ly do
they alone make us acquainted with the history of their times, but they
sometimes narrate it with real talent as observers and writers. Gregory
of Tours, Eginhard, William of Tyre, Guibert of Nogent, William of
Jumieges, and Orderic Vital are worthy of every attention from those
whose hearts are set upon thoroughly understanding the history of the
periods and the provinces of which those laborers of the middle ages
have, in Latin, preserved the memorials. The chief of those works have
been gathered together and translated in a special collection bearing the
name of Guizot. But it is with the reign of Francis I. that, to bid a
truce to further interruption, we commence the era of the real grand
literature of France, that which has constituted and still constitutes
the pride and the noble pleasure of the French public. Of that alone we
would here denote the master-works and the glorious names, putting them
carefully at the proper dates and places in the general course of events;
a condition necessary for making them properly understood and their
influence properly appreciated. As to the reign of Francis I., however,
it must be premised as follows: several of the most illustrious of French
writers, in poesy and prose, Ronsard, Montaigne, Bodin, and Stephen
Pasquier, were born during that king's lifetime and during the first half
of the sixteenth century; but it is to the second half of that century
and to the first of the seventeenth that they belong by the glory of
their works and of their influence; their place in history will be
assigned to them when we enter upon the precise epoch at which they
performed and shone. We will at present confine ourselves to the great
survivors of the middle ages, whether in prose or poesy, and to the men
who shed lustre on the reign of Francis I. himself, and led French
literature in its first steps along the road on which it entered at that
period.

The middle ages bequeathed to French literature four prose-writers whom
we cannot hesitate to call great historians: Villehardouin, Joinville,
Froissart, and Commynes. Geoffrey de Villehardouin, after having taken
part, as negotiator and soldier, in the crusade which terminated in the
capture of Constantinople, and having settled in Thessaly, at
Messinopolis, as holder of considerable fiefs, with the title of Marshal
of Romania (Roumelia), employed his leisure in writing a history of this
great exploit. He wrote with a dignified