SOURCE: "The Great Testament, with the Codicil and the Lesser Poems," in Francois Villon: A Documented Survey, Coward-McCann, Inc., 1928, pp. 333-40.

Unrelated to the English author and painter Wyndham Lewis, D. B. Wyndham Lewis was a prominent English essayist, humorist, historian, and biographer. In the following excerpt, he defends Villon's poetry as high art of the most accomplished sort.

Of [Villon's] scattered irregularities, his obscurities, his occasional untidiness of syntax, his wilful carelessness, his one or two verses left helpless in the air, dangling their legs, his demi-assonances, like the rhyming of Grenobles with Doles, peuple with seule, and enfle with temple, to take three instances, there is no need to make a howl. Les poëtes font à leur guise, as the goddess says in the play; adding, with enormous truth and aptitude, so far as Villon is concerned,

 Ce n'est pas la seule sottise
Qu'on voit faire...