Brantôme possesses one of those happy, gentle, well ordered natures, which systematically avoid every form of excess and exaggeration. His book _Des Dames Galantes_ is from beginning to end a protest against immoderate passion. It is above all a work of taste. Its seven Discourses are devoted exclusively to stories of love and passion, yet a man must be straightlaced indeed to feel any sort of repulsion. Another extraordinary merit! in spite of the monotony of the subject matter, everlastingly the same, the reader’s attention never flags, and one tale read, he is irresistibly drawn on to make acquaintance with the next. Such praise, I am aware, is very high; and especially when we possess such masterpieces in this _genre_ as the Tales of Boccaccio, of Pietro Aretino, some of those of Ariosto, those of Voltaire, the short stories of Tallemant des Réaux and the indiscretions of the _Histoire amoureuse des Gaules_. I name only the most familiar examples. Of course all these works do not offer a complete resemblance to the _Vies des Dames Galantes_, but they all belong to the same race and family. I propose to say a few passing words of each of these productions. The most remarkable among all these chroniclers of the frailties of the female heart is undoubtedly Boccaccio. Pietro Aretino has done himself an irreparable wrong by writing in such a vein that no decent man dare confess to having read him. Ariosto is a story-teller only by the way, but then he is worthy of all imitation. The _Heptameron_ is a collection of stories the chief value of which consists in a sensibility and charming grace that never fail. Tallemant tells a tale of gallantry between two daintily worded sentiments. Voltaire in this as in all departments shows an incontestable superiority of wit and _verve_. There is nothing new in La Fontaine; ’tis always the same wondrous charm, so simple in appearance, so deep in reality. As to Bussy, a man of the world and a gentleman, but vicious, spiteful and envious, his _Histoire amoureuse_ is his revenge on mankind, a deliberate publication of extravagant personalities flavoured with wit. Boccaccio, to say nothing of his striking originality, possesses other merits of the very highest order. The sorrows of unhappy love are told with genuine pathos, while lovers’ wiles and the punishments they meet with at once raise a smile and provoke a resolve to profit by such valuable lessons. True Dioneo’s quaint narratives are not precisely fit for ladies’ ears; yet so daintily are they recounted, the most _risqué_ episodes so cleverly sketched in, it is impossible to accuse them of indelicacy. An entire absence of bitterness, a genial indulgence for human weakness, a hearty admiration of women and a doctrine of genial complaisance as the only possible philosophy of life, these are the qualities that make the _Decameron_ the masterpiece of this kind of composition.