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mers ; but, admirable critic though he was, 

 he had not tried creative work and failed, 

 in order to prove his capacity for pointing 

 out the failures and successes of others. 

 Nor yet, with the charming tinkle of 

 Marot's blasons and coq a Vane, and the 

 clever turns of Brodeau's new rondeaus in 

 his ears, and with Marguerite of Angou- 

 leme still singing when he was a lad, did 

 he give the warblers any distinguished 

 notice, but gathered from them, by that 

 indirect mode of observation peculiar to 

 born essayists, many a delicate turn of 

 diction and here and there a brilliant flash 

 of irony. 



Not by choice, but by force of tempera- 

 ment and the trend of the times, he found 

 himself occupying a point of view on the 

 ground between Rome and Reformation, 

 in a skeptical attitude toward both, yet too 

 well saturated with the religion in which 

 he was born to die outside its forms. He 

 may be taken, as Emerson took him, for 

 the type-specimen of the genus doubter; 

 but his doubts were not mere polemical 

 stones hurled at sacred traditions. He 

 297 



