François Villon Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Henry Francis Cary

Critical Essay by Henry Francis Cary

SOURCE: "Early French Poets," in The London Magazine, Vol. VIII, October, 1823, pp. 436-38.

Below, Cary reviews the Grand Testament and the Petit Testament.

The praise bestowed by Boileau on Villon, and still more the pains taken by Clement Marot, at the instance of Francis the First, to edit his poems, would lead us to expect great things from them; but in this expectation most English readers will probably be disappointed. For while Alain Chartier is full as intelligible as Chaucer, and Charles Duke of Orleans more so, Villon (who wrote after both) can scarcely be made out by the help of a glossary. Even his editor, Marot, who, as he tells us in the preface, had corrected a vast number of passages in his poems, partly from the old editions, partly from the recital of old people who had got them by heart, and partly from his own conjectures,...
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