trouvée putain," illustrates his curious sense of honour. He first describes the pious outward behaviour of his dévote, then relates how he found himself wandering the streets with no money and all his best clothes pawned; a lady's-maid introduces him to her mistress's darkened room by mistake; he pretends in silence to be the lover, and then, when the error is discovered (too late) and the galante" lady turns out to be the dévote, he first is horribly rude to her, then denounces her hipocrisie," and then blackmails her to the extent of ten crowns, as the price of his silence! 66 The subjects of D'Esternod's satires are varied; they range from a light and typically Renaissance "La Mort d'un Perroquet que le chat mangea to the piece of turpitude just described, from a “slap on the cheek" to the denunciation of a Protestant divine-for Claude d'Esternod was an ardent Catholic. It is amusing when one considers some of the horrors he laughs at, to read his scandalized invective against the marriage of two cousins. The best of his pieces is the first, "Sur l'ambition de certains courtisans nouveaux. It is comparatively free from the nastiness of which the poet gives us something too much; it contains much moral indignation against the inevitable band of rising men who were pushing into the ranks of the old "gentry "; and, like so many of these early satires, wanders off into denunciations of any real or fancied abuse which happened to come into the author's mind. It does not quite reach the summit of ungallant disparagement expressed in this couplet— Vous, de qui les tetins de peau de vieil registre but it has amusing lines on the swaggering " Gascons of the time- Ils font les Rodhomonts, les Rogers, les bravaches; and Quand ils sont attachez à leurs pièces de fer, ... Bragardants en courtaut de cinq cents richetales, Veloutez, damassez, et armoisinisez. Relevant le moustache à coup de mousquetade. D'Esternod is very quotable, and the quaintness of his conceits is a great temptation to quote further. Thus, when he is writing a tirade upon the theme of "Pride goeth before a fall," he begins with these singular four lines which would have horrified the correct critics J'ay veu des pins fort hauts élever leurs perruques To describe a hanging corpse he says quaintly— Que si quelqu'un gardoit les brebis à la lune, (“ Bordin ” is an old word for “ bâton.") In one of his poems d'Esternod announces that he is about to sing "Sur un vieil rebec plein de rouilles," and the image strikes one as a very apt description of his art-he is indeed a singer to a rusty old instrument. But the very ruggedness of his diction, the grotesqueness of his expressions, the sacrifice of everything to verdeur and vigorousness, make him particularly attractive when so many poets are merely graceful, amiable, and refined. When our own early satirists-so excellent of their kind-are neglected and even despised; when there is an idea that satire is extinct, and another, almost worse, idea that "satire is not poetry," it would be absurd to expect a revival of these old French satirists. For all but a few enthusiasts they are dead, and, as d'Esternod himself says, in an unexpected mood of depression Sans y penser vieillesse arrive; Vous estes des vieux mords de brides Qui pour chevaux ne valent rien.1 1 It is perhaps not incorrect to see in this a reminiscence of Villon. V SAINT-ÉVREMOND AINT-ÉVREMOND'S great gift is charm, the SAINT charm of an exquisite and amiable and rather malin personality. The slightest as well as the most serious of his writings possesses this cordial and fragrant charm. As we yield to his charm, smile at its pure and ever-present wit, applaud the common sense kept so light by good breeding, the antitheses of an elaborately simple prose, we understand why Saint-Évremond was so welcome a guest at Whitehall, why he delighted Buckingham and Waller with his conversation, why he remained always an affectionate memory to Ninon. It is to be apprehended that this charm is hardly appreciated by the readers of to-day as it was enjoyed by the best wits of the Court of Charles II. Mr. Whibley, of course, knows and appreciates SaintÉvremond; Mr. Frederic Manning has recently retold some of the well-known passages of his life; but in that Caledonian Market of literature, the Charing Cross Road, the works of Saint-Évremond |