Inquiry and protest have given way to a placid conviction that there is not much to be found out, and that it does not much matter; the erudition though abundant is less indiscriminate, and is taken in and given out with less gusto; exuberant drollery has given way to quiet irony; and though neither business nor pleasure is decried, both are regarded rather as useful pastimes incident to the life of man than with the eager appetite of the Renaissance. From the purely literary point of view, the style is remarkable from its absence of pedantry In construction, and yet for its rich vocabulary and picturesque brilliancy. The follower and imitator of Montaigne, Pierre Charron (1541-1603), carried his master's scepticism to a somewhat more positive degree. His principal book, _De la sagesse_, scarcely deserves the comparative praise which Pope has given it. On the other hand Guillaume du Vair (1556-1621), a lawyer and orator, takes the positive rather than the negative side in morality, and regards the vicissitudes in human affairs from the religious and theological point of view in a series of works characterized by the special merit of the style of great orators. The revolutionary and innovating instinct which showed itself in the 16th century with reference to church government and doctrine spread naturally enough to political matters. The intolerable disorder of the religious wars naturally set the thinkers of the age speculating on the doctrines of government in general. The favourite and general study of antiquity helped this tendency, and the great accession of royal power in all the monarchies of Europe invited a speculative if not a practical reaction. The persecutions of the Protestants naturally provoked a republican spirit among them, and the violent antipathy of the League to the houses of Valois and Bourbon made its partisans adopt almost openly the principles of democracy and tyrannicide. Bodin.