AVRIL BEING ESSAYS ON THE POETRY OF THE FRENCH RENAISSANCE BY H. BELLOC ". .. _Ceux dont la Fantaisie Sera religieuse et dévote envers Dieu Tousjours achèveront quelque grant Poésie, Et dessus leur renom la Parque n'aura lieu. _" LONDON DUCKWORTH AND CO. 3, HENRIETTA STREET, COVE NT GARDEN, W. C. 1904 CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. Part of this book originally appeared in "The Pilot, " and is here reprinted by kind permission of the Editor. CONTENTS CHARLES OF ORLEANS VILLON MAROT RONSARD Du BELLAY MALHERBE DEDICATION TO F. Y. ECCLES MY DEAR ECCLES, You will, I know, permit me to address you these essays which are morethe product of your erudition than of my enthusiasm. With the motives of their appearance you are familiar. We have wondered together that a society so avid of experience andenlargement as is ours, should ignore the chief expression of itsclosest neighbour, its highest rival and its coheir in Europe: shouldignore, I mean, the literature of the French. We have laughed together, not without despair, to see the mind ofEngland, for all its majesty and breadth, informed at the most criticalmoments in the policy of France by such residents of Paris as were atthe best fanatical, at the worst (and most ordinary) corrupt. Seeing around us here a philosophy and method drawn from northernGermany, a true and subtle sympathy with the Italians, and a perpetual, just and accurate comment upon the minor nationalities of Europe, a massof recorded travel superior by far to that of other countries, wemarvelled that France in particular should have remained unknown. We were willing, in an earlier youth, to read this riddle in somewhatcrude solutions. I think we have each of us arrived, and in a finalmanner, at the sounder conclusion that historical accident isprincipally to blame. The chance concurrence of this defeat with thatdynastic influence, the slip by which the common sense of politicalsimplicity missed footing in England and fell a generation behind, themarvellous industrial activities of this country, protected by atradition of political discipline which will remain unique in History;the contemporaneous settling down of France into the equilibrium ofpower--an equilibrium not established without five hearty civil wars andperhaps a hundred campaigns--all these so separated the two worlds ofthought as to leave France excusable for her blindness towards thedestinies and nature of England, and England excusable for her continuedemptiness of knowledge upon the energy and genius of France: thoughthese were increasing daily, immensely, at our very side. We have assisted at some straining of such barriers. A long peace, thesterility of Germany, the interesting activities of the Catholic Church, have perhaps not yet changed, but have at least disturbed the mind ofthe north, and ours, a northern people's, with it. The unity, thepassionate patriotism, the close oligarchic polity, the very silence ofthe English has arrested the eyes of France. By a law which is universalwhere bodies are bound in one system, an extreme of separation haswrought its own remedy and the return towards a closer union is begun. Ido not refer to such ephemeral and artificial manifestations as aspecial and somewhat humiliating need may demand; I consider rather thatlarge sweep of tendency which was already apparent fifteen years afterthe Franco-Prussian War. An approach in taste, manners and expressionwell defined during our undergraduate years, has now introduced much ofour inmost life to the French, to us already a hint of their philosophy. I think you believe, as I do, that the return has begun. We shall not live to see that fine unity of the west which lent thelatter seventeenth and eighteenth centuries their classical repose. Nocommon rule of verse or prose will satisfy men's permanent desire forharmony: no common rule of manners, of honour, of international ethics, of war. We shall not live to see, though we are young now, a Parisreading some new Locke or Hume, a London moved to attentive delight insome latter trinity of Dramatists, some future Voltaire. .. . The high, protected class, which moved at ease between the Capitals of the World, has disappeared; that which should take its place is not yet formed. Weare both of that one Faith which can but regard our Christendom as thefront of mankind and which, therefore, looks forward, as to a necessarygoal, to the re-establishment of its common comprehension. But thereversion to such stability is slow. We shall not live to see it. It is none the less our duty (if I may use a word of so unsavoury aconnotation) to advance the accomplishment of this good fatality. Not indeed that a vulgar cosmopolitan beatitude can inspire an honestman. To abandon one's patriotism, and to despise a frontier or a flag, is, we are agreed, the negation of Europe. There are Frenchmen whoforget their battles, and Englishmen to whom a gold mine, a chancefederal theory, a colonial accent, or a map, is more of an inheritancethan the delicate feminine profile of Nelson or the hitherto unbrokentraditions of our political scheme. To such men arms are eitherabhorrent, or, what is worse, a very cowardly (and thank God!unsuccessful) method of acquiring or defending their very baseenjoyments. Let us forget them. It is only as nationalists, and only inan intense sympathy with the highly individual national unities ofEurope that we may approach the endeavour of which I have spoken. With us, I fear, that endeavour must take a literary form, but such achannel is far from ignoble or valueless. He that knows some part of theletters of a foreign nation, be it but the graces or even the vagariesof such letters, knows something of that nation's mind. To portray forthe populace one religion welding the west together, to spread a commonphilosophy, or to interpret and arrange political terms, would certainlyprove a more lasting labour: but you will agree with me that meresympathy in letters is not to be despised. We have observed together that the balance in this matter is heavilyagainst the English. M. Jusserand is easily the first authority uponpopular life in England at the close of the middle ages. M. Boutmy hasproduced an analysis of our political development which our Universitieshave justly recognized. Our friend M. Angellier of the École Normale haswritten what is acknowledged by the more learned Scotch to be theprincipal existing monograph upon Robert Burns; Mr. Kipling himself hassnatched the attention of M. Chevrillon. You know how many names mightbe added to this list to prove the close, applied and penetrating mannerin which French scholars have latterly presented our English writers totheir fellow-citizens. We have both believed that something of the sort might be attempted inthe converse; that a view could be given--a glimpse at least--of thatvast organism whose foundations are in Rome, Coeval with the spring ofChristianity, and whose last growth seems as vigorous and as fecund asthough it were exempt from any laws of age. But, I say, we know how heavy is the balance against us. The Gallic ritual is unrecognized, even by our over-numerous class ofclerical antiquarians. The Carolingian cycle is neglected, save perhapsfor a dozen men who have seen the Song of Roland. The Complaints ofRusteboeuf, the Fabliaux, all the local legendary poetry, all thechroniclers (save Froissart--for he wrote of us), the tender simplicityof Joinville, the hard steel of Villehardouin, no one has handled. The fifteenth century, the storm of the Renaissance, are not taught. Why, Rabelais himself might be but an unfamiliar name had not a northernsquire of genius rendered to the life three quarters of his work. The list is interminable. Even the great Drama of the great century isbut a text for our schools leaving no sort of trace upon the mind: andas for the French moderns (I have heard it from men of liberaleducation) they are denied to have written any poetry at all: so exact, so subtle, so readily to be missed, are the proportions of their speech. If you ask me why I should myself approach the matter, I can plead someinheritance of French blood, comparable, I believe, to your own; andthough I have no sort of claim to that unique and accomplishedscholarship which gives you a mastery of the French tongue unmatched inEngland, and a complete familiarity with its history, application andgenius, yet I can put to my credit a year of active, if eccentric, experience in a French barrack room, and a complete segregation duringthose twelve memorable months wherein I could study the very soul ofthis sincere, creative, and tenacious people. Your learning, my singular adventure, have increased in us, it must beconfessed, a permanent and reasoned admiration for this people'squalities. Such an attitude of mind is rare enough and often dangerous:it is but a qualification the more for beginning the work. It permits usto follow the main line of the past of the French, to comprehend and notto be troubled by the energy of their present, to catch the advancingomens of their future. Indeed, if anything of France is to be explained in English and topeople reading English, I could not desire a better alliance than yoursand mine. But if you ask me why the Renaissance especially--or why in theRenaissance these six poets alone--should have formed the subject of myfirst endeavour, I can only tell you that in so vast a province, whereofthe most ample leisure could not in a lifetime exhaust a tithe, Chance, that happy Goddess, led me at random to their groves. Whether it will be possible to continue such interpretation I do notknow, but if it be so possible, I know still less what next may be putinto my hands: Racine, perhaps, may call me, or those forgotten men whourged the Revolution with phrases of fire. H. BELLOC. CHELSEA, _January, 1904. _ CHARLES OF ORLEANS. I put down Charles of Orleans here as the first representative of thatlong glory which it is the business of this little book to recall: butto give him such a place at the threshold requires some apology. The origins of a literary epoch differ according as that epoch is primalor derivative. There are those edifices of letters which start up, notindeed out of nothing, but out of things wholly different. Produced by ashock or a revelation, as two gases lit will, in a sharp explosion, unite to form a liquid wholly unlike either, so after a great conquest, a battle, the sudden preaching of a creed, these primal literaturesappear in an epic or a dithyrambic code of awful law. Their first effortis their mightiest. They come mature. They are allied to that element ofthe catastrophic which the modern world (taking its general philosophyfrom its social condition) denies, but which is yet at the limits of allthings separate and themselves; accompanies every birth, and strikesagony into every transition of death. Those other much commoner epochs in the history of letters, which may becalled derivative, have this current and obvious quality, that theirbeginnings merge into the soil that bred them, also (very often) theirdecay will lapse imperceptibly into newer things. They are quitedefinite, but also definitely parented. We know their special stuff andharmony, but we can point out clearly enough the elements which formedthat stuff, the tones which unite in that harmony. We can show withdates and citations the parts meeting and blending; our difficulty isnot to determine the influences which have mixed to make the generalschool, but rather to fix the beginning and the end of its effect uponmen. In the first of these the leader, sometimes the unique example of theschool, stands out great, but particular and clear, on a backgroundvague or dark. He is as stupendous, yet as sharp and certain, as amountain facing the morning, with only sky behind. In the second theoriginator, if there be one, is vague, tentative, perhaps unknown. Moreoften many minor men together introduce a slow and general transition. Now the French Renaissance has this peculiar mark, that it holds quiteplainly by one side of it to the first by the other to the second ofthese spirits. It was primal and catastrophic in that it made something completely new. A new architecture, new cities, a new poetry, almost a new language, anew kind of government--ultimately the modern world. It was derivative in that the shock, the revelation, which produced it, was the return of something allied to the French blood, something rootedin the French memory. Rome surviving or risen had made that Italy, whichwas now beginning to trouble the Alps, and would surely creep in byevery channel of influence, and at last pervade all Europe. Rome, also, in her full vigour, had once framed and ordered Gaul. The French of theRenaissance were woken suddenly, but as they started they recognized theface and the hand of the awakener. On this account you will find one mind indeed at the very beginning ofthe change in letters, but not a dominating mind. There is but one manwho is certainly an origin, but he is not a master. You see an uniqueand single personality, distinct but without force, founding noschool--the grave, abiding, kind but covert face of Charles of Orleans. He, linked to the French Renaissance, is like the figure of a gentlefriend playing in some garden with a child whose manners are new andpleasing to him, but of whose great destiny he makes no guess. Thatchild was to be Du Bellay, Brantome, Montaigne a hundred-sided, hugeRabelais, Ronsard. Or perhaps this metaphor will put it better. To saythat Charles of Orleans's equal and persistent music was like a stringharped on distinctly in a chorus of flutes and hautboys, till one by oneharps from here and there caught up the similar tang of chords and atlast the whole body of sound was harping only. His life was suited to such difference and such origination. Italy, still living, filled him. An Italian secretary wrote from his mouth themost sumptuous of his manuscripts. He banded on Italy as a goal and hisItalian land as a legacy to the French crown--to his own son; till(years after his death) the soldiers roared through Briançon and brokethe crusted snow of Mont Genèvre. An Italian mother, the most beautifulof the Viscontis, come out of Italy, rich in her land of Asti and herhalf million of pure gold, had borne him in her youth to the King ofFrance's brother: a man luxurious, over fine, exact in taste, a lover ofmagnificence in stories and words, decadent in a dying time, very brave. Through that father the Valois blood, unjustly hated or still moreunjustly despised according to the varied ignorance of modern times, ranin him nobly. Take the Valois strain entire and you will find the pomp or rather thefantasy of their great palace of St. Paul; turrets and steep blue roofsof slate, carved woodwork, heavy curtains, and incense and shiningbronze. The Valois were, indeed, the end of the middle ages. Somecruelty, a fury in battle, intelligence and madness alternately, andalways a sort of keenness which becomes now revenge, now foresight, nowintrigue, now strict and terrible government: at last a wild adventureout beyond the hills: Fornovo, Pavia. Their story is like the manuscripts, which beyond all other things theyloved and collected, and which they were the last to possess or to havemade; for while it contains in vivid pictures the noblest and the basestsubjects: (Joan of Arc and also her betrayal, their country dominant andalmost engulfed, Marigano, and then again Pavia) it always glitters withhard enamelled colours against skies of gold, and is drawn and sharp andclean as a thing can be. Such is the whole line, but look at this one Valois and you see all thequalities of his race toned by a permanent sadness down to a good andeven temper, not hopeful but still delighting in beauty and possessed asno other Valois had been of charity. Less passionate and therefore muchless eager and useful than most of his race, yet the taint of madnessnever showed in him, nor the corresponding evil of cruelty, nor theuncreative luxury of his immediate ancestry. All the Valois were poetsin their kind; his life by its every accident caused him to write. Atfifteen they wedded him to that lovely child whom Richard II had liftedin his arms at Windsor as he rode out in fatal pomp for Ireland. Threeyears later, when their marriage was real, she died in childbirth, andit is to her I think that he wrote in his prison the ballad which ends: Dieu sur tout souverain seigneur Ordonnez par grace et douceur De l'ame d'elle tellement Qu'elle ne soit pas longuement En peine souci et douleur. Already, in the quarrel that so nearly wrecked the crown, theanti-national factions had killed his father. He was planning vengeance, engraving little mottoes of hate upon his silver, when the wars came onthem all. A boy of twenty-four, well-horsed, much more of a soldier thanhe later seemed, he charged, leading the centre of the three tall troopsat Agincourt. In the evening of that disaster they pulled him out fromunder a great heap of the ten thousand dead and brought him prisonerinto England, to Windsor then to Pomfret Castle. Chatterton, Cobworth, at last John Cornwall, of Fanhope, were his guardians. To some one ofthese--probably the last--he wrote the farewell: Mon très bon hôte et ma très douce hôtesse. For his life as a prisoner, though melancholy, was not undignified; hepaid no allegiance, he met the men of his own rank, nor was he of a kindto whom poverty, the chief thorn of his misfortune, brought dishonour. Henry V had left it strictly in his will that Orleans the general andthe head of the French nationals should not return. For twenty-fiveyears, therefore--all his manhood--he lived under this sky, rhyming andrhyming: in English a little, in French continually, and during thatisolation there swept past him far off in his own land the defence, therenewal, the triumph of his own blood: his town relieved, his cousincrowned at Rheims. His river of Loire, and then the Eure, and then theSeine, and even the field where he had fallen were reconquered. Willoughby had lost Paris to Richemont four years before Charles ofOrleans was freed on a ransom of half his mother's fortune. It was notuntil the November of 1440 that he saw his country-side again. The verse formed in that long endurance (a style which he preserved tothe end in the many poems after his release) may seem at a first readingmerely mediæval. There is wholly lacking in it the riot of creation, norcan one see at first the Renaissance coming in with Charles of Orleans. Indeed it was laid aside as mediæval, and was wholly forgotten for threehundred years. No one had even heard of him for all those centuries tillSallier, that learned priest, pacing, full of his Hebrew and Syriac, therooms of the royal library which Louis XV had but lately given him togovern, found the manuscript of the poems and wrote an essay on them forthe Academy. The verse is full of allegory; it is repetitive; it might weary one withthe savour of that unhappy fifteenth century when the human mind layunder oppression, and only the rich could speak their insignificantwords; a foreigner especially might find it all dry bones, but hisjudgement would be wrong. Charles of Orleans has a note quite new andone that after him never failed, but grew in volume and in majesty untilit filled the great chorus of the Pleiade--the Lyrical note of directpersonal expression. Perhaps the wars produced it in him; the lilt ofthe marching songs was still spontaneous: Gentil Duc de Lorraine, vous avez grand renom, Et votre renommée passe au delà des monts Et vous et vos gens d'arme, et tous vos compagnons Au premier coup qu'ils frappent, abattent les Donjons. Tirez, tirez bombardes, serpentines, Canons! Whatever the cause, this spontaneity and freshness run through all themass of short and similar work which he wrote down. The spring and sureness, the poise of these light nothings make them aflight of birds. See how direct is this: Dieu! qu'il la fait bon regarder! La gracieuse, bonne et belle. or this: Le lendemain du premier jour de Mai Dedans mon lit ainsi que je dormoye Au point du jour advint que je sonjeay. Everywhere his words make tunes for themselves and everywhere he himselfappears in his own verses, simple, charming, slight, but with memoriesof government and of arms. This style well formed, half his verse written, he returned to his ownplace. He was in middle age--a man of fifty. He married soberly enoughMary of Cleves, ugly and young: he married her in order to cement theunderstanding with Burgundy. She did not love him with his shy floridface, long neck and features and mild eyes. His age for twenty-fiveyears passed easily, he had reached his "castle of No Care. " As late as1462 his son (Louis XII) was born; his two daughters at long intervalsbefore. His famous library moved with him as he went from town to town, and perpetually from himself and round him from his retinue ran thecontinual stream of verse which only ended with his death. His verydoctor he compelled to rhyme. All the singers of the time visited or remained with him--wild Villonfor a moment, and after Villon a crowd of minor men. It was in such acompany that he recited the last ironical but tender song wherein hetalks of his lost youth and vigour and ends by bidding all present asalute in the name of his old age. So he sat, half regal, holding a court of song in Blois and Tours, aforerunner in verse of what the new time was to build in stone along theLoire. And it was at Amboise that he died. THE COMPLAINT. (_The 57th Ballade of those written during his imprisonment. _) There is some dispute in the matter, but I will believe, as I have said, that this dead Princess, for whose soul he prays, was certainly the wifeof his boyhood, a child whom Richard II had wed just before thatLancastrian usurpation which is the irreparable disaster of Englishhistory. She was, I say, a child--a widow in name--when Charles ofOrleans, himself in that small royal clique which was isolated andshrivelling, married her as a mere matter of state. It is probable thathe grew to love her passionately, and perhaps still more her memory whenshe had died in child-bed during those first years, even beforeAgincourt, "en droicte fleur de jeunesse, "--for even here he is able tofind an exact and sufficient line. There is surely to be noted in this delicate ballad, something morenative and truthful in its pathos than in the very many complaints heleft by way partly of reminiscence, partly of poetic exercise. For, though he is restrained, as was the manner of his rank when theyattempted letters, yet you will not read it often without getting in youa share of its melancholy. That melancholy you can soon discover to be as permanent a quality inthe verse as it was in the mind of the man who wrote it. _THE COMPLAINT. _ _Las! Mort qui t'a fait si hardie, De prendre la noble Princesse Qui estoit mon confort, ma vie, Mon bien, mon plaisir, ma richesse! Puis que tu as prins ma maistresse, Prens moy aussi son serviteur, Car j'ayme mieulx prouchainement Mourir que languir en tourment En paine, soussi et doleur. _ _Las! de tous biens estoit garnie Et en droite fleur de jeunesse! Je pry à Dieu qu'il te maudie, Faulse Mort, plaine de rudesse! Se prise l'eusses en vieillesse, Ce ne fust pas si grant rigueur; Mais prise l'as hastivement Et m'as laissié piteusement En paine, soussi et doleur. _ _Las! je suis seul sans compaignie! Adieu ma Dame, ma liesse! Or est nostre amour departie, Non pour tant, je vous fais promesse Que de prieres, à largesse, Morte vous serviray de cueur, Sans oublier aucunement; Et vous regretteray souvent En paine, soussi et doleur. _ _ENVOI. _ _Dieu, sur tout souverain Seigneur, Ordonnez, par grace et doulceur, De l'ame d'elle, tellement Qu'elle ne soit pas longuement En paine, soussi et doleur. _ THE TWO ROUNDELS OF SPRING. (_The 41st and 43rd of the "Rondeaux. "_) These two Rondeaux, of which we may also presume, though very vaguely, that they were written in England (for they are in the manner of hisearlier work), are by far the most famous of the many things he wrote;and justly, for they have all these qualities. _First_, they are exact specimens of their style. The Roundel shouldinterweave, repeat itself, and then recover its original strain, andthese two exactly give such unified diversity. _Secondly_: they were evidently written in a moment of that unknownpower when words suggest something fuller than their own meaning, and inwhich simplicity itself broadens the mind of the reader. So that it isimpossible to put one's finger upon this or that and say this adjective, that order of the words has given the touch of vividness. _Thirdly_: they have in them still a living spirit of reality; read themto-day in Winter, and you feel the Spring. It is this quality perhapswhich most men have seized in them, and which have deservedly made themimmortal. A further character which has added to their fame, is that, beingperfect lyrics, they are also specimens of an old-fashioned manner andmetre peculiar to the time. They are the resurrection not only of theSpring, but of a Spring of the fifteenth century. Nor is it toofantastic to say that one sees in them the last miniatures and the verydress of a time that was intensely beautiful, and in which Charles ofOrleans alone did not feel death coming. _THE TWO ROUNDELS OF SPRING. _ _Les fourriers d'Esté sont venus Pour appareillier son logis, Et ont fait tendre ses tappis, De fleurs et verdure tissus. En estandant tappis velus De verte herbe par le pais, Les fourriers d'Esté sont venus Pour appareillier son logis. Cueurs d'ennuy pieça morfondus, Dieu merci, sont sains et jolis; Alez vous en, prenez pais, Yver vous ne demourrez plus; Les fourriers d'Esté sont venus. _ _Le temps a laissié son manteau De vent, de froidure et de pluye, Et s'est vestu de brouderie, De soleil luyant, cler et beau. Il n'y a beste, ne oyseau, Qu'en son jargon ne chant ou crie; Le temps a laissié son manteau De vent de froidure et de pluye. Riviere, fontaine et ruisseau Portent, en livrée jolie, Gouttes d'argent d'orfavrerie, Chascun s'abille de nouveau. Le temps a laissié son manteau. _ HIS LOVE AT MORNING. (_The 6th of the "Songs". _) In this delightful little song the spontaneity and freshness which savedhis work, its vigour and its clarity are best preserved. It does indeed defy death and leaps four centuries: it is young andperpetual. It thrills with something the failing middle ages hadforgotten: it reaches what they never reached, a climax, for one cannotput too vividly the flash of the penultimate line, "I am granted avision when I think of her. " Yet it was written in later life, and who she was, or whether she livedat all, no one knows. _HIS LOVE AT MORNING. _ _Dieu qu'il la fait bon regarder La gracieuse bonne et belle! Pour les grans biens qui sont en elle, Chascun est prest de la louer Qui se pourroit d'elle lasser! Tousjours sa beaulté renouvelle. Dieu, qu'il la fait bon regarder, La gracieuse, bonne et belle! Par deça, ne delà la mer, Ne sçay Dame ne Damoiselle Qui soit en tous biens parfais telle; C'est un songe que d'y penser. Dieu, qu'il la fait bon regarder!_ THE FAREWELL. (_The 310th Roundel. _) Here is the last thing--we may presume--that Charles of Orleans everwrote: "Salute me all the company, I pray. " In that "company", not only the Court at Amboise, but the men of theearly wars, his companions, were round him, and the dead friends of hisgentle memory. He was broken with age; he was already feeling the weight of isolationfrom the Royal Family; he was beginning to suffer the insults of theking. But, beneath all this, his gaiety still ran like a river underice, and in the ageing of a poet, humour and physical decline combinedmake a good, human thing. There is an excellent irony in the refrain: "Salute me, all thecompany, " whose double interpretation must not be missed, though it mayseem far-fetched. Till the last line it means, without any question, "Salute the companyin my name, " but I think there runs through it also, the hint of "Saluteme for my years, all you present who are young, " and that this certainlyis the note in the last line of all. It must be remembered of theFrench, that they never expand or explain their ironical things, for inart it is their nature to detest excess. This last thing of his, then, I say, is the most characteristic of himand of his Valois blood, and of the national spirit in general to whichhe belonged: for he, and it, and they, loved and love contrast, and theextra-meaning of words. _THE FAREWELL. _ _Saluez moy toute la compaignie Où à present estes à chiere lie, Et leur dictes que voulentiers seroye Avecques eulx, mais estre n'y porroye, Pour Vieillesse qui m'a en sa baillie. Au temps passé, Jeunesse si jolie Me gouvernoit; las! or n'y suis je mye, Et pour cela pour Dieu, que excusé soye; Saluez moy toute la compaignie Où à present estes à chiere lie, Et leur dictes que voulentiers seroye. Amoureux fus, or ne le suis je mye, Et en Paris menoye bonne vie; Adieu Bon temps ravoir ne vous saroye, Bien sanglé fus d'une estroite courroye. Que, par Aige, convient que la deslie. Saluez moy toute la compaignie. _ VILLON. I have said that in Charles of Orleans the middle ages are at first moreapparent than the advent of the Renaissance. His forms are inheritedfrom an earlier time, his terminology is that of the long allegorieswhich had wearied three generations, his themes recall whatever wastheatrical in the empty pageantry of the great war. It is a spiritdeeper and more fundamental than the mere framework of his writing whichattaches him to the coming time. His clarity is new; it proceeds fromnatural things; it marks that return to reality which is the beginningof all beneficent revolutions. But this spirit in him needs examinationand discovery, and the reader is confused between the mediaeval phrasesand the something new and troubling in the voice that utters them. With Villon, the next in order, a similar confusion might arise. Allabout him as he wrote were the middle ages: their grotesque, theircontrast, their disorder. His youth and his activity of blood forbad himany contact with other than immediate influences. He was whollyNorthern; he had not so much as guessed at what Italy might be. Thedecrepit University had given him, as best she could, the dregs of herpalsied philosophy and something of Latin. He grew learned as do thosemen who grasp quickly the major lines of their study, but who, indetails, will only be moved by curiosity or by some special affection. There was nothing patient in him, and nothing applied, and in all this, in the matter of his scholarship as in his acquirement of it, he is ofthe dying middle ages entirely. His laughter also was theirs: the kind of laughter that saluted thefirst Dance of Death which as a boy he had seen in new frescoes roundthe waste graveyard of the Innocents. His friends and enemies and heroesand buffoons were the youth of the narrow tortuous streets, his visionsof height were the turrets of the palaces and the precipitate roofs ofthe town. Distance had never inspired him, for in that age its effectwas forgotten. No one straight street displayed the greatness of thecity, no wide and ordered spaces enhanced it. He crossed his nativeriver upon bridges all shut in with houses, and houses hid the banksalso. The sweep of the Seine no longer existed for his generation, andlargeness of all kinds was hidden under the dust and rubble of decay. The majestic, which in sharp separate lines of his verse he certainlypossessed, he discovered within his own mind, for no great arch orcornice, nor no colonnade had lifted him with its splendour. That he could so discover it, that a solemnity and order should beapparent in the midst of his raillery whenever he desires to produce aneffect of the grand, leads me to speak of that major quality of his bywhich he stands up out of his own time, and is clearly an originator ofthe great renewal. I mean his vigour. It is all round about him, and through him, like a storm in a wood. Itcreates, it perceives. It possesses the man himself, and us also as weread him. By it he launches his influence forward and outward ratherthan receives it from the past. To it his successors turn, as to anancestry, when they had long despised and thrown aside everything elsethat savoured of the Gothic dead. By it he increased in reputation andmeaning from his boyhood on for four hundred years, till now he issecure among the first lyric poets of Christendom. It led to no excessof matter, but to an exuberance of attitude and manner, to aninexhaustibility of special words, to a brilliancy of impression uniqueeven among his own people. He was poor; he was amative; he was unsatisfied. This vigour, therefore, led in his actions to a mere wildness; clothed in this wildness the rarefragments of his life have descended to us. He professed to teach, buthe haunted taverns, and loved the roaring of songs. He lived at randomfrom his twentieth year in one den or another along the waterside. Affection brought him now to his mother, now to his old guardian priest, but not for long; he returned to adventure--such as it was. He killed aman, was arrested, condemned, pardoned, exiled; he wandered and againfound Paris, and again--it seems--stumbled down his old lane of violenceand dishonour. Associated also with this wildness is a curious imperfection in ourknowledge of him. His very name is not his own--or any other man's. Hisfather, if it were his father, took his name from Mont-Corbier--halfnoble. Villon is but a little village over beyond the upper Yonne, nearthe division, within a day of the water-parting where the land fallssouthward to Burgundy and the sun in what they call "The Slope of Gold. "From this village a priest, William, had come to Paris in 1423. Theygave him a canonry in that little church called "St. Bennets Askew, "which stood in the midst of the University, near Sorbonne, where the Ruedes Écoles crosses the Rue St. Jacques to-day. Hither, to his house inthe cloister, he brought the boy, a waif whom he had found much at thetime when Willoughby capitulated and the French recaptured the city. Hehad him taught, he designed him for the University, he sheltered him inhis vagaries, he gave him asylum. The young man took his name and calledhim "more than father. " His anxious life led on to 1468, long after thepoet had disappeared. For it is in 1461, in his thirtieth year, that Villon last writes down averse. It is in 1463 that his signature is last discovered. Then not bydeath or, if by death, then by some death unrecorded, he leaves historyabruptly--a most astonishing exit!. .. You may pursue fantastic legends, you will not find the man himself again. Some say a final quarrel gothim hanged at last--it is improbable: no record or even tradition of itremains. Rabelais thought him a wanderer in England. Poitou preserves astory of his later passage through her fields, of how still he drank andsang with boon companions, and of how, again, he killed a man. .. . Maybe, he only ceased to write; took to teaching soberly in the University, andlived in a decent inheritance to see new splendours growing upon Europe. It may very well be, for it is in such characters to desire in earlymanhood decency, honour, and repose. But for us the man ends with hislast line. His body that was so very real, his personal voice, hisjargon--tangible and audible things--spread outward suddenly a vastshadow upon nothingness. It was the end, also, of a world. The firstPresses were creaking, Constantinople had fallen, Greek was in Italy, Leonardo lived, the stepping stones of the Azores were held--in that newlight he disappears. * * * * * Of his greatness nothing can be said; it is like the greatness of allthe chief poets, a thing too individual to seize in words. It issuperior and exterior to the man. Genius of that astounding kind has allthe qualities of an extraneous thing. A man is not answerable for it. Itis nothing to his salvation; it is little even to his general character. It has been known to come and go, to be put off and on like a garment, to be lent by Heaven and taken away, a capricious gift. But of the manner of that genius it may be noted that, as his vigourprepared the flood of new verse, so in another matter his genius madehim an origin. Through him first, the great town--and especiallyParis--appeared and became permanent in letters. Her local spirit and her special quality had shone fitfully here andthere for a thousand years--you may find it in Julian, in Abbo, inJoinville. But now, in the fifteenth century, it had been not only atown but a great town for more than a century--a town, that is, in whichmen live entirely, almost ignorant of the fields, observing only othermen, and forgetting the sky. The keen edge of such a life, itsbitterness, the mockery and challenge whereby its evils are borne, itsextended knowledge, the intensity of its spirit--all these are reflectedin Villon, and first reflected in him. Since his pen first wrote, ashining acerbity like the glint of a sword-edge has never deserted theliterature of the capital. It was not only the metropolitan, it was the Parisian spirit whichVillon found and fixed. That spirit which is bright over the whole city, but which is not known in the first village outside; the influence thatmakes Paris Athenian. The ironical Parisian soul has depths in it. It is so lucid that itsluminous profundity escapes one--so with Villon. Religion hangs there. Humility--fatally divorced from simplicity--pervades it. It laughs atitself. There are ardent passions of sincerity, repressed and reactingupon themselves. The virtues, little practised, are commonlycomprehended, always appreciated, for the Faith is there permanent. Allthis you will find in Villon, but it is too great a matter for so shortan essay as this. THE DEAD LADIES. It is difficult or impossible to compare the masterpieces of the world. It is easy and natural to take the measure of a particular writer and toestablish a scale of his work. Villon is certainly in the small first group of the poets. His littlework, like that of Catullus, like that of Gray, is up, high, completedand permanent. And within that little work this famous Ballade is by farthe greatest thing. It contains all his qualities: not in the ordinary proportion of hischaracter, but in that better, exact proportion which existed in himwhen his inspiration was most ardent: for the poem has underlying itsomewhere a trace of his irony, it has all his ease andrapidity--excellent in any poet--and it is carried forward by thatvigour I have named, a force which drives it well upwards and forward toits foaming in the seventh line of the third verse. The sound of names was delightful to him, and he loved to use it; he hadalso that character of right verse, by which the poet loves to putlittle separate pictures like medallions into the body of his writing:this Villon loved, as I shall show in other examples, and he has ithere. The end of the middle ages also is strongly in this appeal or confessionof mortality; their legends, their delicacy, their perpetualcontemplation of death. But of all the Poem's qualities, its run of words is far the finest. _THE DEAD LADIES. _ _Dictes moy où, n'en quel pays Est Flora la belle Rommaine; Archipiada, ne Thaïs, Qui fut sa cousine germaine; Echo, parlant quand bruyt on maine Dessus riviere ou sus estan, Qui beaulté ot trop plus qu'humaine? Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?_ _Où est la très sage Hellois, Pour qui fut chastré et puis moyne Pierre Esbaillart à Saint-Denis? Pour son amour ot cest essoyne. Semblablement, où est la royne Qui commanda que Buridan Fust gecté en ung sac en Saine? Mais où sont les neiges d'antan!_ _La Royne Blanche comme un lis, Qui chantoit à voix de seraine; Berte au grant pié Bietris, Allis; Haremburgis qui tint le Maine, Et Jehanne, la bonne Lorraine, Qu'Englois brulerent à Rouan; Où sont elles, Vierge souvraine? Mais où sont les neiges d'antan!_ _ENVOI. _ _Prince, n'enquerez de sepmaine Où elles sont, ne de cest an, Que ce reffrain ne vous remaine: Mais où sont les neiges d'antan!_ AN EXCERPT FROM THE GRANT TESTAMENT. (_Stanzas 75-79. _) Villon's whole surviving work is in the form of two rhymed wills--oneshort, one long: and in the latter, Ballads and Songs are put in each intheir place, as the tenour of the verse suggests them. Thus the last Ballade, that of the "Dead Ladies, " comes after a coupleof strong stanzas upon the necessity of death--and so forth. One might choose any passage, almost, out of the mass to illustrate thecharacter of this "Testament" in which the separate poems are imbedded. I have picked those round about the 800th line, the verses in which heis perhaps least brilliant and most tender. _AN EXCERPT FROM THE GRANT TESTAMENT. _ LXXV. _Premier je donne ma povre ame A la benoiste Trinité, Et la commande à Nostre Dame Chambre de la divinité; Priant toute la charité Des dignes neuf Ordres des cieulx, Que par eulx soit ce don porté Devant le trosne precieux. _ LXXVI. _Item, mon corps je donne et laisse A notre grant mere la terre; Les vers n'y trouveront grant gresse: Trop luy a fait faim dure guerre. Or luy soit delivré grant erre: De terre vint, en terre tourne. Toute chose, se par trop n'erre, Voulentiers en son lieu retourne;_ LXXVII. _Item, et à mon plus que pere Maistre Guillaume de Villon Qui m'esté a plus doulx que mere, Enfant eslevé de maillon, Degeté m'a de maint boullon Et de cestuy pas ne s'esjoye Et luy requiers à genoullon Qu'il n'en laisse toute la joye. _ LXXVIII. _Je luy donne ma Librairie Et le Romman du Pet au Deable Lequel Maistre Guy Tabarie Grossa qui est homs veritable. Por cayers est soubz une table, Combien qu'il soit rudement fait La matiere est si très notable, Q'elle amende tout le mesfait. _ LXXIX. _Item donne à ma povre mere Pour saluer nostre Maistresse, Qui pour moy ot doleur amere Dieu le scet, et mainte tristesse; Autre Chastel n'ay ni fortresse Où me retraye corps et ame Quand sur moy court malle destresse Ne ma mere, la povre femme!_ THE BALLADE OF OUR LADY. (_Written by Villon for his mother. _) The abrupt ending of the last extract, the 79th stanza of the "GrantTestament"--"I give. .. " and then no objective (apparently) added--is anexcellent example of the manner in which the whole is conceived and ofthe way in which the separate poems are pieced into the general work. What "he gives. .. " to his mother is this "Ballade of our Lady, " written, presumably, long before the "will" and put in here and thus after beingcarefully led up to. These thirty-seven lines are more famous in their own country thanabroad. They pour from the well of a religion which has not failed inthe place where Villon wrote, and they present that religion in a mannerpeculiar and national. Apart from its piety and its exquisite tenderness, two qualities ofVillon are to be specially found in this poem: his vivid phrase, suchas: _"Emperiere des infernaux paluz, "_ (a discovery of which he was so proud that he repeated it elsewhere) or: _"sa tres chiere jeunesse. "_ And secondly the curiously processional effect of the metre and of theconstruction of the stanzas--the extra line and the extra foot lendthemselves to a chaunt in their balanced slow rhythm, as any one canfind for himself by reading the lines to some church sing-song as hegoes. _THE BALLADE OF OUR LADY. _ _Dame des cieulx, regente terrienne, Emperiere des infernaux paluz, Recevez moy, vostre humble chrestienne, Que comprinse soye entre vos esleuz, Ce non obstant qu'oncques rien ne valuz. Les biens de vous, ma dame et ma maistresse, Sont trop plus grans que ne suis pecheresse, Sans lesquelz biens ame ne peut merir N'avoir les cieulx, je n'en suis jungleresse. En ceste foi je veuil vivre et mourir. _ _A vostre fils dicte que je suis sienne; De luy soyent mes pechiez aboluz: Pardonne moy, comme à l'Egipcienne, Ou comme il feist au clerc Théophilus, Lequel par vous fut quitte et absoluz, Combien qu'il eust au Deable fait promesse. Preservez moy, que ne face jamais ce Vierge portant, sans rompure encourir Le sacrement qu'on celebre à la messe. En ceste foy je veuil vivre et mourir. _ _Femme je suis povrette et ancienne Qui riens ne scay; oncques lettre ne leuz; Au moustier voy dont suis paroissienne Paradis faint, où sont harpes et luz, Et ung enfer où dampnez sont boulluz: L'ung me fait paour, l'autre joye et liesse. La joye avoir me fay, haulte Deesse, A qui pecheurs doivent tous recourir, Comblez de Foy, sans fainte ne paresse. En ceste foy je veuil vivre et mourir. _ _ENVOI_ _Vous portastes, digne vierge, princesse, Jesus regnant, qui n'a ne fin ne cesse. Le Tout Puissant, prenant notre foiblesse, Laissa les cieulx et nous vint secourir, Offrit à mort sa tres chiere jeunesse. Nostre Seigneur tel est, tel le confesse, En ceste foy je veuil vivre et mourir. _ THE DEAD LORDS. As I have not wished to mix up smaller things with greater I have putthis _ballade_ separate from that of "the Ladies, " though it directlyfollows it as an after-thought in Villon's own book. For the former isone of the masterpieces of the world, and this, though very Villon, isnot great. What it has got is the full latter mediaeval love of odd names andreminiscences, and also to the full, the humour of the scholarly tavern, which was the "Mermaid" of that generation: as the startling regret of: Hélas! et le bon roy d'Espaigne Duquel je ne sçay pas le nom. .. . and the addition, after the false exit of "je me désiste". _Encore fais une question_ He laughed well over it, and was perhaps not thirsty when it waswritten. _THE DEAD LORDS. _ _Qui plus? Où est le Tiers Calixte Dernier decedé de ce nom, Qui quatre ans tint le papaliste? Alphonce, le roy d'Arragon, Le Gracieux Duc de Bourbon, Et Artus, le Duc de Bretaigne, Et Charles Septiesme, le Bon?. .. . Mais où est le preux Charlemaigne!_ _Semblablement le roy Scotiste Qui demy face ot, ce dit on, Vermeille comme une amatiste Depuis le front jusqu'au menton? Le roy de Chippre, de renom? Hélas! et le bon roy d'Espaigne Duquel je ne sçay pas le nom?. .. Mais où est le preux Charlemaigne!_ _D'en plus parler je me desiste Le monde n'est qu'abusion. Il n'est qui contre mort resiste Le que treuve provision. Encor fais une question: Lancelot, le roy de Behaigne, Où est il? Où est son tayon?. .. . Mais où est le preux Charlemaigne!_ _ENVOI. _ _Où est Claguin, le bon Breton? Où le conte daulphin d'Auvergne Et le bon feu Duc d'Alençon?. .. Mais où est le preux Charlemaigne!_ THE DIRGE. This is the best ending for any set of verses one may choose out ofVillon. It follows and completes the epitaph which in his will he ordersto be written in charcoal--or scratched--above his tomb: the sad, sardonic octave of "the little scholar and poor. " It is a kind of addeddirge to be read by those who pass and to be hummed or chaunted over himdead. But it is a rondeau. See how sharp it is with the salt and vinegar of his pressed courageoussmile--and how he cannot run away from his religion or from his powerover sudden and vivid beauty. "Sire--et clarté perpétuelle"--which last are the best two words thatever stood in the vulgar for _lux perpetua_. It is no wonder that as time went on, more and more people learnt thesethings by heart. _RONDEAU. _ _Repos éternel, donne à cil, Sire, et clarté perpétuelle, Qui vaillant plat ni escuelle N'eut oncques, n'ung brain de percil. Il fut rez, chief, barbe et sourcil, Comme un navet qu'on ret ou pelle. Repos éternel donne à cil. Rigueur le transmit en exil Et luy frappa au cul la pelle, Non obstant qu'il dit "J'en appelle!" Qui n'est pas terme trop subtil. Repos éternel donne à cil. _ CLEMENT MAROT. If in Charles of Orleans the first note of the French Renaissance isheard, if in Villon you find first its energy appearing above ground, yet both are forerunners only. With Marot one is in the full tide of the movement. The discovery ofAmerica had preceded his birth by three or perhaps four years. His earlymanhood was filled with all that ferment, all that enormous branchingout of human life, which was connected with the expansion of Spain; hewas in the midst of the scarlet and the gold. A man just of age whenLuther was first condemned, living his active manhood through theexperience of the great battlefields in Italy, wounded (a valet ratherthan a soldier) at Pavia, the perpetual chorus of Francis I. , privilegedto witness the first stroke of the pickaxe against the mediaeval Louvre, and to see the first Italian dignity of the great stone houses on theLoire--being all this, the Renaissance was the stuff on which his lifewas worked. His blood and descent were typical enough of the work he had to do. Hisown father was one of the last set rhymers of the dying Middle Ages. Allhis boyhood was passed among that multitude of little dry "writers-downof verse" with which, in Paris, the Middle Ages died; they were not aswarm, for they were not living; they were a heap of dust. All his earlywork is touched with the learned, tedious, unbeautiful industry whichwas all that the elder men round Louis XII could bring to letters. By ahappy accident there were mixed in him, however, two vigorous springs ofinspiration, each ready to receive the new forces that were working inEurope, each destined to take the fullest advantage of the new time. These springs were first, learned Normandy, quiet, legal, well-founded, deep in grass, wealthy; and secondly, the arid brilliancy of the South:Quency and the country round Cahors. His father was a Norman pure bred, who had come down and married into that sharp land where the summer isthe note of the whole year, and where the traveller chiefly remembersvineyards, lizards on the walls, short shadows, sleep at noon, andblinding roads of dust. The first years of his childhood were spent inthe southern town, so that the south entered into him thoroughly. Thelanguage that he never wrote, the Languedoc, was that, perhaps, in whichhe thought during all his life. It was his mother's. It has been noticed by all his modern readers, it will be noticedprobably with peculiar force by English readers, that the fame of Marotduring his lifetime and his historical position as the leader of theRenaissance has in it something exaggerated and false. One cannot help aperpetual doubt as to whether the religious quarrel, the influence ofthe Court, the strong personal friendships and enmities which surroundedhim had not had more to do with his reputation than his faculty, or evenhis genius, for rhyme. Whenever he wanted £100 he asked it of the Kingwith the grave promise that he would bestow upon him immortality. From Ronsard, or from Du Bellay, we, here in the north, could understandthat phrase; from Marot it carries a flavour of the grotesque. Readysong, indeed, and a great power over the material one uses in singinglast indefinitely; they last as long as the sublime or the terrible inliterature, but we forbear to associate with them--perhaps unjustly--theconception of greatness. If indeed anyone were to maintain that Marotwas not an excellent and admirable poet he would prove himself ignorantof the language in which Marot wrote, but let the most sympathetic turnto what is best in his verse, let them turn for instance to thatcharming lyric: "A sa Dame Malade" or to "The Ballad of Old Time, " oreven to that really large and riotous chorus of the vine, and they willsee that it is the kind of thing which is amplified by music, and whichsometimes demands the aid of music to appear at all. They will see quiteplainly that Marot took pleasure in playing with words and arranged themwell, felt keenly and happily, played a full lyre, but they will doubtwhether poetry was necessarily for him the most serious business oflife. Why, then, has he taken the place claimed for him, and why is he firmlysecure in the place of master of the ceremonies, as it were, to thatglorious century whose dawn he enjoyed and helped to beautify? I will explain it. It is because he is national. He represents not what is most this, ormost that--"highest", "noblest", "truest", "best", and all the rest ofit--in his countrymen, but rather what they have most in common. Did you meet him to-day in the Strand you would know at once that youhad to do with a Frenchman, and, probably, with a kind of poet. He was short, square in the shoulders, tending in middle age to fatness. A dark hair and beard; large brown eyes of the south; a great, rounded, wrinkled forehead like Verlaine's; a happy mouth, a nose veryinsignificant, completed him. When we meet somewhere, under cypresstrees at last, these great poets of a better age, and find Ronsard avery happy man, Du Bellay, a gentleman; then Malherbe, for all that hewas a northerner, we may mistake, if we find him, for a Catalonian. Villon, however Parisian, will appear the Bohemian that many cities haveproduced; Charles of Orleans may seem at first but one of that very highnobility remnants of which are still to be discovered in Europe. Butwhen we see Marot, our first thought will certainly be, as I have said, that we have come across a Frenchman; and the more French for a touch ofthe commonplace. See how French was the whole career! Whatever is new attracts him. The reformation attracts him. It was_chic_ to have to do with these new things. He had the French ignoranceof what was foreign and alien; the French curiosity to meddle with itbecause it had come from abroad; the French passion for opposing, forstruggling;--and beneath it all the large French indifference to theproblem of evil (or whatever you like to call it), the changeless Frenchcontent in certitude, upon which ease, indeed, as upon a rock, theChurch of Gaul has permanently stood and will continuously repose. He has been a sore puzzle to the men who have never heard of thesethings. Calvin (that appalling exception who had nothing in him ofFrance except lucidity) could make neither head nor tail of him. Genevawas glad enough to chaunt through the nose his translations of thePsalms, but it was woefully puzzled at his salacity, and the town wasvery soon too hot to hold him in his exile. And as for the common, partial, and ignorant histories of France, written in our tongue, theygenerally make him a kind of backslider, who might have been a Huguenot(and--who knows?--have thrown the Sacrament to beasts with the best ofthem) save that, unhappily, he did not persevere. Whatever they say ofhim (and some have hardly heard of him) one thing is quite certain: thatthey do not understand him, and that if they did they would like himstill less than they do. He was national in the rapidity of the gesture of his mind as in that ofhis body: in his being attracted here and there, watching this and thatsuddenly, like a bird. He was national in his power of sharp recovery from any emotion backinto his normal balance. He was national in that he depended upon companions, and stood for acrowd, and deplored all isolation. He was national in that he hadnothing strenuous about him, and that he was amiable, and if he hadheard of "earnest" men, he would have laughed at them a little, aspeople who did not see the whole of life. He was especially national (and it is here that the poet returns) inthat most national of all things--a complete sympathy with theatmosphere of the native tongue. Thus men debate a good deal upon thepoetic value of Wordsworth, but it is certain, when one sees how bathedhe is in the sense of English words, their harmony and balance, that theman is entirely English, that no other nation could have produced him, and that he will be most difficult for foreigners to understand. Youwill not translate into French or any other language the simplicity of: "Glimpses that should make me less forlorn. " Nor can you translate, so as to give its own kind of grandeur "Et arrivoit pour bénistre la vigne. " Apart from his place in letters, see how national he is in what he does! He buys two bits of land, he talks of them continually, sees to them, visits them. They are quite little bits of land. He calls one Clément, and the other Marot! Here is a whimsicality you would not find, I think, among another people. He has the hatred of "sprawling" in his particular art which is thechief aesthetic character of the French; but he has the tendency toexcess in opinion or in general expression which is their chiefpolitical fault. It is thus, then, that I think he should be regarded and that I woulddesire to present him. It is thus, I am sure, that he should be read ifone is to know why he has taken so great a place in the reverence andthe history of the French people. And it is in this aspect that he may worthily introduce much greaterthings, the Pléiade and Ronsard. OF COURTING LONG AGO. (_The Eighth of the Roundels. _) This is a fair enough specimen of Marot at his daily gait: an easyversifier "on a theme" and no more. I have said that it is unjust tojudge him on that level, and I have said why; but I give this to givethe man as he moved domestically to the admiration of the court and ofhis friends in a time which missed, for example, the epic character ofthe last six lines of "Le Beau Tettin, " and which hardly comprehended ofwhat value his pure lyric enthusiasms would be to a sadder and drierposterity. _OF COURTING LONG AGO. _ _Au bon vieulx temps un train d'amour regnoit, Qui sans grand art et dons se démenoit, Si qu'un boucquet donné d'amour profonde S'estoit donné toute la terre ronde: Car seulement au cueur on se prenoit. _ _Et si, par cas, à jouyr on venoit, Sçavez-vous bien comme on s'entretenoit? Vingt ans, trente ans; cela duroit ung monde Au bon vieulx temps. _ _Or est perdu ce qu'amour ordonnoit, Rien que pleurs fainctz, rien que changes on n'oyt. Qui vouldra donc qu'à aymer je me fonde, Il fault, premier, que l'amour on refonde Et qu'on la meine ainsi qu'on la menoit Au bon vieulx temps. _ NOËL. (_The Second of the Chansons. _) But here, upon the contrary, is the spontaneity of his happy mind; itsuggests a song; one can hardly read it without a tune in one's head, sosimple is it and so purely lyrical: there is a touch of the dance in it, too. In these little things of Marot, which are neither learned (and heboasted of learning) nor set and dry (and his friends especially praisedhis precision), a great poet certainly appears--in short revelations, but still appears. Unfortunately there are not enough of them. That he thought "like a Southerner, " as I have maintained and as I shallshow by a further example, is made the more probable from the value helends to the feminine e. The excellent rhythm of this poem you will onlyget by giving the feminine e the value of a drawn out syllable: "L'effect Est faict: La bel-le Pucel-le, " etc. So Spaniards, Gascons, Provençaux, Italians, rhyme, and all those of thesouth who have retained their glorious "a's" and "o's". As for the spirit of it--God bless him!--it is a subject for perpetualmerriment to think of such a man's being taken for a true Huguenot andenmeshed, even for a while, in the nasty cobweb of Geneva. But in thelast thing I shall quote, when he is Bacchic for the vine, you will seeit still more. _NOËL. _ _Une pastourelle gentille Et ung bergier en ung verger L'autrhyer en jouant à la bille S'entredisoient, pour abréger: Roger Bergier Legière Bergière, C'est trop à la bille joué; Chantons Noé, Noé, Noé. _ _Te souvient-il plus du prophète Qui nous dit cas de si hault faict, Que d'une pucelle parfaicte Naistroit ung enfant tout parfaict? L'effect Est faict: La belle Pucelle A eu ung filz du ciel voué: Chantons Noé, Noé, Noé. _ TWO EPIGRAMS. (_The 41st of the First Book and the 46th of the Second. _) These two epigrams are again but examples of the readiness, the wit, thehard surface of Marot, and they needed no more poetry than was inVoltaire or Swift, but they needed style. It was this absolute andstandard style which his contemporaries chiefly remarked in him: themarvel was, that being mainly such an epigrammatist and scholar, andpraised and supported only in that guise, he should have carried in himany, or rather so much, fire. The first was his reply to a Dixaine the king's sister had sent him. Thesecond explains itself. _TWO EPIGRAMS. _ _Mes créanciers, qui de dixains n'ont cure, Ont leu le vostre; et sur ce leur ay dict: "Sire Michel, sire Bonaventure, La soeur du Roy a pour moy faict ce dit. " Lors eulx cuydans que fusse en grand crédict, M'ont appelé monsieur à cry et cor, Et m'a valu vostre escript aultant qu'or; Car promis m'ont non seulement d'attendre, Mais d'en prester, foy de marchant, encor, Et j'ay promis, foy de Clément, d'en prendre. _ _Paris, tu m'as faict maints alarmes, Jusque à me poursuivre à la mort: Je n'ay que blasonné tes armes: Un ver, quand on le presse, il mord! Encor la coulpe m'en remord. Ne scay de toy comment sera; Mais de nous deux le diable emport Celuy qui recommencera. _ TO HIS LADY IN SICKNESS. (_The 16th Epistle. _) It is the way this is printed that makes some miss its value. It is, like all the best he wrote, a song; it needs the varying time of humanexpression, the effect of tone, the repose and the re-lifting of musicalnotes; illuminated thus it greatly charmed, and if any one would knowthe order of such a tune, why, it should follow the punctuation: acessation at the third line; a rise of rapid accents to the thirteenth, and then a change; the last three lines of the whole very much fullerand strong. So I would hear it sung on a winter evening in an old house in Auvergne, and re-enter the sixteenth century as I heard. _TO HIS LADY IN SICKNESS. _ _Ma mignonne, Je vous donne Le bon jour. Le séjour, C'est prison. Guérison Recouvrez, Puis ouvrez Vostre porte Et qu'on sorte Vistement; Car Clément Le vous mande. Va, friande De ta bouche, Qui se couche En danger Pour manger Confitures; Si tu dures Trop malade, Couleur fade Tu prendras Et perdras L'embonpoint. Dieu te doint, Santé bonne, Ma mignonne. _ THE VINEYARD SONG. (_The 4th of the Chansons. _) Here is Marot's best--even though many of his native critics will notadmit it so; but to feel it in full one must be exiled from the vines. It is a tapestry of the Renaissance; the jolly gods of the Renaissance, the old gods grown Catholic moving across a happier stage. Bacchus inlong robes and with solemnity blessing the vine, Silenus and thehobbling smith who smithied the Serpe, the Holy Vineyard Knife inheaven, all these by their diction and their flavour recall the Autumnin Herault and the grapes under a pure sky, pale at the horizon, andlabourers and their carts in the vineyard, and these set in the frame ofthat great time when Saturn did return. All the poem is wine. It catches its rhymes and weaves them in and in, and moves rapid and careless in a fugue, like the march from Asia whenthe Panthers went before and drew the car. The internal rhythm and pulseis the clapping of hands in barns at evening and the peasants' feetdancing freely on the beaten earth. It is a very good song; it remembersthe treading of the grapes and is refreshed by the mists that rise atevening when the labour is done. _THE VINEYARD SONG. _ _Changeons propos, c'est trop chanté d'amours, Ce sont clamours, chantons de la Serpette, Tous vignerons ont à elle recours, C'est leur secours pour tailler la vignette. O serpilette, ô la serpilonnette, La vignolette est par toy mise sus, Dont les bons vins, tous les ans, sont yssus!_ _Le dieu Vulcain, forgeron des haults dieux, Forgea aux cieulx la serpe bien taillante, De fin acier, trempé en bon vin vieulx, Pour tailler mieulx et estre plus vaillante. Bacchus le vante et dit qu'elle est séante Et convenante à Noé le bonshom Pour en tailler la vigne en la saison. _ _Bacchus alors chappeau de treille avoit, Et arrivoit pour bénistre la vigne; Avec flascons Silénus le suivoit, Lequel beuvoit aussi droict qu'une ligne; Puis il trépigne, et se faict une bigne; Comme une guigne estoit rouge son nez. Beaucoup de gens de sa race sont nez. _ RONSARD. If it be true that words create for themselves a special atmosphere, andthat their mere sound calls up vague outer things beyond their strictmeaning, so it is true that the names of the great poets by their meresound, by something more than the recollection of their work, produce anatmosphere corresponding to the quality of each; and the name of Ronsardthrows about itself like an aureole the characters of fecundity, ofleadership, and of fame. A group of men to which allusion will be made in connection with DuBellay set out with a programme, developed a determined school, andfixed the literary renaissance of France at its highest point. Theysteeped themselves in antiquity, and they put to the greatest value ithas ever received the name of poet; they demanded that the poet shouldbe a kind of king, or seer. Half seriously, half as a product of merescholarship, the pagan conception of the muse and of inspiration filledthem. More than that; in their earnest, and, as it seemed at first, artificialwork, they formed the French language. Some of its most famous and mostfamiliar words proceed from them--for instance, the word _Patrie_. Somefew of their exotic Greek and Latin adaptations were dropped; thegreater part remained. They have excluded from French--as some think tothe impoverishment of that language--most elements of the Gothic--theinversion of the adjective, the frequent suppression of the relative, the irregularity of form, which had survived from the Middle Ages, andwhich make the older French poetry so much more sympathetic to theEnglishman than is the new--all these were destroyed by the group of menof whom I speak. They were called by their contemporaries the Pleiade, for they were seven stars. Now, of these, Ronsard was easily the master. He had that power whichour anaemic age can hardly comprehend, of writing, writing, writing, without fear of exhaustion, without irritability or self-criticism, without danger of comparing the better with the worse. Five greatvolumes of small print, all good--men of that facility never write thereally paltry things--all good, and most of it glorious; some of it onthe level which only the great poets reach here and there. It is inreading this man who rhymed unceasingly for forty years, who made ofpoetry an occupation as well as a glory, and who let it fill the wholeof his life, that one feels how much such creative power has to do withthe value of verse. There is a kind of good humility about it, thehumility of a man who does not look too closely at himself, and thehealth of a soul at full stride, going forward. You may open Ronsard atany page, and find a beauty; you may open any one of the sonnets atrandom, and in translating it discover that you are compelled to a fineEnglish, because he is saying, plainly, great things. And of thesesonnets, note you, he would write thirty at a stretch, and then twenty, and then a second book, with seventy more. So that as one reads onecannot help understanding that Italian who said a man was no poet unlesshe could rap out a century of sonnets from time to time; and one isreminded of the general vigour of the age and of the way in which art ofall sorts was mingled up together, when one remembers the tags ofverses, just such verses as these, which are yet to be seen in ourgalleries set down doubtfully on the margin of their sketches by thegreat artists of Italy. Ronsard, with these qualities of a leader, unconscious, as all trueleaders are, of the causes of his leadership, and caring, as all trueleaders do, for nothing in leadership save the glory it brings with it, had also, as have all leaders, chiefly the power of drawing in amultitude of friends. The peculiar head of his own group, he very soonbecame the head of all the movement of his day. He had made lettersreally great in the minds of his contemporaries, and having so madethem, appeared before them as a master of those letters. Certainly, as Ishall quote him in a moment when I come to his dying speech, he was"satiated with glory. " Yet this man did not in his personality convey that largeness which washis principal mark. His face was narrow, long and aquiline; his healthuneven. It was evidently his soul which made men quickly forget theill-matched case which bore it; for almost alone of the great poets hewas consistently happy, and there poured out from him not only thisunceasing torrent of verse, but also advice, sustenance, and a kind ofsecondary inspiration for others. In yet another matter he was a leader, and a leader of the utmostweight, not the cause, perhaps, but certainly the principal example ofthe trend which the mind of the nation was taking as the sixteenthcentury drew to a close. I mean in the matter of religion, upon whosecolour every society depends, which is the note even of a nationallanguage, and which seems to be the ultimate influence beyond which nohistorical analysis can carry a thinking man. But even those who will not admit the truth of this should watch thetheory closely, for with the religious trend of France is certainlybound up, and, as I would maintain, on such an influence is dependent, that ultimate setting of the French classic, that winding up of theRenaissance, with which I shall deal in the essay upon Malherbe. The stream of Catholicism was running true. The nation was tumbling backafter a high and turbulent flood into the channel it had scoured foritself by the unbroken energies of a thousand years. It is no accidentthat Ronsard, that Du Bellay, were churchmen. It is a type. It is a typeof the truth that the cloth admitted poets; of the truth that in thegreat battle whose results yet trouble Europe, here, on the soil wherethe great questions are fought out, Puritanism was already killed. Theepicurean in them both, glad and ready in Ronsard, sombre and Lucretianin Du Bellay, jarred indeed in youth against their vows; but that itshould have been tolerated, that it should have led to no excess orangry revolt, was typical of their moment. It was typical, finally, oftheir generation that all this mixture of the Renaissance with theChurch matured at last into its natural fruit, for in the case ofRonsard we have a noble expression of perfect Christianity at the end. In the November of 1585 he felt death upon him; he had himself borne tohis home as soon as the Huguenot bands had left it, ravaged anddevastated as it was. He found it burnt and looted, but it reminded himof childhood and of the first springs of his great river of verse. Aprofound sadness took him. He was but in his sixty-second year, his mindhad not felt any chill of age. He could not sleep; poppies andsoporifics failed him. He went now in his coach, now on a litter fromplace to place in that country side which he had rendered famous, andsaw the Vendomois for the last time; its cornfields all stubble under acold and dreary sky. And in each place he waited for a while. But death troubled him, and he could not remain. Within a fortnight heordered that they should carry him southward to the Loire, to thatpriory of which--by a custom of privilege, nobility and royal favour--hewas the nominal head, the priory which is "the eye and delight ofTouraine", --the Isle of St. Cosmo. He sickened as he went. The thirtymiles or so took him three painful days; twice, all his strength failedhim, and he lay half fainting in his carriage; to so much energy and toso much power of creation these episodes were an awful introduction ofdeath. It was upon the 17th of November that he reached the walls wherein hewas Superior; six weeks later, on the second day after Christmas, hedied. Were I to describe that scene to which he called the monks, all men ofhis own birth and training, were I to dwell upon the appearance and thecharacter of the oldest and the wisest, who was also the most famousthere, I should extend this essay beyond its true limit, as I shouldalso do were I to write down, even briefly, the account of his just, resigned, and holy death. It must suffice that I transcribe the chief ofhis last deeds; I mean, that declaration wherein he made his lastprofession of faith. The old monk had said to him: "In what resolution do you die?" He answered, somewhat angrily: "In what did you think? In the religionwhich was my father's and his father's, and his father's and hisfather's before him--for I am of that kind. " Then he called all the community round him, as though the monasticsimplicity had returned (so vital is the Faith, so simple its primalenergies), and as though he had been the true prior of some early andfervent house, he told them these things which I will faithfullytranslate on account of their beauty. They are printed here, I think, for the first time in English, and must stand for the end of this essay: He said: "That he had sinned like other men, and, perhaps, more thanmost; that his senses had led him away by their charm, and that he hadnot repressed or constrained them as he should; but none the less, hehad always held that Faith which the men of his line had left him, hehad always clasped close the Creed and the unity of the Catholic Church;that, in fine, he had laid a sure foundation, but he had built thereonwith wood, with hay, with straw. As for that foundation, he was sure itwould stand; as for the light and worthless things he had built upon ithe had trust in the mercy of the Saviour that they would be burnt in thefire of His love. And now he begged them all to believe hard, as he hadbelieved; but not to live as he had lived; they must understand that hehad never attempted or plotted against the life or goods of another, norever against any man's honour, but, after all, there was nothing thereinwherewith to glorify one's self before God. " When he had wept a little, he continued, saying, "that the world was a ceaseless turmoil andtorment, and shipwreck after shipwreck all the while, and a whirlpool ofsins, and tears and pain, and that to all these misfortunes there wasbut one port, and this port was Death. But, as for him, he carried withhim into that port no desire and no regret for life. That he had triedevery one of its pretended joys, that he had left nothing undone whichcould give him the least shadow of pleasure or content, but that at theend he had found everywhere the oracle of Wisdom, vanity of vanities. " He ended with this magnificent thing, which is, perhaps, the last hishuman power conceived, and I will put it down in his own words:-- "Of all those vanities, the loveliest and most praiseworthy isglory--fame. No one of my time has been so filled with it as I; I havelived in it, and loved and triumphed in it through time past, and now Ileave it to my country to garner and possess it after I shall die. So doI go away from my own place as satiated with the glory of this world asI am hungry and all longing for that of God. " DIALOGUE WITH THE NINE SISTERS. This is a little Amaboean thing not very well known but very Horatianand worth setting down here because it is in the manner of so much thathe wrote. Its manner is admirable. Its gentleness, persistency and increase--arelike those of his own small river the Loir. Its last stanza from themiddle of the first line "_Ceux dont la fantaisie_" to the end, should, I think be famous; but an English reader can hardly forgive such anintroduction as "_Voilà sagement dit_" to so noble a finale. _DIALOGUE WITH THE NINE SISTERS. _ Ronsard. _Pour avoir trop aimé vostre bande inégale, Muses, qui defiez (ce dites vous) le temps, J'ay les yeux tout battus, la face toute pasle, Le Chef grison et chauve, et je n'ay que trente ans. _ Muses. _Au nocher qui sans cesse erre sur la marine Le teint noir appartient; le soldat n'est point beau Sans estre tout poudreux; qui courbe la poitrine Sur nos livres, est laid s'il n'a pasle la peau. _ Ronsard. _Mais quelle recompense aurois-je de tant suivre Vos danses nuict et jour, un laurier sur le front? Et cependant les ans aux quels je deusse vivre En plaisirs et en jeux comme poudre s'en vont. _ Muses. _Vous aurez, en vivant, une fameuse gloire, Puis, quand vous serez mort, votre nom fleurira L'age, de siècle en siècle, aura de vous memoire; Vostre corps seulement au tombeau pourrira. _ Ronsard. _O le gentil loyer! Que sert au viel Homère, Ores qu'il n'est plus rien, sous la tombe, là-bas, Et qu'il n'a plus ny chef, ny bras, ny jambe entiere Si son renom fleurist, ou s'il ne fleurist pas!_ Muses. _Vous estes abusé. Le corps dessous la lame Pourry ne sent plus rien, aussy ne luy en chaut. Mais un tel accident n'arrive point à l'ame, Qui sans matière vist immortelle là haut. _ Ronsard. _Bien! Je vous suyvray donc d'une face plaisante, Dussé-je trespasser de l'estude vaincu, Et ne fust-ce qu'à fin que la race suyvante Ne me reproche point qu'oysif j'aye vescu. _ Muses. _Vela saigement dit, Ceux dont la fantaisie Sera religieuse et devote envers Dieu Tousjours acheveront quelque grand poesie, Et dessus leur renom la Parque n'aura lieu. _ THE EPITAPH ON RABELAIS. Seven years after Rabelais died, Ronsard wrote this off-hand. I give it, not for its value, but because it connects these two great names. Theman who wrote it had seen that large and honorable mouth worshippingwine: he had reverenced that head of laughter which has corrected allour philosophy. It would be a shame to pass such a name as Ronsard'ssigned to an epitaph on such a work as that of Rabelais, poetry or nopoetry. Ronsard also from a tower at Meudon used to creep out at night and drinkwith that fellow-priest, vicar of the Parish, Rabelais: a greater manthan he. By a memory separate from the rest of his verse, Ronsard was moved towrite this Rabelaisian thing. For he had seen him "full length upon thegrass and singing so. " There is no need of notes, for these great names of Gargantua, Panurgeand Friar John are household to every honest man. _THE EPITAPH ON RABELAIS. _ _Si d'un mort qui pourri repose Nature engendre quelque chose, Et si la génération Se faict de la corruption, Une vigne prendra naissance Du bon Rabelais qui boivoit Tousjours ce pendant qu'il vivoit;_ _Demi me se troussoit les bras Et se couchoit tout plat à bas Sur la jonchée entre les tasses Et parmy les escuelles grasses_ _Il chantait la grande massue Et la jument de Gargantue, Le grand Panurge et le jaïs Des papimanes ébahis, Leurs loix, leurs façons et demeures Et Frère Jean des Antonneures. Et d'Espisteme les combas. Mais la Mort qui ne boivoit pas Tira le beuveur de ce monde Et ores le fait boire de l'onde Du large fleuve d'Achéron. _ "MIGNONNE ALLONS VOIR SI LA ROSE. " (_The 17th Ode of the First Book. _) "In these eighteen lines, " says very modernly a principal critic, "liesRonsard's fame more surely than in all the remaining mass of his works. "He condemns by implication Ronsard's wide waste of power; but the fewother poems that I have here had room to print, should make the readercareful of such judgements. It is true that in the great hoard whichRonsard left his people there are separate and particular jewels set inthe copper and the gold, but the jewels are very numerous: indeed it wasalmost impossible to choose so few as I have printed here. If it be asked why this should have become the most famous, no answercan be given save the "flavour of language. " It is the perfection of histongue. Its rhythm reaches the exact limit of change which a simplemetre will tolerate: where it saddens, a lengthy hesitation at theopening of the seventh line introduces a new cadence, a lengthylingering upon the last syllables of the tenth, eleventh and twelfthcloses a grave complaint. So, also by an effect of quantities, the lastsix lines rise out of melancholy into their proper character of appealand vivacity: an exhortation. Certainly those who are so unfamiliar with French poetry as not to knowthat its whole power depends upon an extreme subtlety of rhythm, mayfind here the principal example of the quality they have missed. Something much less weighty than the stress of English lines, a justperceptible difference between nearly equal syllables, marks theexcellent from the intolerable in French prosody: and to feel this truthin the eighteen lines that follow it is necessary to read them virtuallyin the modern manner--for the "s" in "vesprée" or "vostre" werepedantries in the sixteenth century--but one must give the mute "e's"throughout as full a value as they have in singing. Indeed, reading thispoem, one sees how it must have been composed to some good and simpleair in the man's head. If the limits of a page permitted it, I would also show how worthy thething was of fame from its pure and careful choice of verb--"Tandis quevostre age _fleuronne_"--but space prevents me, luckily, for all this islike splitting a diamond. "_MIGNONNE ALLONS VOIR SI LA ROSE. _" _Mignonne, allons voir si la rose Qui ce matin avoit desclose Sa robe de pourpre au soleil A point perdu ceste vesprée Les plis de sa robe pourprée Et son teint au vostre pareil_ _Las! Voyez comme en peu d'espace Mignonne, elle a dessus la place, Las! Las! ses beautez laissé cheoir! O vrayment marastre nature, Puis qu'une telle fleur ne dure Que du matin jusques au soir!_ _Donc si vous me croyez, Mignonne, Tandis que vostre age fleuronne En sa plus verte nouveauté, Cuillez, Cuillez vostre jeunesse: Comme à ceste fleur, la veillesse Fera ternir vostre beauté. _ THE "SONNETS FOR HÉLÈNE" (_The 42nd and 43rd Sonnets of the Second Book. _) Hélène was very real. A young Maid of Honour to Catherine de Medicis;Spanish by blood, Italian by breeding, called in France "de Sugères, "she was the gravest and the wisest, and, for those who loved serenity, the most beautiful of that high and brilliant school. The Sonnets began as a task; a task the Queen had set Ronsard, withHélène for theme: they ended in the last strong love of Ronsard's life. A sincere lover of many women, he had come to the turn of his age whenhe saw her, like a memory of his own youth. He has permitted to runthrough this series, therefore, something of the unique illusion whichdistance in time or space can lend to the aspect of beauty. An emotionso tenuous does not appear in any other part of his work: here alone youfind the chastity or weakness which made something in his mind come nearto the sadder Du Bellay's: his soul is regardant all the while as hewrites: visions rise from her such as never rose from Cassandra; as thisgreat picture at the opening of the 58th Sonnet of the Second Book: Seule sans compagnie en une grande salle Tu logeois l'autre jour pleine de majesté. These "Sonnets for Hélène" should be common knowledge: they are (with DuBellay's) the evident original upon which the author of Shakespeare'sSonnets modelled his work: they are the late and careful effort ofRonsard's somewhat spendthrift genius. Here are two of them. One, the second, most famous, the other, thefirst, hardly known: both are admirable. It is the perfection of their sound which gives them their peculiarquality. The very first lines lead off with a completed harmony: it isas thoroughly a winter night as that in Shakespeare's song, but it ismore solemn and, as it were, more "built of stone. .. . " "La Lune Ocieuse, tourne si lentement son char tout à l'entour", is likea sleeping statue of marble. To this character, the second adds a vivid interest of emotion which hasgiven it its special fame. Even the populace have come to hear of thissonnet, and it is sung to a lovely tune. It has also what often leads topermanent reputation in verse, a great simplicity of form. The Sextet iswell divided from the Octave, the climax is clearly underlined. Ronsardwas often (to his hurt) too scholarly to achieve simplicity: when, underthe clear influence of some sharp passion or gaiety he did achieve it, then he wrote the lines that will always remain: A fin qu'à tout jamais de siècle en siècle vive, La Parfaicte amitié que Ronsard la portait. _THE "SONNETS FOR HÉLÈNE. "_ XLII _Ces longues nuicts d'hyver, où la Lune ocieuse Tourne si lentement son char tout à l'entour, Où le Coq si tardif nous annonce le jour, Où la nuict semble un an à l'ame soucieuse: Je fusse mort d'ennuy sans ta forme douteuse Qui vient par une feinte alleger mon amour, Et faisant toute nue entre mes bras séjour Me pipe doucement d'une joye menteuse. Vraye tu es farouche, et fière en cruauté: De toy fausse on jouyst en toute privauté. Pres ton mort je m'endors, pres de luy je repose: Rien ne m'est refusé. Le bon sommeil ainsi Abuse pour le faux mon amoureux souci. S'abuser en Amour n'est pas mauvaise chose. _ XLIII _Quand vous serez bien vieille, au Soir à la chandelle, Assise aupres du feu, dévidant et filant, Direz chantant mes vers, en vous esmerveillant, Ronsard me celebroit du temps que j'estois belle. Lors vous n'aurez servante oyant telle nouvelle Desia sous le labeur à demy sommeillant Qui au bruit de mon nom ne s'aille resveillant, Bénissant vostre nom de louange immortelle. _ _Je seray sous la terre et fantôme sans os Par les ombres myrteux je prendray mon repos. Vous serez au foyer une veille accroupie, Regrettant mon amour et vostre fier desdain. Vivez, si m'en croyez; n'attendez à demain. Cueillez des aujourdhuy les roses de la vie. _ JOACHIM DU BELLAY. In Du Bellay the literary Renaissance, French but transfigured by Italy, middle-north of the plains but looking southward to the Mediterranean, came to one soul and concentrated upon it, as the plastic expression ofthe same influence concentrated in Goujon. Very central in time, halfsoldier, half priest, all student; traveller and almost adventurer, apilgrim throughout of the Idea, everything about him is symbolic of thegeneration he adorned. In its vigour, at least, the Renaissance was a glorious youth--he, DuBellay, died at thirty-five. Its leap and soaring were taken from thefirm platform of strong scholarship--he was a scholar beyond the rest. It fixed special forms--he the French sonnet. It felt the lives of allthings running through it as a young man feels them in the springwoods--he gathered in the cup of his verse, and retains for us, thenerve of all that life which is still exultant in the forest beyond hisriver. His breeding, his high name, his leisured poverty, his passionatefriendship, his looking forward always to a new thing, a creation--allthis, was the Renaissance in person. Moreover, the Renaissance had in France its seat where, between rollinglands whose woods are the walls of gardens, the broad and shallow inlandLoire runs from Orleans, past Blois and Tours and Saumur, and Ancenis, until near Nantes at last it feels the tide: salt and adventures and thebarbaric sea. This varied sheltered land of aged vineyards and greatwealth has, for the French Renaissance, the one special quality ofbeginnings and Edens, namely, that it preserves on to a later time theoutward evidences of an original perfection. This place, the nest orseed-plot of the new civilisation, still shows its castles--Blois, Amboise, Chambord. Here Leonardo died, Rabelais, Ronsard himself wasborn. Here the kings of the Change built in their fantastic pride, andfounded a France that still endures. It is as truly the soil of themodern thing as are the provinces north of it (the Isle de France, Normandy, Picardy and Champagne), the soil of the earlier mediaevalflower, and of the Gothic which they preserve unique to our own time. Now, of this district, Du Bellay was more than a native; he was part ofit; he pined away from it; he regretted, as no other man of the timeregretted, his father's land: Anjou and the fields of home. He may besaid, with some exaggeration, to have died in the misfortune of hisseparation from the security and sober tradition of his own walls. Thatgreat early experience of his, which I have already written down--hismeeting with Ronsard--had come to him not far from his own hill, southof the great river. His name, unlike Ronsard's, recalled the gentry ofthat countryside up to and beyond the beginning of its history; alone ofthe Pleiade he translated the valley of the Loire, its depth, itsdelicacy, its rich and subtle loneliness. Again, the Renaissance lived in France an inspired and an exalted life, so that there necessarily ran through it a fore-knowledge of suddenending. This tragedy repeated itself in the career of Du Bellay. His name was famous. The three Du Bellays, the councillor, the soldier, the great Cardinal, were in the first rank of the early sixteenthcentury. Rabelais had loved them. Francis I had leaned upon and rewardedtheir service. His father (their first-cousin and Governor of Brest) wasa poor noble, who, as is the fashion of nobles, had married a wife toconsolidate a fortune. This wife, the mother of Joachim, was heiress tothe house of Tourmélière in Liré, just by the Loire on the brow thatlooks northward over the river to the bridge and Ancenis. In this househe was born. On his parents' early death he inherited the place, not toenjoy it, but to wander. An early illness had made him forsake thecareer of arms for that of the Church; but Orders were hardly so much asa cloak to him; it is difficult to remember, as one reads the fewevidences of his life, that he wore the cloth at all: in his verse alltrace of it is entirely absent. He lived still in that lineage which thereform had not touched. The passionate defence of the Catholic Faith, the Assault converging on the church throughout Europe, the raising ofthe Siege, the Triumph which developed, at last, on the political sidethe League, and on the literary the final rigidity of Malherbe, thenoise of all these had not reached his circle, kind, or family. Of that family the Cardinal seems to have regarded him as the principalsurvivor. He had determined to make of the young poet the heir of itsglory. It came to nothing. He accompanied his relative to Rome: but thediplomacy of the mission ill-suited him. Of the Royal ladies at courtwho befriended him, the marriage of one, the death of another, increased his insecurity. He had inherited, to his bane, anotherestate--Gonor--from his elder brother. It was encumbered, the causelitigious, and he had inherited with it the tutelage of a sickly child. He never shook off the burden. A tragic error marked his end. He died, certainly broken-hearted, just when his powerful cousin, by a conversionperhaps unknown to the poet himself, had rejected calumnies, and haddetermined to resign to him the great Archbishopric of Bordeaux. Eustache Du Bellay, yet another cousin, was Bishop of Paris. He had madeJoachim, on his return from Rome, a Canon of Notre Dame, and in thatcapacity the poet, dying in Paris, was buried in the cathedral. Theaction of the Chapter in the eighteenth century, when they replaced theold tombstones by the present pavement, has destroyed the record of hisgrave; I believe it to lie in the southern part of the ambulatory. In this abrupt descent, following upon so fierce an activity of thought, he prefigured, I say, the close of the Renaissance as his geniustypified its living spirit; for all the while, as you read him, you seethe cloud about his head, and the profound, though proud and constant, sadness of his eyes. This, also, was pure Renaissance in him, that the fields in which hewandered, and which he loved to sing--a man of elegies--were dominatedby the awful ruins of Rome. These it was that lent him his gravity, andperhaps oppressed him. He sang them also with a comprehension of thesuperb. He was second to Ronsard. Though he was the sharp voice of the Pleiade, though it was he who published their famous manifesto, though hisscholarship was harder, though his energy could run more fiercely to onepoint and shine there more brilliantly in one small climax; yet he wassecond. He himself thought it of himself, and called himself a disciple. All up and down his works you find an astonished admiration directedtowards his greater friend-- . .. Un amy que les Dieux Guydent si hault au sentier des plus vieux. Or again-- Divin Ronsard qui de l'arc a sept cordes Tiras premier au but de la mémoire Les traicts ailez de la Françoise gloire. Everywhere it is his friend rather than he that has touched the mark ofthe gods and called up from the tomb the ghost of Rome which all thatcompany worshipped. I say he saw himself that he was second. Old Durat saw it clearly inthat little college of poets where he taught the unteachable thing: DeBaif, Belleau--all the comrades would have taken it for granted. Ronsardled and was chief, because he had the firm largeness, the laughter andthe permanence which are the marks of those who determine the fortunesof the French in letters or in arms. Ronsard made. His verses, in theirgreat mass and unfailing level, were but one example of the power thatcould produce a school, call up a general enthusiasm, and for fortyyears govern the taste of his country. There was in him somethingpublic, in Du Bellay something domestic and attached, as in therelations of a king and of a herald. Or again, the one was like anordered wood with a rich open plain about it, the other was like agarden. Ronsard was the Beauce; Du Bellay was Anjou. It might be said ofthe first that he stood a symbol for the wheat and corn-land of theVendômois, and of the second, that he recalled that subtle wine of thesouthern Loire to which Chinon gives the most famous label. Du Bellay was second: nevertheless, when he is well known in thiscountry it will be difficult to convince Englishmen of that truth. Thereis in his mind a facet which exactly corresponds to a facet of our own, and that is a quality so rare in the French classics that it willnecessarily attract English readers to him: for, of all people, wenowadays criticise most in letters by the standard of our immediateemotions, and least by what was once called "reason. " He was capable ofthat which will always be called "poignancy, " and what for the moment wecall "depth. " He was less careful than are the majority of hiscountrymen to make letters an art, and so to treat his own personalityas a thing apart. On the contrary, he allowed that personality to piercethrough continually, so that simplicity, directness, a certainindividual note as of a human being complaining--a note we know verywell in our own literature--is perpetually discovered. Thus, in a spirit which all Englishmen will understand, a lightnessalmost sardonic lay above the depths of his grief, and the tendernesswhich attached to his home played around the things that go withquietude--his books and animals. I shall quote hereafter the epitaphs hewrote for his dog and for his cat, this singer of sublime and ruinedthings. Of the dog who-- . .. Allait tousjours suivant Quelquefois allait devant. Faisant ne sçay quelle feste D'un gai branslement de teste. and of whom he says, in a pretty imitation of Catullus, that he-- . .. Maintenant pourmeine Parmy cette ombreuse plaine Dont nul ne revient vers nous. Or of the cat who was-- . .. Par aventure Le plus bel oeuvre que nature Fit onc en matière de chats. All that delicate side of him we understand very well. Nor is it to modern Englishmen alone that he will appeal. He powerfullyaffected, it may be presumed, the English Renaissance which succeededhim. Spenser--thirty years after his death--was moved to the translationof his famous lament for Rome, and no one can read the sonnets to whichhe gave their final form without catching the same note in the greatEnglish cycle of the generation after him--the close of the sixteenthand the opening of the seventeenth centuries. But his verse read will prove all this and suggest much more. EXTRACTS FROM THE "ANTIQUITEZ DE ROME. " Of the high series which Rome called forth from Du Bellay during thatbitter diplomatic exile of his, I have chosen these three sonnets, because they seem best to express the majesty and gloom which hauntedhim. It is difficult to choose in a chain of cadences so equal and soexalted, but perhaps the last, "Telle que dans son char laBerecynthienne" is the most marvellous. The vision alone of Rome likethe mother of the Gods in her car would have made the sonnet immortal. He adds to the mere picture a noise of words that is like thunder in thehills far off on summer afternoons: the words roll and crest themselvesand follow rumbling to the end: he could not have known as he wrote ithow great a thing he was writing. It has all the character of verse thatincreases with time and seems superior to its own author's intention. _THE "ANTIQUITEZ DE ROME. "_ III. _Nouveau venu qui cherches Rome en Rome, Et rien de Rome en Rome n'apperçois, Ces vieux palais, ces vieux arcz que tu vois Et ces vieux Murs, c'est ce que Rome on nomme. Voy quel orgueil, quelle ruine, et comme Celle que mist le monde sous ses loix Pour donter tout, se donta quelquefois, Et devint proye au temps, qui tout consomme. _ _Rome de Rome est le seul monument, Et Rome Rome a vaincu seulement. Le Tybre seul, qui vers la mer s'enfuit, Reste de Rome. O mondaine inconstance! Ce qui est ferme, est par le temps destruit, Et se qui fuit, au temps fait résistance. _ IV. _Celle qui de son chef les estoilles passoit, Et d'un pied sur Thetis, l'autre dessous l'Aurore D'une main sur le Scythe, et l'autre sur le More, De la terre, et du Ciel, la rondeur compassoit, Juppiter ayant peur, si plus elle croissoit Que l'orgueil des Geans se relevast encore, L'accabla sous ces monts, ces sept monts qui font ore Tumbeaux de la grandeur qui le ciel menassoit. _ _Il luy meist sur le chef la croppe Saturnale Puis dessus l'estomac assist le quirinale Sur le ventre il planta l'antique Palatin, Mist sur la dextre main la hauteur Celienne, Sur la senestre assist l'eschine Exquilienne Viminal sur un pied: sur l'autre L'Aventin. _ VI. _Telle que dans son Char la Berecynthienne Couronnée de tours, et joyeuse d'avoir Enfanté tant de Dieux, telle se faisoit voir En ses jours plus heureux ceste ville ancienne: Ceste ville qui fust plus que la Phrygienne Foisonnante en enfants et de qui le pouvoir Fust le pouvoir du Monde, et ne se peult revoir Pareille à sa grandeur, grandeur si non la sienne. _ _Rome seule pouvoit à Rome ressembler, Rome seule pouvoit Rome faire trembler: Aussi n'avoit permis l'ordonnance fatale, Qu'autre pouvoir humain, tant fust audacieux, Se vantast d'égaler celle qui fust égale Sa puissance à la terre, et son courage au cieux. _ THE SONNET OF EXILE. This sonnet dates from the same period at Rome, or possibly from hisreturn. It has a different note. It is the most personal and passionateof all his writings, in which so much was inspired by personal regret. On this account it has a special literary interest as the most _modern_thing of the Renaissance. It would be far less surprising to find thiswritten by one of the young republicans under the Second Empire (forinstance) than to find a couplet of Malherbe's straying into our time. _THE SONNET OF EXILE. _ _France, Mère des arts, des armes, et des loix, Tu m'as nourry long temps du laict de ta mamelle: Ores, comme un aigneau qui sa nourisse appelle, Je remplis de ton nom les antres et les bois, Si tu m'as pour enfant advoué quelquefois Que ne me respons-tu maintenant, ô cruelle? France, France, respons à ma triste querelle: Mais nul, sinon Echo, ne respond à ma voix. _ _Entre les loups cruels j'erre parmy la plaine Je sens venir l'hyver, de qui la froide haleine D'une tremblante horreur fait hérisser ma peau. Las! tes autres agneaux n'ont faute de pasture, Ils ne craignent le loup, le vent, ny la froidure; Si ne suis-je pourtant le pire du troppeau. _ THE SONNET "HEUREUX QUI COMME ULYSSE. " (_The 31st of the "Regrets"_). It was of a large gray house, moated, a town beside it, yet not far fromwoods and standing in rough fields, pure Angevin, Tourmélière, the Manorhouse of Liré, his home, that Du Bellay wrote this, the most dignifiedand perhaps the last of his sonnets. The sadness which is the permanent, though sometimes the unrecognized, moderator of his race, which hadpierced through in his latter misfortunes, and which had tortured him tothe cry that has been printed on the preceding page, here reached afinal and a most noble form: something much higher than melancholy, andmore majestic than regret. He turned to his estate, the mould of hisfamily, a roof, the inheritance of which had formed his original burdenand had at last crushed him; but he turned to it with affection. If onemay use so small a word in connection with a great poet, the gentlemanin him remembered an ancestral repose. There is very much in the Sonnet to mark that development of Frenchverse in which Du Bellay played so great a part. The inversion of thesentence, a trick which gives a special character to all the laterformal drama is prominent: the convention of contrast, the purelyclassical allusion, are mixed with a spirit that is still spontaneousand even naïf. But every word is chosen, and it is especially noteworthyto discover so early that restraint in epithet which is the charm butalso the danger of what French style has since become. Of this there aretwo examples here: the eleventh line and the last, which rhymes with it. To contrast slate with marble would be impossible prose save for theexact adjective "_fine_, " which puts you at once into Anjou. The lastline, in spite of its exquisite murmur, would be grotesque if the "_airmarin_" were meant for the sea-shore. Coming as it does after thesuggestions of the Octave it gives you suddenly sea-faring: Ulysses, Jason, his own voyages, the long way to Rome, which he knew; and in the"_douceur Angevine_" you have for a final foil to such wanderings, notonly in the meaning of the words, but in their very sound, the hearthand the return. _THE SONNET "HEUREUX QUI COMME ULYSSE"_ _Heureux qui comme Ulysse a fait un beau voyage Ou comme cestuy là qui conquit la Toison Et puis est retourné, plein d'usage et raison, Vivre entre ses parents le reste de son age! Quand revoirai-je, hélas, de mon petit village Fumer la cheminée: et en quelle saison Revoirai-je le clos de ma pauvre maison, Qui m'est une province, et beaucoup d'avantage?_ _Plus me plaist le séjour qu'ont basty mes aieux Que des palais Romains le front audacieux: Plus que le mabre dur me plaist l'ardoise fine, Plus mon Loyre gaulois que le Tybre Latin, Plus mon petit Lyré que le Mont Palatin, Et plus que l'air marin la doulceur Angevine. _ THE WINNOWER'S HYMN TO THE WINDS. This delicate air of summer, this reminiscence and comfort for men whono longer see the Eure or the Bievre or any of their northern rivers, this very mirror of Du Bellay's own exiled mind--was written for an"exercise. " It is a translation--a translation from the Latin of aforgotten Venetian scholar. When a man finds in reading such a startling truth, it convinces himthat letters have a power of their own and are greater of themselvesthan the things which inspired them: for when, to show his skill inrendering Latin into French verse, Du Bellay had written this down, hecreated and fixed for everybody who was to read him from then onwardsthe permanent picture of a field by the side of a small, full river, with a band of trees far off, and, above, the poplar leaves that arenever still. It runs to a kind of happy croon, and has for a few momentsrestored very many who have read it to their own place; and Corot shouldhave painted it. _THE WINNOWER'S HYMN TO THE WINDS. _ _A vous troppe legere Qui d'aele passagere Par le monde volez, Et d'un sifflant murmure L'ombrageuse verdure Doulcement esbranlez, J'offre ces violettes, Ces lis et ces fleurettes Et ces roses ici, Ces vermeillettes roses Tout freschement escloses, Et ces oeilletz aussi. De vostre doulce haleine Eventez ceste plaine Eventez ce séjour, Ce pendant que j'ahanne A mon blé que je vanne A la chaleur du jour. _ THE FUNERAL ODES OF THE DOG AND THE CAT. Here are extracts from those two delightful and tender things to whichallusion has already been made. The epitaphs upon his little dog and hislittle cat. It was a character in this sad man to make little, humble, grotesque, pleasing images of grief; as it were, little idols of his goddess; andhe fashioned them with an exquisite humour and affection. What animal ofthe sixteenth century lives so clearly as these two? None, I think, except some few in the pictures of the painters of the low countries. I wish I had space to print both these threnodies in full, but they aresomewhat long, and I must beg my reader to find them in the printedworks of Du Bellay. It is well worth the pains of looking. _THE DOG. _ _Dessous ceste motte verte De lis et roses couverte Gist le petit Peloton De qui le poil foleton Frisoit d'une toyson blanche Le doz, le ventre, et la hanche. _ _Son exercice ordinaire Estoit de japper et braire, Courir en hault et en bas, Et faire cent mille esbas, Tous estranges et farouches, Et n'avoit guerre qu'aux mousches, Qui luy faisoient maint torment. Mais Peloton dextrement Leur rendoit bien la pareille: Car se couchant sur l'oreille, Finement il aguignoit Quand quelqu'une le poingnoit: Lors d'une habile soupplesse Happant la mouche traistresse, La serroit bien fort dedans, Faisant accorder ses dens_ _Peloton ne caressoit, Sinon ceulx qu'il cognoissoit, Et n'eust pas voulu repaistre D'autre main que de son maistre, Qu'il alloit tousjours suyvant: Quelquefois marchoit devant, Faisant ne scay quelle feste D'un gay branlement de teste. _ _Mon Dieu, quel plaisir c'estoit, Quand Peloton se grattoit, Faisant tinter sa sonnette Avec sa teste folette! Quel plaisir, quand Peloton Cheminoit sur un baston, Ou coifé d'un petit linge, Assis comme un petit singe, Se tenoit mignardelet, D'un maintien damoiselet!_ _Las, mais ce doulx passetemps Ne nous dura pas long temps: Car la mort ayant anvie Sur l'ayse de nostre vie, Envoya devers Pluton Nostre petit Peloton, Qui maintenant se pourmeine Parmi ceste umbreuse plaine, Dont nul ne revient vers nous. _ _THE CAT_ _Pourquoy je suis tant esperdu Ce n'est pas pour avoir perdu Mes anneaux, mon argent, ma bource: Et pourquoy est ce donc? pource Que j'ay perdu depuis trois jours Mon bien, mon plaisir, mes amours: Et quoy? ô Souvenance greve A peu que le cueur ne me creve Quand j'en parle ou quand j'en ecris: C'est Belaud, mon petit chat gris: Belaud qui fust, paraventure Le plus bel oeuvre que nature Feit onc en matiere de chats: C'etoit Belaud, la mort au rats Belaud dont la beauté fut telle Qu'elle est digne d'estre immortelle. _ _Mon-dieu, quel passetemps c'estoit Quand ce Belaud vire-voltoit Follastre autour d'une pelote! Quel plaisir, quand sa teste sotte Suyvant sa queue en mille tours, D'un rouet imitoit le cours! Ou quand assis sur le derriere Il s'en faisoit une jartiere, Et monstrant l'estomac velu De panne blanche crespelu, _ _Sembloit, tant sa trogne estoit bonne, Quelque docteur de la Sorbonne! Ou quand alors qu'on l'animoit, A coups de patte il escrimoit, Et puis appasoit sa cholere Tout soudain qu'on luy faisoit chere. _ _Belaud estoit mon cher mignon, Belaud estoit mon compagnon A la chambre, au lict, à la table, Belaud estoit plus accointable Que n'est un petit chien friand, Et de nuict n'alloit point criand Comme ces gros marcoux terribles, En longs miaudemens horribles: Aussi le petit mitouard N'entra jamais en matouard: Et en Belaud, quelle disgrâce! De Belaud s'est perdue la race. Que pleust a Dieu, petit Belon, Qui j'eusse l'esprit assez bon, De pouvoir en quelque beau style Blasonner ta grace gentile, D'un vers aussi mignard que toy: Belaud, je te promets ma foy, Que tu vivrois, tant que sur terre Les chats aux rats feront la guerre. _ MALHERBE. The French Renaissance ended in the Classic. The fate of all thatexuberance was to find order, and that chaos of generation settled downto the obedience of unchanging laws. This transition, which fixed, perhaps for ever, the nature of the French tongue, is bound up with thename of Malherbe. When what the French have entitled "the great time, " when the generationof Louis XIV looked back to find an origin for its majestic security inletters, it was in Malherbe that such an origin was discovered; he hadtamed the wildness of the Renaissance, he had bent its vigour to anarrangement and a frame; by him first were explicitly declared thoserules within which all his successors were content to be narrowed. Thedevotion to his memory is nowhere more exalted or more typicallypresented than in the famous cry--_enfin Malherbe vint_. His namecarried with it a note of completion and of an end. When the romantic revival of our own time sought for one mind on whichto lay the burden of its anger, one hard master or pedant who could bemade responsible for the drying up of the wells, Malherbe again wasfound. He became the butt of Hugo's splendid ridicule. He was the god ofplaster that could not hear or speak or feel, but which fools hadworshipped; a god easy to break to pieces. His austerity--for themwithout fullness--his meagre output, his solemn reiterated code of"perfect taste, " moved them to a facile but intense aggression. He itwas that had turned to fossil stone the living matter of the sixteenthcentury: He that had stifled and killed the spirit they attempted torecall. This man so praised, so blamed, for such a quality, was yet exactly, year for year, the contemporary of Shakespeare, born earlier and dyinglater. No better example could be discovered of the contrast between theFrench and English tempers. The Romantics, I say, believed that they had destroyed Malherbe and leftthe Classic a ruined, antiquated thing. They were in error. Victor Hugohimself, the leader, who most believed the classic to have becomeisolated and past, was yet, in spite of himself, constrained by it. Lamartine lived in it. After all the fantastic vagaries of mystics andrealists and the rest, it is ruling to-day with increasing power, returning as indeed the permanent religion, the permanent policy, of thenation are also returning after a century of astounding adventures: forthe Classic has in it something necessary to the character of the Frenchpeople. Consider what the Classic is and why all mighty civilisations havedemanded and obtained some such hard, permanent and, as it were, sacredvehicle for the expression of their maturity. Nations that have a long continuous memory of their own past, nationsespecially whose gods have suffered transformation, but never death, develop the somewhat unelastic wisdom of men in old age. They mistrustthe taste of the moment. They know that things quite fresh and violentseem at first greater than they are: that such enthusiasm forms nolasting legacy for posterity. Their very ancient tradition gives them athirst for whatever shall certainly remain. The rigid Classic satisfiesthat need. Again, you will discover that those whose energy is too abundant seekfor themselves by an instinct the necessary confines without which suchenergy is wasted--and wasted the more from its excess. They canalise fortheir own security a torrent which, undisciplined, would serve but todestroy. Such an instinct is apparent in every department of Frenchlife. To their jurisprudence the French have ever attempted to attach acode, to their politics the stone walls of a Constitution, or, at theleast, of a fundamental theory. Their theology from Athanasius throughSt. Germanus to the modern strict defence against all "liberals" hasglorified the unchanging. Every outburst of the interior fires in thehistory of Gaul has been followed by a rapid, plastic action whichreduced to human use what might otherwise have crystallised into anamorphous lava. So the wild freedom of the twelfth century was capturedto form the Monarchy, the University, the full Gothic of the thirteenth:so the Revolution permitted Napoleon and produced, not the visionaryunstable grandeur of the Gironde, but the schools and laws and roads andset government we see to-day. So the spring storms of the Renaissancesettled, I say, into that steady summer of stable form which has now forthree hundred years dominated the literature of the country. Caught on with this aspect of energy producing the Classic is the truththat energy alone can dare to be classical. Where the great currents ofthe soul run feebly a perpetual acceleration, whether by novelty or byextravagance, will be demanded; where they run full and heavy, then, under the restraint of form, they will but run more proudly and morestrong. It is the flickering of life that fears hard rules in verse andmay not feel the level classics of our Europe. Their rigidity is notthat of marble; they are not dead. A human acquaintance with theirsobriety soon fills us as we read. If we lie in the way of the giantswho conceived them (let me say Corneille or the great Dryden), re-reading and further knowledge--especially a deeper experience ofcommon life about us--reveal to us the steadfast life of these images;the eyes open, the lips might almost move; the statue descends andlives. The man who imposed design and authority and unity upon the letters ofhis country, and who so closed the epoch with which I have been dealing, was singularly suited to his task. Observant, something of a stoic, uninspired; courageous, witty, a soldier; lucid, critical of methodonly, he corresponded to the movement which, all around him, wasushering in the Bourbons: the hardening of Goujon's and de l'Orme'sluxuriance into the conventions of the great colonnades and the sombreimmensity of the new palaces; the return of one national faith to apeople weary of so many random quarrels; the mistrust of an ill-orderedsquirearchy; the firm founding of a central government. He was Norman. Right of that north whence the vigour, though not theinspiration, of the Renaissance had proceeded, and into which itreturned. Caen gave him birth, and still remembers him. Normans stilledit his works--and dedicate these books to the town which also bredCorneille. Norman, learned with that restrained but vigorous learning ofthe province, he was also of the province in his blood, for he came ofone of those fixed families whose heads held great estates all roundFalaise, and whose cadets branched off into chances abroad: one of theBoughtons, in Kent, is still "Boughton Malherbe[1]. " [Footnote 1: Not from the Conquest. It is near Charing, originally deBraose land, but an heiress married a Malherbe in the early twelfthcentury. ] He was poor. His father, who held one of those magistracies which thesmaller nobility bought or inherited, had not known where to turn in theturmoil of the central century. In a moment of distress he calledhimself Huguenot when that party seemed to triumph, and Malherbe inanger against the apostasy went down south, a boy of nineteen, andfought as a soldier--but chiefly duels; for he loved that sport. He layunder a kind of protection from the great Catholic houses, though stillpoor, till in 1601--he was a man of forty-six--Henri IV heard of him. Inall these years he had worked at the rule of poetry like an artisan, thinking of nothing else, not even of fame. Those who surrounded himtook it for granted that he was a master critic--a sort of judge withoutappeal, but it was a very little provincial circle surrounding a veryunimportant house in Provence. Thus, careless it seems of everythingexcept that "form of language" which was with him a passion, like theacademic or theological passions, he was astonished on coming to Parisin 1605 to discover how suited such a pre-occupation was to such a time, and how rapidly he became the first name in contemporary letters. Of menwho poured out verse the age was satiated; of men who could seize thelanguage at this turn in its fortune, fix it and give it rules, the agehad no knowledge till he came: the age fastened upon him, and insistedupon making him a master. A full twenty years from 1607 he governed the transformation, not ofthought, for that he little changed, but of method and of expression. Hedecided what should be called the typical metres, the alternative offeminine and masculine in verse, the order of emphasis, the proportionof inversion tolerable, the propriety, the modernity, the archaism ofwords. It is a function to our time meaningless and futile: to such aperiod as that, indispensable and even noble. He interpreted andpublished the national sentiment upon this major thing, the architectureof letters. The power of his mind, tortured and insufficient in actualproduction, was supreme in putting forth clearly and finally thatcriticism which ran as an unspoken and obscure current of opinion in themind of his age. This was his glory, and it was true. His dryness was extraordinary. In a life of seventy-two years, duringwhich he wrote and erased incessantly, he, the poet, wrote just so muchverse as will fill in large type a little pocket volume of 250 pages; tobe accurate, forty-three lines a year. Of this scraping and pumice stonein the mind a better example than his verse is to be found in hisletters. A number remain. They might seem to be written by two differentmen! Half a dozen are models of that language he adored--they cost him, to our knowledge, many days--the rest are slipshod notes that any manmight write, for he thought they would not survive, and, indeed, themajority of his editors have had the piety to suppress them. No one will understand Malherbe who only hears of how, like a dustyworkman, he cut and polished, and so fixed the new jewel of letters. Inour less happy age the academic spirit is necessarily associated with alethargic stupidity. In his it was not so. His force, by which this workwas carried through, lay in a character of penetration. His faceexpresses it. His very keen and ready eyes, his high lifted brow, hissharp nose, and the few active lines of his cheek and forehead, thepoise of his head, the disdain of his firm mouth, all build him backalive for us. His talk, which stammered in its volubility, was incessantand varied; his temper ready; his bodily command of gesture anddefinition perfect in old age: he was of good metal all those years. Of his intense Toryism, his vivacity, his love of arms, his tenacity ofperception, Racan gives us in his biography an admirable picture. Justbefore he died his son was killed in a duel--he, at seventy-two, desiredpassionately to kill the adversary. "Gambling, " he said, "my pence oflife against the gold of his twenty-five years. " He had wit, and hehated well--hating men after death: Here richly with ridiculous display Killed by excess was Wormwood laid away, While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged, I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged. His zeal for his tongue was real. As he lay upon his death-bed makinghis confession after so vigorous a life, he heard his nurse saysomething to herself which sounded ungrammatical and, turning round fromthe priest, he put her right in a manner most violent and sudden. Hisconfessor, startled, said: "The time is not relevant". "All times arerelevant!" he answered, sinking back. "I will defend with my last breaththe purity and grandeur of the French tongue. " To such a man the meaning of the solution at which his people hadarrived after a century of civil war lay, above all, in their ancientreligion. On that converged those deeper and more permanent things inhis soul of which even his patriotism and his literary zeal were but thesurface. In the expression of that final solution his verse, which washardly that of a poet, rises high into poetry; under the heat andpressure of his faith, single lines here and there have crystallizedinto diamonds. By far the most vigorous of so many frigid odes is thebattle cry addressed by him in old age to Louis XIII setting out againstLa Rochelle. He visited that siege, but had the misfortune to die a bareweek before the fall of the city. The most powerful of his sonnets, orrather the only powerful one, is that in which he calls to Our Lord forvengeance against the men who killed his son. Catholicism in its everyeffect, political and personal, as it were literary too, possessed theman, so that in ending the types of the French Renaissance with him yousee how the terms in which ultimately the French express themselves areand will remain religious. The last two lines of his most famous andmost Catholic poem have about them just that sound which saves them, inspite of their too simple words, from falling into the vulgarcommonplace of vague and creedless men. In writing them down one seemsto be writing down the fate of the great century now tamed, alas! andordered, as must be the violence of over-human things:-- Vouloir ce que Dieu veut est la seule Science Qui nous met en repos. EXTRACTS. (_From the "Ode to Louis XIII setting out against La Rochelle, " and the "Sonnet on his son's death. "_) It has been remarked that Malherbe in his most vigorous yearsdeliberately employed the strength of his mind to the repression ofemotion in his verse, and used it only to fashion, guide, control, andat last fix permanently the rules of the language. It is certainly truethat as his bodily vigour declined, a certain unexpected anger andviolence enters into his verse, to the great relief of us moderns: notto that of his contemporaries. Of this feature in him, the two following extracts are sufficient proof. They were written, the first at the close of his seventy-second, theother at the entry of his seventy-third year. In each, something closeto his heart was at issue, and in each he gives some vent--far more thanhad been his wont--to passion. The first is a cry to Louis XIII to have done with the Huguenot. It waswritten to the camp before La Rochelle. I know of nothing in Frenchliterature which more expresses the intense current of national feelingagainst the nobility and rich townsmen who had attempted to warp thenational tradition and who had re-introduced into French life theelement which France works perpetually to throw out as un-European, ill-cultured and evil. Indeed, the reading of it is of more value to thecomprehension of the national attitude than any set history you mayread. The second is in its way a thing equally religious and equally catholic. This call for vengeance to God was not only an expression of angercalled forth by his son's death, it was also, and very largely, theeffect of a reaction against the ethics of Geneva: an attack on theidolatry at once of meekness and of fatality which was to him sointolerable a corruption of the Christian religion. There is some doubt as to whether it is his last work. I believe it tobe so; but Blaise, in his excellent edition, prints the dull andunreadable ode to Lagade later, and ascribes it to the same year. _ODE TO LOUIS XIII. _ _Fais choir en sacrifice au démon de la France Les fronts trop élevés de ces ames d'enfer; Et n'épargne contre eux, pour notre délivrance, Ni le feu ni le fer. Assez de leurs complots l'infidèle malice A nourri le désordre et la sédition: Quitte le nom de Juste, ou fais voir ta justice En leur punition. Le centième décembre a les plaines ternies, Et le centième avril les a peintes de fleurs, Depuis que parmi nous leurs brutales manies Ne causent que des pleurs. Dans toutes les fureurs des siècles de tes pères, Les monstres les plus noirs firent-ils jamais rien Que l'inhumanité de ces coeurs de vipères Ne renouvelle au tien? Par qui sont aujourd'hui tant de villes désertes, Tant de grands bâtiments en masures changes, Et de tant de chardons les campagnes couvertes, Que par ces enrages? Marche, va les détruire, éteins-en la semence, Et suis jusqu'à leur fin ton courroux généreux, Sans jamais écouter ni pitié ni clémence Qui te parle pour eux. Toutes les autres morts n'ont mérite ni marque; Celle-ci porte seule un éclat radieux, Qui fait revivre l'homme, et le met de la barque A la table des dieux. _ _SONNET ON HIS SON'S DEATH. _ _Que mon fils ait perdu sa dépouille mortelle, Ce fils qui fut si brave, et que j'aimai si fort, Je ne l'impute point à l'injure du sort, Puis que finir à l'homme est chose naturelle. Mais que de deux marauds la surprise infidèle Ait terminé ses jours d'une tragique mort, En cela ma douleur n'a point de réconfort, Et tous mes sentiments sont d'accord avec elle. O mon Dieu, mon Sauveur, puisque, par la raison, Le trouble de mon ame étant sans guérison, Le voeu de la vengeance est un voeu légitime, Fais que de ton appui je sois fortifié; Ta justice t'en prie, et les auteurs du crime Sont fils de ces bourreaux qui t'ont crucifié. _ EXTRACTS FROM THE "CONSOLATION OF DU PERRIER. " These stanzas, which are among the best-known as they are, in theopinion of many, the dullest, in French literature, serve well to closethis book. One verse at least (the fourth) is most legitimately famous, though itis hackneyed from the constant repetition of fools. For the rest acertain simplicity, a great precision, may or may not atone for theirdeliberate coldness. What is certain is that, poetry or not, they admirably express thespirit of his pen and its prodigious effect. They express the classicalend of the French Renaissance with as much weight and hardness as thegreat blank walls of stone that were beginning to show in the rebuildingof Paris. It is for this quality that I have printed them here, usingthem as the definite term of that long, glorious, and uncertain phase inEuropean letters. _THE "CONSOLATION OF DU PERRIER. "_ _Ta douleur, du Perrier, sera donc éternelle? Et les tristes discours Que te met en l'esprit l'amitié paternelle L'augmenteront toujours?_ _Le malheur de ta fille au tombeau descendue Par un commun trépas, Est-ce quelque dédale où ta raison perdue Ne se retrouve pas?_ _Je sais de quels appas son enfance étoit pleine, Et n'ai pas entrepris, Injurieux ami, de soulager ta peine Avecque son mépris. _ _Mais elle étoit du monde, où les plus belles choses Ont le pire destin; Et rose elle a vécu ce que vivent les roses L'espace d'un matin. _ _Puis quand ainsi seroit que, selon ta prière, Elle auroit obtenu D'avoir en cheveux blancs terminé sa carrière, Qu'en fût-il avenu?_ _Penses-tu que, plus vieille, en la maison céleste Elle eût eu plus d'accueil, Ou qu'elle eût moins senti la poussière funeste Et les vers du cercueil?_ _De moi, déja deux fois d'une pareille foudre Je me suis vu perclus; Et deux fois la raison m'a si bien fait résoudre, Qu'il ne m'en souvient plus. _ _Non qu'il ne me soit mal que la tombe posséde Ce qui me fut si cher; Mais en un accident qui n'a point de reméde, Il n'en faut point chercher. _ _La Mort a des rigueurs à nulle autre pareilles: On a beau la prier; La cruelle qu'elle est se bouche les oreilles, Et nous laisse crier. _ _Le pauvre en sa cabane, où le chaume le couvre, Est sujet à ses lois; Et la garde qui veille aux barrières du Louvre N'en défend point nos rois. _ _De murmurer contre elle et perdre patience, Il est mal à propos; Vouloir ce que Dieu veut est la seule science Qui nous met en repos. _ "_Vouloir ce que Dieu veut est la seule science Qui nous met en repos. _" NOTES. CHARLES OF ORLEANS. THE COMPLAINT. Line 5. _Prins. _ An inaccurate pedantic past participle of _prendre_. Line 14. _Faulse. _ There is to be noted here and elsewhere throughoutthese extracts, until the modern spelling at the close of the period, the redundant "l" in many words. It was an effect of pure pedantry. Thelatin "l" had become _u_ in northern French. _Falsa_ made, naturally, "Fausse. " The partial learning of the later middle ages reintroduced an"l" which was not known to be transformed, but was thought omitted. Line 24. _Liesse. _ One of the commonest words of this epoch, lost tomodern French. It means joy=_laetitia_. Line 25. Note the gender of "Amour, " feminine even in the singularthroughout the middle ages and renaissance--right up to the seventeenthcentury. THE TWO ROUNDELS OF SPRING. I Line 1. _Fourriers. _ The servants who go before to find lodging. Theterm survives in French military terminology. The _Fourriers_ are thenon-commissioned officers and party who go forward and mark theBilleting of a regiment. Line 9. _Pieça=il y a pièce_; "lately". _Cf. _ _naguère_="_il n'y aguère. .. . "_ Line 11. _Prenez pais_="take the fields, " begone. Line 19. Note "_Chant_, " the regular form of the subjunctive=_Cantet_. The only latin vowel preserved after the tonic syllable is a=French e(mute). Thus _contat_="chante" which form has in modern French usurpedthe subjunctive. Line 23. _Livrée_="Liberata, " _i. E. _, things given out. A termoriginally applied not only to clothing, but to the general allowance ofthe king's household. Hence our word "livery. " THE FAREWELL. Line 2. _Chiere lie. _ "Happy countenance. " _Chiere_ here is thesubstantive, _lie_=_laeta_, is the adjective. _Bonne chère_ means "agood time" where _chère_ is an old word for "head" (Greek: kara). Line 5. _Baillie_=Bailliwick, "For Age that has me now within herbounds. " Line 7. _Mye. _ "Crumb". "I am not a whit (not a crumb) with her (_Joie_)to-day. " Line 15. "Well braced, " literally "well girthed" (as a horse is). VILLON. THE DEAD LADIES. Stanza 1, line 1. Note the redundant negative; it is characteristic ofmediaeval French, as of all primitive work, that the general suggestionof doubt is sufficient to justify a redundant negative. Line 2. _Flora_, etc. It is worth while knowing who these women were. _Flora_ is Juvenal's Flora (Sat. II. 9), a legend in the university. Of_Archipiada_ I know nothing. _Thaïs_ was certainly the Egyptiancourtesan turned anchoress and canonized, famous in the middle ages andrevived to-day in the repulsive masterpiece of M. Anatole France. _Elois_ is, of course, _Heloïse_, and _Esbaillart_ is Abelard. Thequeen, who in the legend had Buridan (and many others) drowned, was theDowager of Burgundy that lived in the Tour de Nesle, where the PalaisMazarin is now, and had half the university for a lover: in soberhistory she founded that college of Burgundy from which the École deMédecine is descended; the legend about her is first heard of (save inthis poem) in 1471, from the pen of a German in Leipzig. _Blanche_ maybe Blanche of Castille, but more likely she was a vision of Villon'sown, for what did St. Louis' mother ever sing? _Berte_ is the legendarymother of Charlemagne in the Epics; _Beatris_ is any Beatrice youchoose, for they have all died. _Allis_ may just possibly be one of theTroubadour heroines, more likely she is here introduced for rhyme andmetre; _Haremburgis_ is strictly historical: she was the Heiress ofMaine who married Foulque of Anjou in 1110 and died in 1126: anancestress, therefore, of the Plantagenets. _Jehanne_ is, of course, Joan of Arc. Line 8. _D'Antan_ is _not_ "Yester-year. " It is "Ante annum, " all timepast before _this_ year. Rossetti's "Yester-year" moreover, is an absurdand affected neologism; "Antan" is an excellent and living French word. Stanza II, line 2. Note the pronunciation of "Moyne" to rhyme (more orless) with "eine": the oi, ai and ei sounds were very similar till thesixteenth century at earliest. They are interchangeable in many popularprovincialisms and in some words, _e. G. _, Fouet, pronounced "Foit" thesame tendency survives. The transition began in the beginning of theseventeenth century as we learn from Vaugelas: and the influence towardsthe modern sound came from the Court. Stanza III, line 2. _Seraine_="Syren. " Line 5. "_Jehanne_", "_Jehan_", in spite of the classical survival intheir spelling, were monosyllables from the earliest times. Line 7. The "_elles_" here would not scan but for the elided "e" in"_souv'raine_" at the end of the line. In some editions "_ils_" is foundand _souveraine_ is spelt normally. _Ils_ and _els_ for a feminineplural existed in the middle ages. _Envoi. _ The envoi needs careful translation. The "que" of the thirdline="sans que" and the whole means, "Do not ask this week or this yearwhere they are, _without_ letting this refrain haunt you". "Que" mightpossibly mean "de peur que", did not the whole sense of the poem forbidsuch an interpretation. AN EXCERPT FROM THE GRANT TESTAMENT. Stanza 75, line 4. A charming example of those "flashes" which revealVillon. Stanza 76, line 2. Note the spelling of _Grant_ in the feminine withoutan _e_. Adjectives of the third declension whose feminine was notdistinguishable in Latin took no "e" in early French. A survival of thisis found in grand' rue, grand' messe, etc. Line 5. _Grant erre_, "quickly", and the whole line reads: "Let it (mybody) be delivered to it (luy=la terre) quickly, " the "erre" here isfrom the popular late Latin "_iterare_"="_iter facere_". It survives inthe nautical idiom "reprendre son erre"="to get under weigh again. " Line 7. "_Erre_" here comes, on the contrary, from _errare_, to make amistake, to err. Stanza 77, line 4. _Maillon. _ Swaddling clothes. Line 5. _Boullon_, scrape. The two lines are obscure but seem to read:"He has got me out of many a scrape which gave him no joy" (_esioye_from _esjouir_=_rejouir_). Line 7 and 8. These are obscure but apparently="And beseech him on myknees not to forsake all joy on that account. " Stanza 78, line 2. "_Le Romman du Pet au Deable_. " The Pet au Deable wasa great stone at the door of a private house in the university. Thestudents took it away and all Paris fought over the matter. The "Roman"was a set of verses, now lost, which Villon wrote on the quarrel. Line 3. _Guy Tabarie_ who _grossa_ (wrote out), these verses was afriend of Villon's: soon hanged. Line 5. _Soubz. _ The "b" is pedantic, the _ou_ indicates of itself theloss of the _b_. The "z" (and the "s" in the modern _sous_) are due tothe derivation not from _sub_ but _subtus_. THE BALLAD OF OUR LADY. Stanza 2, line 3. _Egypcienne. _ St. Mary of Egypt. Line 4. _Theophilus. _ This was that clerk who sold his soul to the Deviland whom Our Lady redeemed. You may find the whole story sculptured onthe Tympanum of the exquisite northern door of Notre Dame in Paris. Line 8. _Vierge Portant_="Virgin that bore a son". Stanza 3, line 4. _Luz_="luthus". "S" becomes "z. " The Envoi. Note the Acrostic "Villon" in the first letters of the firstsix lines. It is a trick he played more than once. THE DEAD LORDS. Stanza 1, line 1. _Calixte. _ These names are of less interest. _Calixte_was Pope Calixtus III, Alphonso Borgia, who died in 1458--in Villon'stwenty-sixth year. _Alphonse_ is Alphonso V of Arragon, who died in thatsame year. The _Duc de Bourbon_ is Charles the First of Bourbon, whodied at the end of the year 1456, "gracieux" because his son protectedVillon. _Artus_ (Arthur) of Brittany is that same Richemont whorecaptured Paris from Willoughby. Charles VII is Charles VII. The _RoyScotiste_ is James II, who died in 1460: the _Amethyst_ half of hisface was a birthmark. The _King of Cyprus_ is probably John III, whodied in that same fatal year, 1458. Pedants will have it that the _Kingof Spain_ is John II of Castille, who died in 1454--but it is a betterjoke if it means nobody at all. _Lancelot_ is Vladislas of Bohemia, whodied in 1457. _Cloquin_ is Bertrand de Guesclin who led the reconquest. _The Count Daulphin_ of Auvergne is doubtful; _Alençon_ is presumablythe Alençon of Joan of Arc's campaign, who still survived, and is called"feu" half in ridicule, because in 1458 he had lost his title and landsfor treason. Stanza 2, line 3. _Amatiste_=amethyst. Stanza 3, line 7. _Tayon_=Ancestor. "_Etallum. _" Latin "_Stallio_. " THE DIRGE. Line 1. _Cil_=celui-ci. The Latin "_ecce illum_. " Line 3. _Escuelle_=bowl. "With neither bowl nor platter. " Line 4. Note again the constant redundant negative of the populace inthis scholar: "Had never, no--not a sprig of parsley. " Line 5. _Rez_=ras, cropped. MAROT. OF COURTING LONG AGO. Line 5. _On se prenoit_, one attacked--"it was but the heart onesought. " Line 11. _Fainctz_=sham; "_changes_" is simply like the English"changes": the form survives in the idiom: "donner le change. " Line 13. _Refonde_=recast. NOËL. Verse 1, line 3. _L'Autre hyer_=alterum heri, "t'other day. " Line 10. _Noé. _ The tendency to drop final letters, especially the _l_, is very marked in popular patois, and this is, of course, a song basedon popular language. Most French peasants north of the Loire would stillsay "Noé" for "Noël. " _Noël_ is, of course, _Natalem_ (diem). Verse 2, line 2. _Cas de si hault faict_=so great a matter. TWO EPIGRAMS. Epigram 1, line 2. _Vostre. _ Marguerite of Navarre. As Ihave remarked, in the text, she had sent him a Dixaine (some say hewrote it himself). This one is written in answer. --_Ay. _ Note, till theverb grew over simple in the classical French of the seventeenth centurythere was no more need for the pronoun than in Latin. Thus Montaignewill omit the pronoun, but Malherbe never. Line 5. _Cuydans_=thinking (_Cogitare_=_Cogtare_=_Coyde_=_cuider_, the_oi_ became _ui_ by a common transition; _cf. _ noctem, octem, noit, nuit, huit. ) The word is now archaic. Line 9. _Encor. _ Without the final e. This is not archaic but poeticlicence. _Encore_="hanc horam, " and a post tonic "am" in Latin alwaysmeans a final mute e in French. Epigram 2, line 1. _Maint_ (now archaic) is a word of Teutonic origin, our _many_. Line 6. _Coulpe_=Culpam, of course; a fault. Line 9. _Emport_. Note the old subjunctive without the final e. _Videsupra_, on "_Chant_. " The modern usage is incorrect. For the firstconjugation making its subjunctive in _em_, should lose the finalsyllable in French: a post tonic _em_ always disappears. The modernhabit of putting a final e to all subjunctives is due to a false analogywith verbs from the third conjugation. These made their subjunctive in_am_, a termination which properly becomes the mute e of French. TO HIS LADY IN SICKNESS. Line 4. _Sejour_=(here) "staying at home. " Line 14, 15. _Friande de la bouche_, glutton. Line 17. _Danger. _ The first meaning of "Danger" is simply "to be inlordship" (Dominicarium). The modern is the English "Danger. " This isbetween the two; "held to your hurt. " Line 26. _Doint. _ This subjunctive should properly be _don_ (_donem_, post tonic _em_ is lost). The "oint" is from a false analogy with thefourth conjugation, as though the Latin had been _doniam_. THE VINEYARD SONG. Verse 1, line 2. _Clamours. _ See how southern this is, with itsLanquedoc forms, "clamours" for "_clameurs_. " Line 5. So are these diminutions all made up at random, as southern ascan be, and note the tang of the verse, fit for a snapping of thefingers to mark the rapid time. Verse 3, line 2. _Bénistre. _ The older form of _bénir_ from_Benedicere_; the _c_ between vowels at the end of the tonic syllablebecomes _s_: the _t_ is added for euphony, to help one to pronounce the_s_. Line 3. _Silenus_ for _Silène_. Because the name was new, the Latin formis kept. The genius of the French, unlike that of modern English, is toabsorb a foreign name (as we did once). Thus once we said "Anthony""Tully": but Montaigne wrote "Cicero"--his descendants say "Ciceron. " Line 4. _Aussi droict qu'une ligne_="right out of the flask. " The flaskheld above one and the wine poured straight into the mouth. The happysouth still know the way. Line 5. _Bigne_: a lump, a knock, a bruise. Line 6. _Guigne_=cherry. RONSARD. DIALOGUE WITH THE NINE SISTERS. Stanza 1, line 3. _Chef grison_=gray head. When he says "trente ans, "that is all rubbish, he was getting on for forty-three: it was writtenin 1567. Stanza 2, line 1. _Nocher_=pilot; rare but hardly archaic. Stanza 3, line 3. _Cependant_=meanwhile. The word is now seldom used inprose, save in the sense of "notwithstanding", "nevertheless". Stanza 5, line 1. _Loyer_=Condition of tenure. Line 2. _Ores_=Now that. Should be "_ore_" (horam). The parasitic "s"probably crept in by false analogy with the adverbs in "s. " Stanza 6, line 1. _Lame_=tombstone. The word is no longer used. Line 4. See how, even in his lighter or prosaic manner, he cannot avoidgreat lines. Stanza 8, line 1. _Vela_=Voilà. Then follows that fine ending which Ihave put on the title-page of this book. "MIGNONNE ALLONS VOIR SI LA ROSE. " Line 1. _Mignonne_ is, of course, his Cassandre: her personality wasalways known through his own verse. She was fifteen when he met her andher brown eyes: it was in 1546 at Blois, her birthplace, whither he hadgone to visit the Court, during his scholar's life in Paris. He met herthus young when he himself was but in his twenty-third year, and allthat early, violent, not over-tilled beginning of his poetry wasillumined by her face. But as to who she was, by name I mean, remainedlong a matter of doubt. Binet would have it that her true name wasCassandre, and that its singularity inspired Ronsard. Brantôme called it"a false name to cover a true. " Ronsard himself has written, "false ortrue, time conquering all things cannot efface it from the marble. "There need have been no doubt. D'Aubigné's testimony is sufficient. Shewas a Mlle de Pie, and such was the vagary of Ronsard's life, that itwas her niece, Diane Salviati de Taley whom in later life he espousedand nearly wed. Line 3. Note _Pourpre_, and in line 5 _Pourprée_ so in line 9 _Beautez_, and in the last line _Beauté_: so little did he fear repetition and soheartily could his power carry it. Line 4. _A point_: the language was still in flux. The phrase wouldrequire a negative _n'_ in modern French. Line 10, 11. _Marastre. .. Puisqu'une. .. _ There is here an ellipticalconstruction never found in later French. Harsh stepmother nature (whomI call harsh) since. .. Etc. SONNETS FOR HÉLÈNE. Sonnet XLII, line 1. _Ocieuse_="otiosa, " langorous. Line 5. _Ennuy_, in the sixteenth century meant something fuller than, and somewhat different from the word "ennui" to-day. It was a wearinesswhich had in it some permanent chagrin. Line 8. _Pipe_, "cajoles": a word which (now that it is unusual) marsthe effect of its meaning by its insignificant sound. Lines 8 and 9. Note _ioye_, _vraye_, a feminine "e" following anothervowel is, since Malherbe, forbidden in the interior of a verse, unlesselided. Line 11. _Ton mort_, "your ghost. " Sonnet XLIII, line 6. _Desia_=dejà. Line 7. _De mon nom. _ I have printed the line thus because Ronsardhimself wished it so, and so corrected it with his own hand. But theoriginal form is far finer "_Au bruit de Ronsard. _" DU BELLAY. THE SONNET "HEUREUX QUI COMME ULYSSE. " Line 3. _Usage. _ A most powerful word in this slightly archaic sense:the experience of long travel: familiar knowledge of things seen. Line 12. _Loire. _ This word has puzzled more than one editor. There aretwo rivers: the great river Loire, which is feminine, and the littleLoir, which is masculine. Here Du Bellay spells the name of the greatriver, but puts it in the masculine gender. It has been imagined that hewas talking of the smaller river. But he was not. The Loire alone hasany connection with Liré or with his life, and as for the gender, strained as the interpretation may seem, I believe that Du Bellaydeliberately used it in the parallel with the Tiber and the idea of the"Fleuve Paternel, " to which he alludes so often elsewhere. Line 13. _Lyré. _ The modern Liré, his birthplace, on the left bank ofthe Loire, just opposite Ancenis. As you go along the Poitiers road tothe bridge it stands up on your right, just before the river. THE DOG. Line 1. _Motte_=a turf. Line 40. _Damoiselet. _ Still used more or less in its old sense of ayoung man _armed_: not merely a young page or a cadet of thegentry, ="like a little sentry. " Line 43. _Anvie_=(of course) "envie. " THE CAT. Line 22. _Rouët_=spinning-wheel. Line 26. _Panne_=the Italian _Panno_--cloth. Line 27. _Troigne_=the mouth and face of an animal, the muzzle. Line 32. _Chere_=(originally) "head" and one of the few old French wordsderived from Greek, but the first signification has long been lost. Herethe phrase is equivalent to "faire bonne chere" which has for centuriesbeen used proverbially for what we call "a good time. " _V. Supra_ in"The Farewell" of Charles of Orleans. MALHERBE. EXTRACTS FROM THE "ODE TO LOUIS XIII. " Stanza 3, line 1. _Centième. _ He dates the Huguenot trouble from acentury. It may be said to have originated in the placards threateningthe defilement of the Sacrament, placards which appeared in the streetsof Paris in 1525. Stanza 2, line 3. _Le nom de Juste. _ Louis XIII had no particularaffectation of that title: it is rather a reminiscence of his distantcollatoral and namesake who closed the fifteenth century. Last stanza, line 1. _Toutes les autres morts. _ He has just beenspeaking of death in battle against the factions. SONNET ON HIS SON'S DEATH. Line 1. _Mon fils. _ The only survivor of his many children, a young man, just called to the bar at Aix and passionately loved by his father, hebore the curious name of Marc-Anthony. A M. De Piles killed him in aduel, having for second his brother-in-law. The whole was an honourablebit of business, and the death such as men of honour must be prepared torisk: but Malherbe would see no reason and defamed the adversary. Line 9. _La Raison. _ The idea runs all through Malherbe's work. It ishis distinguishing note, and is the spirit which differentiates him sopowerfully from the sixteenth century, that this stoical balance orregulator which he calls "La Raison, " and which governed France for twohundred years, is his rule and text for verse and prose as well as forpractical life. Even the grandeur to which it gave rise seemed to himaccidental. He demanded "la raison" only, and felt the necessity of itin art as acutely as though its absence were something immoral. EXTRACTS FROM THE "CONSOLATION OF DU PERRIER. " Stanza 1, line 1. _Duperrier. _ A critic of sorts and a gentleman, livingin Provence and perhaps of Provençal ancestry. The verses were writtenwhile Malherbe's fame was still local, two years before the king's visithad lifted him to Paris. Stanza 2, line 2. _Ta fille. _ The child Marguerite. Her name does notappear in the poem nor in any letter; we have it from Racan. Stanza 10, line 3. _Et la garde, etc. _ These two lines are quoted, sometimes, not often, by admirers who would prove that Malherbe was notincapable of colour or of warmth.