Note 351 — Chapter XI
Reading edition
His verse tales, even if stories in verse had not by this time fallen out of our proper range, require little notice. The faculty of "telling" did not remain with him here, perhaps because it was prejudicially affected by the "dryness" and unpoetical quality of his poetry, and of the French poetry of the time generally, perhaps for other reasons. At any rate, as compared with La Fontaine or Prior, he hardly counts. Le Mondain, Le Pauvre Diable, etc., are skits or squibs in verse, not tales. The opening one of the usual collection, Ce qui plaît aux Dames,—in itself a flat rehandling of Chaucer and Dryden,—is saved by its charming last line—
Ah! croyez-moi, l'erreur a son mérite,
a rede which he himself might well have recked.