he deplores the Duke's lack of wisdom, he praises unstintingly his noble qualities. "Undoubtedly," says he, "he was endued with many goodly virtues, for never was Prince more desirous to entertain noble men and to keep them in good order than he. His liberality seemed not great, because he made all men partakers thereof. Never Prince gave audience more willingly to his servants and subjects than he. While I served him he was not cruel, but grew marvellous oruel towards his end, which was a sign of short life. . . . Covetous he was of glory, which was the chief cause which made him move so many wars, for he desired to imitate those ancient Princes whose fame continueth till this present. Lastly, hardy was he and a valiant, as any man that lived in his time, but all his great enterprises and attempts ended with himself and turned to his own loss and dishonour, for honour goeth ever with the viotory." Honour goeth ever with the victory that is a true saying, true to-day as when it was written, and it is a saying which we should do well to ponder now, when a German victory would establish upon a firm foundation "honour rooted in dishonour."

Comines is just not only to the Duke of Burgundy. He is just also to Edward IV. of England, whom he finds the handsomest and most munificent prince that ever he saw, though too much inclined to take his ease. But the hero of his life and book is Louis XI.

He recognised the heavy burden which was laid upon him. "I knew this mighty king," he wrote, "and served him in the flower of his age, and in his great prosperity; yet never saw I him free from toil of body and trouble of mind." He praises his policy and his conduct, noting that he was always ready to humble himself at the call of wisdom, for "when pride rideth before, shame and damage follow after.' A king, modest in prosperity, brave in adversity, he knew whom he ought to fear, and was free from panic. So he gave his life to the profit of France, and dreamed of emulating Charlemagne, whom he thought he resembled, as many lesser men since have thought they resembled Napoleon. And Comines sketches his superstitions and his craft and his cruelties, leaving the balance of good always upon the right side, until he comes to his death at his castle of Plessis. "After all these fears, sorrows, and suspicions," he writes, "God (according to His accustomed goodness) wrought a miracle upon him, healing him both in soul and body, for He took him out of this miserable world, being perfect of sense, understanding, and memory, having received all his sacraments, without all grief to man's judgment, and talking continually even within a Pater Noster while of his death."

Such is the writer who Mr Tilley, following Brunetière, says, "had nothing in him of the Renaissance." If this be

true, it is true also that Comines has what is far greater-a universality of interest. He is part of the world's inheritance. He is read to-day not only by those whose business it is to study the records of history, but by those who care for the literary expression of character. Whether he was an artist in words or not, it is certain that his style fits his matter perfectly. He wrote always as a man of affairs, and produced the effect of a pious, practical statesmanship, at which he aimed. What Montaigne wrote in his own copy is true enough. Here it is in Florio's English: "In him you shall find a pleasing-sweet and gently-gliding speech, fraught with a purely-sincere simplicity, his narration pure and unaffected, and wherein the Author's unspotted good meaning doth evidently appear, void of all manner of vanity or ostentation speaking of himself, and free from all affection or envy speaking of others." That is high praise from a wise judge, and it admits Comines into the company of the eleot. But, says Mr Tilley, Comines' religion is "the simple, inconsistent, unspiritual religion of the ordinary medieval man." Now, it is true that for Comines God is the only ruler of Princes. He believes that whatever is done in this world is done with God's sanotion and approval. At the very moment that he sets forth the value of archers to an army, he insists that "God shows battles

are in His hand." Even Louis XI. is but a favoured puppet of the Deity. But this simple reverence is not exclusively medieval. It has belonged and will always belong to statesmen and soldiers of a certain type. Comines and his master were, like Cromwell, "practical mystics,” and with the best will in the world we cannot put Cromwell back into the Middle Ages. And even to-day we find leaders, on either side, invoking God to fight their battles for them, and the invocation is hypocritical only in those who make their Deity responsible for their own flagrant misdeeds.

It is one of the puzzles of history that Comines and Machiavelli were writing at the same time, in ignorance of each other's purpose, treatises which dealt with the duties and

ambitions of Princes. That Machiavelli 8&W more deeply into the sequence and purposes of events, that he had a wider outlook into the past, is obviously true. But his superiority came not from a difference in sympathy or period from Comines, but from his own genius and temperament. After his own fashion, Comines attempted to struct that which came easily to Machiavelli-a philosophy of statecraft. He would, if he could, have regulated the friendships of sovereigns; he defined the duties of ambassadors and spies, and he glorified wisdom and suspicion. "Think you," he asks, "that God hath established the office

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of a King or a Prince to be executed by such beasts as glory in saying: I am no scholar; I trust my Council well enough, and refer all matters to them, them, and and so without further answer depart to their sports and pastimes?" That was not the kingly part, as Comines wished to see it played; and though he lacked the profound knowledge and the supreme intelligence of Machiavelli, he was busy with the same work as engrossed the author of 'The Prince.' Nor did he go with out recognition. His book became the breviary of kings before it ever saw the dignity of print. Charles V. carried it with him always; and Francis I. disapproved of its appearance in type, because he thought it should remain the exclusive property of kings.

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Thus it seems a small matter whether we should place Comines in a pen labelled "Renaissance" or not. truth is that Villon Comines on the one hand, Ronsard and Rabelais on the other, belong all to the same age-the age of genius. And it is noteworthy that all that came between them in the literature of France has little other merit than the merit of curiosity. And this is the result not of the old spirit nor of the new, not of schools or periods, but the result of the accidents which decreed that Villon and Comines, Ronsard and Rabelais, should be born in France at the times in which they were.

Thus, again, we find an illus. tration of Blake's saying that genius is above its age, and are content.

Of the intervening period of the Dawn of the Renaissance Mr Tilley has given us an admirable account, which is all the more welcome because it is a period seldom relieved by great names. With a scholarly hand he has sketched the rise of humanism in France, and has given us deft portraits of Gaguin, the student of Latin, of Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples, the Aristotelian and restorer of philosophy, of whom a panegyrist says: "He came forth like the rising sun to dissipate the darkness and arouse the youth of France from its deep lethargy. He was the first to shed the light of purer learning on liberal studies, and to raise them from their fallen state to a place of honour." And so he passes to Guillaume Budé, the accomplished Grecian, the stalwart champion of scholarship in France, the author of 'De Asse,' and the correspondent of Rabelais. Then he describes the work which Erasmus, the greatest teacher and inspirer of Europe, did for humanism in France. "The New Learning was for Erasmus an instrument of life," says Mr Tilley, in an excellent passage. "This clear conception of the uses of Pagan literature for a Christian society was of the greatest service to France. For a large proportion of the early French humanists, under the influence of their theological training, had an uneasy misgiving as

to the fitness of pagan literature for the education of a Christian. Some, indeed, found relief in the theory that ancient literature was an allegory. But Erasmus taught them a truer view, that it is the moral seriousness of the best pagan literature that makes it a fitting instrument of Christian education." That is wisely said, and our debt to Erasmus is not yet paid. We still owe much of our scholarship to his prudent teaching and good example, and if, obedient to clamour, we now throw away what he taught us, we shall show ourselves ungrateful to the greatest man of letters of his time.

It is not Mr Tilley's fault that, when he leaves scholarship for the field of literature, he is forced to admit its barrenness. The dawn of the literary Renaissance in France was grey indeed. Such poets as there were called themselves very properly rhétoriquers. Their works were formal to insipidity, and of all the writers of the time only Lemaire de Bruges, to whom Mr Tilley rightly traces a debt in Rabelais, is worth remembrance. Thus it is in French scholarship that the effects of humanism were earliest and most clearly seen. In no other domain of human energy was so fearless a champion of the new learning and the new taste as Guillaume Budé, In the face of manifold difficulties he became most learned in Greek. The only teacher he had was the incompetent Hermonymus. "I found an old Greek," thus

he tells his tale, "or rather he found me, for I paid him a large fee, who could do little more than converse in literary language. But he pronounced and read excellently, and as I heard he was the only Greek in France, I thought him extremely learned. Moreover, he succeeded in exciting my ardour for study by introducing me to Homer and to the names of some other writers." And then

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came the intercourse with Italy, and the ready access to Greek manuscripts; and Budé spared neither money in buying books nor time in reading them. He took no holidays, and packed into one day the work of a day and a half. His debt to Italy, then, can be easily measured. arts of architecture and sculpture made a tardier, vaguer entrance into France. The French builders, the masters of their own craft, were naturally disinclined to accept the new fashions of Italy. But gradually Italian artificers made their way across the Alps, and at Amboise and elsewhere gave instruction to the craftsmen of France. The wonderful châteaux, which were built from end to end of France, were no longer fortresses; they served not for defence but for the grace of a well-ordered life, and the classical influence, slight though it be, was already upon them. "This contact of the old style with the new," says Mr Tilley, "of French master-masons and workmen, supported by tradition and public sentiment, with Italian architects and decora

tors under royal patronage, resulted in a blending of the two styles, in which at first Gothic had by far the larger share." But gradually the Italian taste encroached upon the ancient prejudices, and though France always interpreted the new style in her own way, she at last accepted the lessons in architecture which her neighbours had to teach with a whole heart.

As you read Mr Tilley's pages, a pageant of beauty passes before your eyes. The French, who would gladly teach, would always gladly learn. The civilised countries of Europe many centuries ago made an artistic alliance, which has never been broken. Germany has ever lain outside our borders, artistic and moral, as it is outside them to-day. But France, England, and Italy have shared the same ideas, have shared the same movements. In the early days of humanism Erasmus visited London and Cambridge, as well as Paris and Orleans. He held in a single chain the learned men of Europe. He fought for the Greeks against the Trojans with equal force on either side the Channel. And when Italy imposed the new rules of architecture upon France, she imposed them also, with a lighter hand, upon England. But if in the arts of building and painting we have shown our insularity, if, accepting certain influenoes, we have gone on our own way, if our houses and our furniture always bear an impress which is neither French nor Italian,

our literature has not seldom followed the common road. Sometimes we have followed the fashion of France, sometimes France has followed our fashion. The debt which Chaucer owed to the French we have since repaid with interest. What would the great romantic movement have been had France lacked the encouragement of England? Who shall estimate the influence of Walter Scott and Byron upon the Frenchmen of 1830?

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And loyally have we exchanged masterpieces. If Shakespeare for some centuries fought a losing battle in France, he has won the victory at last, and no poet is more generously appreciated than he across the Channel. The Germans make his works. an excuse for cumbrous annotation or false false patriotism. They overload him with commentary, or they claim him, insolently, for their own. French recognise him as poet, and do their best to understand him. Who, for instance, has written of late more wisely about Shakespeare than M. André Suares? And we in return have annexed Rabelais, by right of quest. Not only have we studied his merry book with goodwill and understanding, but in Sir Thomas Urquhart's version we have come near to matching the style of the original. Florio, moreover, has made Montaigne a true Englishman, and we gladly remember that he carried in his veins a few drops of English bloed, that he once listened to