consists of a poem in forty stanzas of eight octosyllabic lines (each rhymed a, b, a, b, b, c, b, c) called the _Petit Testament_[156]; of a poem in 173 similar stanzas called the _Grand Testament_, in which about a score of minor pieces, chiefly ballades or rondeaux, are inserted; of a _Codicil_ composed mainly of ballades; of a few separate pieces, and of some ballades in _argot_, collectively called _Le Jargon_. Besides these there are doubtful pieces, including a curious work called _Les Repues Franches_, which describes in octaves like those of the Testaments the swindling tricks of Villon and his companions, an excellent Dialogue between two characters, the Seigneurs de Mallepaye and Baillevent, and a still better Monologue entitled _Le Franc Archier de Bagnolet_. The Little Testament was written after the affair with Catherine de Vausselles, the Great Testament after his liberation from the Bishop's Prison at Meung. Many of the minor poems contain allusions which enable us to fix them to various events in the poet's life. The first edition of his works was, as has been said, published in 1489. In 1533 he had the honour of having Marot for editor, and up to the date of the Bibliophile Jacob's edition of 1854 (since when there have been several editions), the number had reached thirty-two. The characteristics of Villon may be looked at either technically or from the point of view of the matter of his work. He had an extraordinary mastery of the most artificial forms of poetry which have ever been employed. The rondel, which Charles d'Orleans wrote with so much grace, he did not use, but his rondeaux are generally exquisite. The ballade, however, was his special province. No writer has ever got the full virtue out of the recurrent rhymes and refrains, which are the special characteristics of the form, as Villon has. No one has infused into a mere string of names, such as his famous _Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis_ and others, such exquisitely poetical effects by dint of an epithet here and there and of a touching burden. But the matter of his verse is in many ways perfectly on a level with its manner. No one excels him in startling directness of phrase, in simple but infinite pathos of expression. Of the former, the sudden cry of the Belle Heaulmiere after the recital of her former triumphs-- Que m'en reste-t-il? honte et peche; and the despairing conclusion of the lover of La Grosse Margot-- Je suis paillard, paillardise me suit-- are examples in point; of the latter the line in the rondeau to Death-- Deux etions et n'avions qu'un coeur. No one has bolder strokes of the picturesque, as for instance-- De Constantinoble L'emperier aux poings dores; and no one can render the sombre horror of a scene better than Villon has rendered it in the famous epitaph of the gibbeted corpses--