He has already been spoken of in the second volume of this History, in connection with his leaving the Duke of Burgundy's service for that of Louis XI., and with his remarks upon the virtues as well as the vices of that able but unprincipled despot.

We will not go again over that ground.

As a king's adviser, Commynes would have been as much in place at the side of Louis XIV.

as at that of Louis XI.; as a writer, he, in the fifteenth century, often made history and politics speak a language which the seventeenth century would not have disowned.
Let us pass from the prose-writers of the middle ages to their poets.
The grand name of poesy is here given only to poetical works which have lived beyond their cradles and have taken rank amongst the treasures of the national literature.

Thanks to sociability of manners, vivacity of intellect, and fickleness of taste, light and ephemeral poesy has obtained more success and occupied more space in France than in any other country; but there are successes which give no title to enter into a people's history; quality and endurance of renown are even more requisite in literature than in politics; and many a man whose verses have been very much relished and cried up in his lifetime has neither deserved nor kept in his native land the beautiful name of poet.