First Portion of Sixteenth Century: Poets: Marot, Saint-Gelais; Prose Writers: Rabelais, Comines. Second Portion of Sixteenth Century: Poets: "The Pleiade"; Prose Writers: Amyot, Montaigne. First Portion of Seventeenth Century: Intellectual and Brilliant Poets: Malherbe, Corneille. Great Prose Writers: Balzac, Descartes. Second Portion of Seventeenth Century: Poets: Racine, Molière, Boileau, La Fontaine; Prose Writers: Bossuet, Pascal, La Bruyère, Fénelon, etc. THE RENAISSANCE OF LETTERS.--The sixteenth century was for France the epoch of the Renaissance of letters. What is called the Renaissance of letters is the result, to each race, of the closest contact of the educated people with ancient literature, contact which sometimes strengthened the national vein, sometimes weakened it, according to the divergent temperaments of these races. MAROT; SAINT-GELAIS.--The sixteenth century in France was ushered in by Marot and Saint-Gelais. Marot was a gracious, fluent, and satiric singer. He was infinitely witty without venom, or mannerism, or affectation; at times he attained to a somewhat serious philosophic poesy and also to eloquence. Saint-Gelais, because he was most emphatically court-poet of all those who have ever been court-poets, was placed by his contemporaries above Marot, and literary historians have left him for the most part in that position. The truth is that his work is worthless. It would be impossible, however, to rob him of the glory of having brought the sonnet from Italy, where he long abode in youth. COMINES.--In this first half of the sixteenth century must be noted Comines, the historian of Louis XI, a political historian and a historical statesman, remarkably subtle in perceiving the characters and temperaments of prominent individuals, as well as a writer possessing exactitude and limpidity rare in his generation. RABELAIS.--Francis Rabelais, in his two epic romances, _Gargantua_ and _Pantagruel_, was erudite, capable of a certain philosophic wisdom which has been greatly exaggerated, but above all was picturesque to one's heart's content, and possessed the art of telling a tale as well as any one in the wide world. He has been called "the buffoon Homer," and the nickname may be legitimately granted to him. THE PLEIADE.--The second half of the sixteenth century was in all respects the more remarkable. In poetry there was the Pleiade: that is, the true and complete "Renaissance," although Marot had already been a good workman at its dawn. The Pleiade consisted of Ronsard, Du Bellay, Pontus of Tyard, Remy Belleau, and others; that is, folk who wished to give to France in French the equivalent of what the classics had produced in nobility and beauty. They did not succeed, but they had the honour of having undertaken the task, and they also, all said and done, produced some fine things.