NATIONAL POETRY. 



applied the ballad to all kinds of subjects, and with him it sometimes rises to 

 the height of the ode. Deschamps was an austere and serious poet, who 

 showed no mercy to vice and to abuses, and the patriotic spirit of his poetry 

 comes out in his maledictions against the English, while he shows himself a 

 man of feeling by his regretful allusions to the sufferings of the people. It 

 was in this mournful period that was written the popular poem of the 

 " Danse Macabre " (" Dance of Death "), represented in Fig. 340. Christina de 

 Pisan, daughter of the astrologer of Charles V., also composed a number of 

 ballads and roundelays, marked with the impress of melancholy, which are of 



Fig. 341. Alain Chartier comforted by Hope. Cameo Miniature from the "Triumph of Hope," 

 Allegory on the Political Events in the Eeign of Charles VII. Unpublished Manuscript of the 

 Sixteenth Century. In the Library of M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot. Paris. 



more merit than her long historical and moral poems. Most of them testify 

 to her love for France, and her sentiments are noble and elevated, though the 

 style is feeble and confused. 



There was a steady increase in the number of French poets, and the poetry 

 itself, especially the court poetry, continued to improve. Alain Chartier, 

 whose immense reputation was made at the French court, did much to bring 

 about this progress. His " Breviary of the Nobles " was a sort of gospel for 

 the nobility, and Jean le Masle affirms that during the reign of Francois I. 



