DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.63221#0114
80
THE FRENCH RENAISSANCE
have been surprising had Louise de Savoie, their disciple
and theii' mistress, been other than she was. Herself an
accomplished verse-writer of their dull school, she composed
“ Epistles ” like the rest of them.
The last ten years of the fifteenth century represent a
period of decadence: a time when there was a universal taste
for the unwholesome and abnormal; when the old order had
practically ended, the new not yet begun. Any kind of
decadence is harmful, but perhaps none is so objectionable
as that which borrows the form, the license, the detail, of
classical scholarship, without its chiselled beauty and sense of
the exquisite. There is no more arid art then the endless
elaborate verses, the pedantic improprieties and futile erudi-
tion, that existed just before the Renaissance. The deca-
dence of every age is perhaps interesting, or at least intelli-
gible, to itself; and to us, who are also going through a
decadent period, the shapes that it takes seem, not less silly,
but less tedious than those of the Past. In our case French
influence takes the place that Italian did then; and, if we
carry the analogy farther, we may find some hope in it.
Boccaccio suggested modern ideas as well as a lax morality.
Amidst the corruption there lived the germ of the new life:
the Renaissance, in short, came from Italy. This last decade
of the fifteenth century was like the Autumn. Decay met
the eye on every side; but the dead leaves went to enrich
the soil and to foster the growth of the young seeds hidden
in the earth.
The decadence did not confine itself to literature. Reli-
gion was degenerate and, like the poetry of the day, possessed
more form than substance. The professors of a dry or a
THE FRENCH RENAISSANCE
have been surprising had Louise de Savoie, their disciple
and theii' mistress, been other than she was. Herself an
accomplished verse-writer of their dull school, she composed
“ Epistles ” like the rest of them.
The last ten years of the fifteenth century represent a
period of decadence: a time when there was a universal taste
for the unwholesome and abnormal; when the old order had
practically ended, the new not yet begun. Any kind of
decadence is harmful, but perhaps none is so objectionable
as that which borrows the form, the license, the detail, of
classical scholarship, without its chiselled beauty and sense of
the exquisite. There is no more arid art then the endless
elaborate verses, the pedantic improprieties and futile erudi-
tion, that existed just before the Renaissance. The deca-
dence of every age is perhaps interesting, or at least intelli-
gible, to itself; and to us, who are also going through a
decadent period, the shapes that it takes seem, not less silly,
but less tedious than those of the Past. In our case French
influence takes the place that Italian did then; and, if we
carry the analogy farther, we may find some hope in it.
Boccaccio suggested modern ideas as well as a lax morality.
Amidst the corruption there lived the germ of the new life:
the Renaissance, in short, came from Italy. This last decade
of the fifteenth century was like the Autumn. Decay met
the eye on every side; but the dead leaves went to enrich
the soil and to foster the growth of the young seeds hidden
in the earth.
The decadence did not confine itself to literature. Reli-
gion was degenerate and, like the poetry of the day, possessed
more form than substance. The professors of a dry or a