Duol/ing Stories of the Sixteenth Century. From the French of
Brantome. By George H. Powell. Illustrated. (I. H. Bullen. 7s. (Id. net.)—There are few more entertaining gossippers in literature than garrulous old Bra.nt6me, whose fifteen volumes are nevertheless scarcely known to the modern English reader. Probably the only one of them that is still much read is the "Vies des Dames Galantes," and that mainly for the sake of its somewhat risky subject. Yet there is a great hind of amusement, not to speak of the valuable insight which they give into French society and modes of thought in the sixteenth century, to be derived from the pages of this quaint and artless but very human writer. Mr. Powell has had the wit to see this, and has made a very readable book out of one of Brantome's less known treatises, the " Discours sur les Duels." He has not aimed at a literal version, for good reasons. Brantome was- a most natural and amusing, but neither an exact nor a brilliant writer. His language may be compared to that of Pepys or Cromwell for its unstudied and surprising effects. "His grammar is of the domestic and postprandial order, and the nominatives of his most animated sentences have to be inferred, often is not, from the story he is telling." Also there are many ion gueurs and almost tedious digressions,—notably when- ever Brant6me gets on the track of his ill-fated uncle, La Chiiteigneraie, and the famous duel in which Jarnac killed that worthy relative by the original blow to which his name has ever since been proverbially given. So Mr. Powell has ventured to take considerable liberties with his author, and has given us a very free and somewhat condensed version, which nevertheless succeeds admirably in reproducing the naive and garrulous effect of the original. It is a remarkable system of ethics that is set forth in these pages. Brantome, indeed, was a good type of what has been called the non-moral man. His code was simply summed up in the belief that a brave seigneur or a grande dame tie par le monde could do no wrong, and he narrates the most scandalous actions of either with a candid simplicity and ignorance that any one could cavil at them which go far to disarm the sturdy moralist. To read a book like this is a very instructive commentary upon the whole history of France in the days of the League and the St. Bartholomew, of the Mignons and the Guises. It helps one to understand much that would other- wise be hopelessly perplexing. Apart from that, Brantome's stories are most entertaining, and—thanks to Mr. Powell's editorial shears—there is not a dull page in the whole book. We should add that the illustrations, taken from contemporary treatises on fencing and similar arts of self-defence and tourna- ment, greatly add to the interest and value of this agreeable volume.
THE ANCIENT WORLD.
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