pompous little snob--and longed to pull it! and tried to disinfect his
greasy, civet-scented, full-bottomed wig with wholesome whiffs from a
nineteenth-century regalia!

Nothing of that foolish but fascinating period escaped us. Town, hamlet,
river, forest, and field; royal palace, princely castle, and starving
peasants' hut; pulpit, stage, and salon; port, camp, and marketplace;
tribunal and university; factory, shop, studio, smithy; tavern and
gambling-hell and den of thieves; convent and jail, torture-chamber and
gibbet-close, and what not all!

And at every successive step our once desponding, over-anxious,
over-burdened latter-day souls have swelled with joy and pride and hope
at the triumphs of our own day all along the line! Yea, even though we
have heard the illustrious Bossuet preach, and applauded Moliere in one
of his own plays, and gazed at and listened to (and almost forgiven)
Racine and Corneille, and Boileau and Fenelon, and the good
Lafontaine--those five ruthless persecutors of our own innocent French
childhood!

And still ascending the stream of time, we have hobnobbed with Montaigne
and Rabelais, and been personally bored by Malherbe, and sat at
Ronsard's feet, and ridden by Froissart's side, and slummed with
Francois Villon--in what enchanted slums! ...

Francois Villon! Think of that, ye fond British bards and bardlets
of to-day--ye would-be translators and imitators of that
never-to-be-translated, never-to-be-imitated lament, the immortal
_Ballade des Dames du Temps jadis_!