Such scatological kinds are the French,
Of philosophical mind re life's stench:
No riot-act rage or two-fingered V,
The merely shrug and declare, "Say Lavy!"

From the French we got haute cuisine (well, who does like their dinner cauld?).  They taught us how to kiss properly, and introduced an interesting line in written correspondence.  The finest wines are said to come from France (and not from Buckfast Abbey, as is opined in certain areas of this country), and it's also a corker of a place for the culture.  The Mona Lisa loiters in the Louvre with many other oily masterpieces, and poetry has poured out from Paris like the serpentine Seine.  Paris' Pigalle is still a bawdy lair, and from Paris hailed Baudelaire, the potentate of pickled poets the world over.

The Big Cheese of French literature, however, is Emile Zola.  A stern chap, his gaze was said to turn those upon whom it fell to stone.  He was known by his contemporaries as the Great Gorgon Zola.  Did I mention that he he's regarded as the Big Cheese of French literature?


Correction

It is a fact not widely known
That Candide's author was not grown
In the City of Paris
In the country of France,
But in a Warsaw parish,
Purely by chance.

Omitted too from history's sheet,
Is that he was a fine athlete:
An Olympian,
Highly classed,
He always won,
Never came last.

Folk on the street of oft declare
Fullest praise for the Pole, Voltaire.

(c)Frank Rooney