This is the second volume in a new series of editions of the Latin verses of Michel de L'Hospital (ca. 1505–73). The first volume, published in 2014, consisted of fifteen epistles written between 1543 and 1556. The current volume contains twenty epistles composed between 1546 and 1560. The recipients include King Henry II, the king's sister Marguerite de France, Cardinal Jean Du Bellay, Cardinal Charles de Lorraine, his brother Duke François de Guise, Chancellor François Olivier, poet Jean Salmon Macrin, Conseiller au Grand Conseil Pierre de Mondoré, Bishop and Ambassador Lancelot de Carles, Conseiller of the Parlement de Paris Pierre Grassin, Président aux Enquêtes Jacques Du Faur, and the archbishop of Vienne Charles de Marillac. During the years covered in this volume, L'Hospital served as a judge at the Parlement de Paris (1537–47), ambassador to the Council of Trent (sitting at Bologna, 1547–48), chancellor of Berry (1550–60), maître des requêtes (1553–55), and president of the Chambre des comptes (1555–60), before becoming chancellor of France (1560–68) under Charles IX and Catherine de Medici.

L'Hospital's Neo-Latin literary practice belongs to the genre of the Horatian epistolary conversation. Erasmian humanism and Neo-Stoicism underlie his verses, which touch on various ethical, spiritual, and literary topics. L'Hospital reflects on the ideal sovereign and power, and provides philosophical and paradoxical eulogies of illness, war, and death. These epistles also shed important light on his life journey, witnessing his ambitions, frustrations, and anticipations for a political career, as he struggled to overcome the fate of being an exile's son (his father had been banished by Francis I). Poems dedicated to powerful individuals—his patron the cardinal of Lorraine, for example—prompted criticism from detractors. Theodore Beza, never L'Hospital's fan, called him a skillful courtesan. Yet these hexameters amply reveal the virtue and vision of one of the most celebrated humanist statesmen in history.

L'Hospital's background as a judge allowed him deep insight into the law and justice of his times. In this volume, readers find trenchant satires and observations about the perils of rampant litigation and moral corruption of the legal profession. In an epistle to Jacques Du Faur, L'Hospital points out that a party may come out of a lawsuit either victorious or vanquished, but never with what he or she had hoped for. He deplores that “we turn the laws, created to come to the aid of mortals, into dreadful and fateful ruins of good people, and we separate law from equity” (112–15). “I affirm such monstrosities do not exist in the laws of the Romans or ours,” but the laws are manipulated by those at the Palais for their financial gains. There are too many lawyers who are “depraved, lazy, ignorant, rapacious, hypocritical, [and] avaricious” (134–35).

L'Hospital compares the court of law to hell, as he invites Charles de Marillac to accompany him to “descend” to the tribunal where “there is nothing joyous, gentle, or pleasant that could lighten your eternal pains” (322–23). His frustration with the morass of legal procedures foreshadows his determination, once he became the chancellor, to undertake reforms of judicial administration. Many of these poems presage spiritual and poetic inspirations for his policies during the Wars of Religion. An encounter with L'Hospital the poet helps better understand L'Hospital the statesman.

As in the first volume, here each of the epistles is presented with the Latin text with French translation. A “Presentation” provides the chronology and the historical context of each poem, biographical notices on the intended recipient, followed by a paragraph-by-paragraph summary of the contents. An “Analysis” places its content and theme in its cultural, political, and historical contexts. A “Commentary” provides notes on terms and references. Comprehensive indexes of names, places, and topics enhance the value of the collection. This is the definite edition of L'Hospital's poems. Scholars will be immensely aided in research, and general readers will benefit from the wisdom of this remarkable figure in sixteenth-century France.