dogmatic spirit of theology
after a time alienated the Reforming party from the mere humanism
of literature and art. An interest in general ideas and a capacity
for dealing with them were fostered by the study of antiquity both
classical and Christian, by the meeting of various tendencies, and
by the conflict of rival creeds. To embody general ideas in art under
a presiding feeling for beauty, to harmonise thought and form, was
the great work of the seventeenth century; but before this could be
effected it was necessary that France should enjoy tranquillity after
the strife of the civil wars.

Learning had received the distinction of court patronage when Louis
XII. appointed the great scholar Bude his secretary. Around Francis
I., although he was himself rather a lover of the splendour and
ornament of the Renaissance than of its finer spirit, men of learning
and poets gathered. On the suggestion of GUILLAUME BUDE he endowed
professorships of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, to which were added those
of medicine, mathematics, and philosophy (1530-40), and in this
projected foundation of the College de France an important step was
made towards the secularisation of learned studies. The King's sister,
MARGUERITE OF NAVARRE (1492-1549), perhaps the most accomplished
woman of her time, represents more admirably than Francis the genius
of the age. She studied Latin, Italian, Spanish, German, Hebrew, and,
when forty, occupied herself with Greek. Her heart was ardent as well
as her intellect; she was gay and mundane, and at the same time she
was serious (with even a strain of mystical emotion) in her concern
for religion. Although not in communion with the Reformers, she
sympathised with them, and extended a generous protection to those
who incurred danger through their liberal opinions. Her poems,
_Marguerites de la Marguerite des Princesses_ (1547), show the
mediaeval influences forming a junction with those of the Renaissance.
Some are religious, but side by side with her four dramatic Mysteries
and her eloquent _Triomphe de l'Agneau_ appears the _Histoire des
Satyres et Nymphes de Diane_, imitated from the Italian of Sannazaro.
Among her latest poems, which remained in manuscript until 1896, are
a pastoral dramatic piece expressing her grief for the death of her
brother Francis I.; a second dramatic poem, _Comedie jouee au Mont
de Marsan_, in which love (human or divine) triumphs over the spirit
of the world, over superstitious a