A Short History of French Literature
by a little, to give himself up to study under Daurat. His prose
manifesto has already been dealt with, and almost immediately afterwards
he in some sort anticipated Ronsard's poetical carrying out of his
principles by a volume of _Sonnets to Olive_, the anagram of a certain
Mademoiselle de Viole. The sonnet, however, was not such an absolute
novelty as the ode, having been introduced already by Mellin de Saint
Gelais. Shortly afterwards he went to Italy with the Cardinal du Bellay,
a proceeding which did not bring him good luck. The intriguing diplomacy
of the papal court displeased him, and he soon lost his cousin's favour.
A volume of sonnets entitled _Regrets_, full of vigour and poetry, dates
from this time. But Du Bellay, deprived of the protection of the most
powerful member of his family, again fell into difficulties, and finally
died in 1560 at the age of thirty-five. His Roman sojourn has given
birth to perhaps the finest of his works, _Les Antiquites de Rome_,
Englished by Spenser under the slightly altered title of 'The Ruins of
Rome.' Du Bellay's works are not extensive, and indeed they could hardly
be so, considering the shortness of his life and the interruptions of
business and study which even that short life underwent. But he is
undoubtedly the member of the group whose work keeps at the highest
level. Nor is his excellence limited to one or two tones. For grace and
simplicity his _Vanneur_, his _Epitaphe d'un Chat_, and several others
of his _Jeux Rustiques_ challenge comparison. He had a strong vein of
satire, which he showed in denouncing fawning poetasters as well as the
corrupt and intriguing hangers on of the Papal court. His sonnets to
Olive have the finest flavour of the peculiarly cultivated and graceful
voluptuousness which has been noted as one of the distinguishing marks
of the French Renaissance. His _Antiquites de Rome_ exhibit even more
strongly another of those distinguishing marks, the melancholy sense of
death, destruction, and nothingness; indeed, as the _Heptameron_ is the
typical prose work of this period, so Du Bellay's poems may be taken as
its typical poetry. He has been called the Apollo of the Pleiade, but he
should with justice be called its Mercury as well, for, as he was
perhaps its best poet, so he was certainly its best prose writer. It is
unlucky that he was less favoured by fate and fortune than any other of
the greater writers of the century.
[Sidenote: Belleau.]
The position of best poet of the Pleiade--Ronsard, the greatest, having
mingled a good deal of alloy with his gold--has been sometimes disputed
for Remy Belleau[196]. It is certain that his 'Avril' holds with Du
Bellay's 'Vanneur' and Ronsard's already-mentioned 'Quand vous serez
bien vieille,' the rank of the best known and best liked poems of the
school. Belleau, whose life was extremely uneventful, was born at
Nogent-le-Rotrou in 1528, and was attached during nearly the whole of
his life to the household of Remy de Lorraine, Marquis d'Elbeuf, and his
son Charles, Duc d'Elbeuf, whose education he superintended and in whose
house he spent his days. He died in 1577 and received an elaborate
funeral, being carried to the grave by his brother stars, Ronsard and
Baif, and by two of the younger disciples of the Pleiade, Desportes and
Jamyn. Belleau was the chief purely descriptive poet and the chief
poetical translator of the Pleiade. He began by a collection of poems
entitled _Petites Inventions_ (short descriptive pieces), and by a
translation of Anacreon. In 1565 a more ambitious work, the _Bergerie_,
made its appearance. This is a mixture of prose and poetry, describing
country life and its attractions. It is in this that the famous 'Avril'
occurs, and there are other detached pieces not much inferior. In 1566
another rather curiously conceived work made its appearance, the _Amours
et Nouveaux Echanges de Pierres Precieuses_. As a whole this is perhaps
his best book. Besides these, Belleau also translated or paraphrased the
_Phenomena_ of Aratus, _Ecclesiastes_, and the _Song of Solomon_. He
deserves to rank with not a few poets who have often attained a fair
secondary position in the art, and whose special faculty disposes them
to patient and ingenious description in more or less poetical verse. The
stately and at the same time flexible rhythm, the brilliant and varied
vocabulary which the Pleiade used, lent themselves not ill to this task,
and Belleau's talent, learning, and industry enabled him to give an
unusually equable charm to his work. But he is altogether too
occasional, too void of the higher poetical sentiment, and too limited
in range, to be ranked with Ronsard or with Du Bellay. His peculiar
quality of patient labour stood him in good stead in composing a
Macaronic poem on the Huguenots, which is by no means without value.
[Sidenote: Baif.]
Jean Antoine de Baif[197] was a man of more varied talent than Belleau,
and his history and personality are more interesting. He was the natural
son of Lazare de Baif, French ambassador at Venice, and of a noble lady
of that city. Marriage was impossible, for Lazare de Baif, who was
himself a man of letters, was in orders; but he did his best for his
son, and in 1547, when he was still very young, left him a considerable
fortune. Baif was, except Jodelle, the youngest member of the Pleiade,
but he early distinguished himself by his expertness in the classical
languages. He began in French, like the majority of his school, with a
collection of sonnets and other pieces, entitled _Les Amours de Meline_,
and he followed them up with the _Amours de Francine_. Francine is said
to have had over her predecessor the advantage or disadvantage of
existing. Baif then turned to the new theatre, which his comrade Jodelle
had introduced, and translated or adapted several plays of Plautus,
Terence, and Sophocles, but these will be noticed elsewhere. He returned
to poetry proper in _Les Passe-Temps_, a poetical miscellany of merit.
Lastly, in 1581, appeared a curious work, entitled _Les Mimes_, composed
of octosyllabic dizains, half-moral, half-satirical in tone and subject.
Baif, who was thought by some of his contemporaries to write even better
in Latin than in French, was a chief defender of the often-mooted though
preposterous plan of adjusting modern languages to the exact metres of
the ancients. This idea, which somewhat later seduced no less a man than
Spenser for a time, and with him many of the brightest wits in England,
is perhaps almost more hopeless in French than in our own tongue, owing
to the omnipotence of accent and the habit of slurring almost all the
syllables of a word except one. But it was frequently entertained at
different times through the century, and is said by Agrippa d'Aubigne to
have been started as early as 1530 by a certain Mousset, of whom there
is no other trace. Baif, who was also a spelling reformer, wrote a good
deal of verse in the metres he advocated, but with no greater success
than the other adventurous persons who have attempted the same _tour de
force_. He is also said to have conceived the idea of an Academy, and to
have in many other ways shown himself an active and ardent reformer of
letters. It is for this alertness of spirit and general proficiency in
literary craftsmanship that Baif is memorable, rather than for supreme
or even remarkable poetical power. His epitaphs are among his best work,
probably owing to his careful study of the hardly-to-be-surpassed
examples of this kind of composition which the classical languages
afford. He was a diligent panegyrist of country life and country ways,
but no single work of his in this class comes up to the masterpieces of
Ronsard, Du Bellay, and Belleau. Range, variety, and inventiveness of
spirit are Baif's chief merits.
[Sidenote: Daurat, Jodelle, Pontus de Tyard.]
The three remaining members of the group may be disposed of more
rapidly. Daurat, the eldest, and in a sense the master of all, was, as
far as regards French composition, the dark star of the Pleiade, for he
wrote nothing of importance in the vernacular. Jodelle was a voluminous
writer, but his dramatic importance so far exceeds his merely poetical
value that he will be best treated of when we come to discuss the
Theatre of the Renaissance. A somewhat curious instance of his poetical
energy is to be found in his unfinished, indeed hardly begun,
_Contre-Amours_. All the rest had started with a volume of verse in
praise of some real or imaginary mistress, so Jodelle determined to
write one against an unkind lady. The seventh member of the Pleiade,
Pontus de Tyard, was the eldest save Daurat, the longest-lived and the
highest in station, while he was also in a way the most original, having
published his first book before the appearance of the _Defense et
Illustration_. He was born at Bissy, near Macon, and, having been
appointed Bishop of Chalon, died in 1603, last of the group. Poetry was
only part of his literary occupations, and literary work itself by no
means absorbed him. But his _Erreurs Amoureuses_, addressed to a certain
Pasithee, and other works, give him fair rank in the school. He has been
erroneously credited with the introduction of the sonnet into France,
an honour which is probably due, as has been more than once observed, to
Saint Gelais. But if he did not introduce the form, he at least
contributed one of its most striking examples in his beautiful Sonnet to
'Sleep,' a favourite subject of the age both in France and England.
The Pleiade proper by no means monopolised all the poetical talent of
the period. Indeed, there can be no surer testimony to the real strength
of the movement than the universal adherence which was given to its
methods by those who were in no sense bound to it by personal
connection. A second Pleiade might be made up of members who had almost
as much poetical talent as the actual titular stars. Magny, Tahureau, Du
Bartas, D'Aubigne, Desportes, Bertaut, had each of them talent not far
inferior to that of Du Bellay and of Ronsard, and equal to that of the
five minor members. Garnier was immensely Jodelle's superior in his own
line. Jamyn, Durant, Passerat, the two La Tailles, Vauquelin de la
Fresnaye, even La Boetie, who had, as far as can be made out, far more
vocation in poetry than in prose, are names at least equal to those of
Pontus de Tyard or Baif. But they did not form part of the energetic
_coterie_ who started and pushed the movement, and so they have lacked
the reputation which the combined and successful effort of the Seven has
given them. Yet Du Bartas is the one French poet of the sixteenth
century who wrote a poem on the great scale with success, and D'Aubigne
ranks with Regnier and Victor Hugo in the strength and vigour of his
verse.
[Sidenote: Magny.]
Olivier de Magny[198] was a kind of petted child of the Pleiade. His
_Amours_ are prefaced by commendatory verses, among which compositions
of four out of the seven--Ronsard, Baif, Belleau and Jodelle--figure,
and he was as strenuous in carrying out the recommendations of Du
Bellay's _Illustration_ as any of the seven themselves. His _Amours_
just mentioned, his _Odes_, his _Gayetes_ even, testify to the obedient
admiration which young verse-writers often show for the leading poets of
their day. But there is no servile imitation in Magny. His life was
short, and the dates of its beginning and ending are not exactly known,
though he died in 1560. He was a lover of Louise Labe, and was worthy
of her, poetically speaking. He was born, like Marot, at Cahors; he went
to Rome, like many other literary men of his time, on a diplomatic
errand; and his works were all published between 1553 and his death. The
_Odes_ are the best of them; the _Gayetes_ are light and lively enough;