MAROT; SAINT-GELAIS.--The sixteenth century in France was ushered in by
Marot and Saint-Gelais. Marot was a gracious, fluent, and satiric singer.
He was infinitely witty without venom, or mannerism, or affectation; at
times he attained to a somewhat serious philosophic poesy and also to
eloquence. Saint-Gelais, because he was most emphatically court-poet of
all those who have ever been court-poets, was placed by his
contemporaries above Marot, and literary historians have left him for the
most part in that position. The truth is that his work is worthless. It
would be impossible, however, to rob him of the glory of having brought
the sonnet from Italy, where he long abode in youth.

COMINES.--In this first half of the sixteenth century must be noted
Comines, the historian of Louis XI, a political historian and a
historical statesman, remarkably subtle in perceiving the characters and
temperaments of prominent individuals, as well as a writer possessing
exactitude and limpidity rare in his generation.

RABELAIS.--Francis Rabelais, in his two epic romances, _Gargantua_
and _Pantagruel_, was erudite, capable of a certain philosophic
wisdom which has been greatly exaggerated, but above all was picturesque
to one's heart's content, and possessed the art of telling a tale as well
as any one in the wide world. He has been called "the buffoon Homer," and
the nickname may be legitimately granted to him.

THE PLEIADE.--The second half of the sixteenth century was in all
respects the more remarkable. In poetry there was the Pleiade:
that is, the true and complete "Renaissance," although Marot had already
been a good workman at its dawn. The Pleiade consisted of Ronsard, Du
Bellay, Pontus of Tyard, Remy Belleau, and others; that is, folk who
wished to give to France in French the equivalent of what the classics