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she treats them with masculine vigour. Among her ballades is one that reminds us of the Combat des Trente, since it hails the victory of seven Frenchmen over seven Englishmen, in 1403, at Montendre near Bordeaux; and her last poem was a dittié in honour of the triumphs of Jeanne d'Arc. It is a noble pœan,

wherein is expressed all the joy of a woman, all the eloquence of a statesman, and all the gratitude of a saint. Besides an allegorising Roman d'Othéa et d'Hector, otherwise known as the Cent Histoires de Troye, Christine wrote a number of dits moraux addressed to her son Jean Castel, and designed, like Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son, as a preparation for life,-e.g.,

"Se tu as estat ou office,

Dont tu te mesles de justice,
Gardes comment tu jugeras,
Car devant le grant juge yras."

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Lastly, in the controversy regarding the Romance of the Rose, Christine championed the honour of her sex, with excellent effect, in an Épître au Dieu d'Amour. The Livre des Cent Ballades is precious as throwing light on the literary dissipations of French gentlemen The Livre des at the close of the fourteenth century. Cent Ballades. The work consists of a great debate" on love, opened by an old knight who counsels a young bachelor to be loyal, while a lady defends inconstancy and caprice. Unable to decide the point, the young man submits the question to thirteen lords, three of whom return a witty, evasive answer, seven side with the old knight, and only two are found to support the

lady. The principal scene of this" debate" is a watermeadow by the Loire, where a gay company of ladies and gentlemen is assembled, but the meeting with the knight takes place on the road between Angers and Pont-de-Cé. The Livre was supposed to have been written by Marshal de Bouciqualt, then between twenty and thirty years old, and certain of his friends, during an expedition "oultre-mer"; but the latest authorities are opposed to this belief.1

1 These writings are not specially easy of access. Interesting specimens may be found in Leroux de Lincy's Recueil de Chants Historiques; and Scheler has published an edition of Froissart's poems (Brussels, 1871). Mr Paget Toynbee's Specimens of Old French (Clarendon Press) will be valued.

172

CHAPTER IV.

DANTE.

EARLY BIOGRAPHERS-LIFE-THE 'CONVIVIO -THE DE

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MONARCHIA

-THE DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA '-EPISTLES, ECLOGUES, ETC.-
THE COMMEDIA.'

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"HIS biography is, as it were, irrecoverably lost for us." This was Carlyle's dictum several decades ago, and Lost biography, nothing has happened since to necessitate

a revision of the sentence. Rather, the effect of much toilsome research and anxious sifting of evidence, instead of adding to our knowledge, has been, at least in some directions, to take away that little which we flattered ourselves we possessed. As in other departments of history, so here beliefs which have entered, so to speak, into the very marrow of our consciousness-have become almost articles of faith with us must be yielded up before the powerful search-light which is being turned on so many dark coigns of the Middle Ages. The final result may be happy. The process may end in an authentic biography of Dante not devoid, let us hope, of that

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warmth, that colour, that particularity which lend so great, however spurious, a charm to the "romances' that served our predecessors in lieu of genuine fact. But for this the time is not ripe; and, with regard to many statements, the most that can be claimed for them is that they are provisionally correct.

Things being in this predicament, it is natural to ask-What are our sources of information? At first

these might seem ample. A multiplicity The Trattatello. of "Lives" is found to exist, some of them quite early, and one going back to the generation following that of Dante. Assured of this fact, we might well suppose it a simple and satisfactory expedient to procure the biographies, read them, and digest them at our leisure. Nobody could be blamed for this illusion; however, it is an illusion. These "Lives," most of them, are not independent works. They are to be traced with hardly an exception to one originalBoccaccio's famous Little Treatise in Praise of Dante. Its very title is enough to render this composition suspected. If it was wished to learn the truth about such-and-such, the last place in which to seek it would be a speech delivered at his funeral, when the force of the adage "Nothing but good of the dead" is most felt and appreciated. The Trattatello is not actually a funeral oration, but it is conceived in the spirit, and executed in the style, of a funeral oration; and therefore its authority cannot be received as final.

Boccaccio's general character and achievements will be dealt with later. Meanwhile, it is requisite to assume an acquaintance with this writer as the author

of the Decameron. That Boccaccio was a novelist is not an irrelevancy-a circumstance that can be rightly ignored. While it would be unjust to affirm that a novelist is incapable as such of treating historical subjects seriously, it must be evident to the least reflecting that he is exposed to peculiar temptations, and trammelled by predilections from which other, less fanciful, beings are exempt. If we find him devoting disproportionate space to the romantic elements of the story-that is no more than we should expect; nor ought it to be much of a surprise, if the habitual and irresponsible exercise of the inventive faculty should disgust him at times with a mutilated and imperfect presentation, and cause him to substitute for the rude, the simple, and sadly stupid truth the rainbow hues of a glowing imagination.

A critical

Considerations like these addressed themselves in the fifteenth century to the sober inquiring mind of Leonardo Bruni, who wrote in sarcastic 'Life." terms of the "love, and sighs, and scalding tears," which formed the staple of Boccaccio's contribution. Instead of the showy rhetoric and trivial subject-matter of the Little Treatise, Bruni proposes to himself an historical relation of "the weighty and substantial parts" of Dante's life, nor, all things considered, does this Aretine secretary of the Republic of Florence disappoint. It was obvious at the first that, coming when he did, he would have to forgo many of the advantages open to his predecessor. Nobody who could remember Dante, or who could furnish accounts drawn from personal knowledge or the disclosures of

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