“Plus, suivant la coutume et anciennes lois, Je fais mon heritier tout le peuple françois; Je lui laisse les pleurs, le sang, les pilleries, Les meurtres, assassins, insignes voleries, Les veuves, orphelins, et les violemens, Les larmes, les regrets, et les rançonnemens, Les ruines des bourgs, des villes, des villages, Des chateaux, des maisons et tant de brigandages, Les ennuis, les douleurs et tous les maux reçus Par surprise ou assauts, par les flammes et feux, Bref de son cher pays les cendreuses reliques, Reste de mes labeurs et secrètes pratiques.” Peignot showed what possibilities lay in this research; perhaps of poetic wills his countryman Villon’s “Testaments” are the most noteworthy. English literature, too, has many poems of this nature, and John Donne’s poem called “The Will” is characteristic of its author and of its kind. “Before I sigh my last gasp, let me breathe, Great Love, some legacies; I here bequeath Mine eyes to Argus, if mine eyes can see; If they be blind, then, Love, I give them thee, My tongue to Fame; to ambassadors mine ears; To women or the sea, my tears: Thou, Love, hast taught me heretofore By making me serve her who had twenty more, That I should give to none, but such as had too much before: My constancy I to the planets give; My truth to them who at the court do live; Mine ingenuity and openness, To Jesuits; to buffoons my pensiveness; My silence to any who abroad hath been: My money to a Capuchin: Thou, Love, taught’st me, by appointing me To love there, where no love received can be, Only to give to such as have an incapacity....” It can be seen how readily the mock will lends itself to satire or wit; but as a last example of poetic wills may be quoted one of quite another nature, one which savours of the piety and the spirit of seventeenth-century testaments.