440 NATIONAL POETRY. 



nobles, in spite of his deformity and ugliness. It is told how the Dauphiness 

 Margaret -of Scotland, coming upon him one day while asleep, kissed him 

 upon the mouth, from which, says Etienne Pasquier, " issued so many golden 

 words and virtuous discourses." He died in 1458, at the age of seventy-five. 

 One of his pupils, Duke Charles of Orleans, who, taken prisoner at Agincourt, 

 remained a captive in England for the rest of his youth, consoled himself by 

 writing French and English verses, most of them gallant, spiritual, and 

 pensive, into many of which he introduced the metaphysical personages of 

 the " Romance of the Rose." He had around him in London, as well as at 

 his Chateau de Blois in France, a sort of court of love and poetry, the 

 members of which vied with each other in composing ballads and roundelays. 

 Charles of Orleans often imitated the troubadours and the Italian poets 

 Petrarch amongst others. His imagination was lively and gay, he indulged 

 in many humorous sallies, and his soul overflowed with true and generous 

 feeling. 



The court poetry led, by the natural effect of contradiction and strife, to 

 the birth of a poetry which was of truly popular origin. One of the first 

 essays in this new kind of poetry, which emanated from the genuine emotions 

 of the mind, was, however, made by a man of noble birth, Jean Regnier, 

 Seigneur de Guerchy, who, notwithstanding his birth and his fortune, did 

 not think it beneath him to declare his sentiments with pathetic 

 sincerity. He was at the time in prison at Beauvais, and he was 

 about to be tried for high treason. His painful position made him a 

 poet, and, as a preparation for death, he evoked the muse. After he had 

 bemoaned his " Fortunes et Adversitez " he became resigned to his fate, and 

 he drew up a will in rhyme, half earnest, half jocular, which was doubtless 

 the type taken for his two " Testaments " by Villon, who, though he does not 

 imitate Regnier word for word, undoubtedly had his work before him when 

 he began to write his " Petit Testament " in the Chatelet prison, where he was 

 under confinement for his misdeeds. Villon, a student of the University of 

 Paris, was said to have committed a murder and several robberies, and after 

 being fortunate enough to escape the gibbet, he again was guilty of some 

 misdeed, for which he was imprisoned at Meung. It was there that lie 

 composed his best work, the " Grand Testament," owing to which, and to 

 the intervention of Duke Charles of Orleans, he obtained a commutation of 

 his sentence. This work is a singular compound of wild gaiety, of keen 



