FRANCIS THE FIRSTFrancis HackettDoubleday, Doran ($3).
''Observe this long-nosed personage with night-life in his narrowed eyes, eyes that have wept for the broken Virgin, eyes that have faced battle, caressed and lusted, heavy with cupidity, glazed with surfeit, once expectant as the sky in May. . . . He is a type of Frenchman not yet extinct nor likely to be extinct for centuries." So does Historian Francis Hackett introduce his latest hero, Francis I. Author Hackett's 448-page tome is compendious and scholarly but he does not believe that "history should be blonde-proof"; not...