time, but too closely connected with Rabelais in form and spirit to be here omitted, came the _Moyen de parvenir_ of Beroalde de Verville (1558?-1612?), a singular _fatrasie_, uniting wit, wisdom, learning and indecency, and crammed with anecdotes which are always amusing though rarely decorous. Amadis of Gaul. At the same time a fresh vogue was given to the chivalric romance by Herberay's translation of _Amadis de Gaula_. French writers have supposed a French original for the _Amadis_ in some lost roman d'aventures. It is of course impossible to say that this is not the case, but there is not one tittle of evidence to show that it is. At any rate the adventures of Amadis were prolonged in Spanish through generation after generation of his descendants. This vast work Herberay des Essarts in 1540 undertook to translate or retranslate, but it was not without the assistance of several followers that the task was completed. Southey has charged Herberay with corrupting the simplicity of the original, a charge which does not concern us here. It is sufficient to say that the French _Amadis_ is an excellent piece of literary work, and that Herberay deserves no mean place among the fathers of French prose. His book had an immense popularity; it was translated into many foreign languages, and for some time it served as a favourite reading book for foreigners studying French. Nor is it to be doubted that the romancers of the Scudery and Calprenede type in the next century were much more influenced both for good and harm by these Amadis romances than by any of the earlier tales of chivalry. _16th-Century Historians._--As in the case of the tale-tellers, so in that of the historians, the writers of the 16th century had traditions to continue. It is doubtful indeed whether many of them can risk comparison as artists with the great names cf Villehardouin and Joinville, Froissart and Comines. The 16th century, however, set the example of dividing the functions of the chronicler, setting those of the historian proper on one side, and of the anecdote-monger and biographer on the other. The efforts at regular history made in this century were not of the highest value. But on the other hand the practice of memoir-writing, in which the French were to excel every nation in the world, and of literary correspondence, in which they were to excel even their memoirs, was solidly founded.