louange et beauté des Dames ("Of the Praise and Beauty of Ladies"). François Corniger has put the same into 18 Latin lines. Vencentio Calmeta has rendered them also into Italian verse, commencing with the words: Dolce Flaminia.
P. 236: Pliny speaks of this Helen of Zeuxis.
P. 237: Ronsard, Œuvres, 1584 edition, p. 112. It is a poem addressed to the famous painter Clouet, according to Janet, in which the poet sings the praises of his fair lady. This poem has more than one point in common with the present chapter of the Dames.
P. 238: Marot had arranged this Spanish proverb into a quatrain, and at the time of the Ligue it was applied to the Infanta of Spain:
Pourtant, si je suis brunette,
Amy, n'en prenez esmoy,
Car autant aymer souhaitte
Qu'une plus blanche que moy.
P. 239: Raymond Lulle was a native of Majorca, and lived towards the end of the thirteenth century: he was reputed to be a magician. The story that Brantôme tells was taken from the Opuscula by Charles Bovelles, fol. XXXIV. of the in-4o edition of 1521. The famous Raimond Lulle (generally known in England as Raimond Lully), philosopher and schoolman, was celebrated throughout the Middle Ages for his logic and his commentary on Aristotle, and above all for his art of Memory, or Ars Lulliana. He was born at Palma, the capital of Majorca, in 1235. He travelled in various countries, and died (1315) in Africa after suffering great hardships, having gone there as a missionary.
P. 240: Or Charles de Bouvelles. His life of Raymond Lulle is a quarto, printed at Paris, and published by Ascencius. It is dated 3rd of the Nones of December, 1511. Several other works by the same author are extant.
P. 240: Arnauld de Villeneuve, a famous alchemist of the end of the thirteenth century; he died in a shipwreck, in 1313.
P. 240: Oldrade, a jurist, was born at Lodi in the thirteenth century. His Codex de falsa moneta is not known.
[381]
