navarre. 



During the reign of Francois I. there was a tendency to imitate the 

 Italian, and for a hundred years this tendency prevailed, but at the same time 

 the language was fortified by its continuous contact with Greek and Latin. 

 Rabelais satirizes in "Pantagruel" this abuse of Latiiiism, which Gcoffroy 



