instruments, read Greek, and wrote poetry in French and Italian; or, again, Diane de Poictiers, actually mistress to the King, practically a Secretary of State, and accidentally governess to the Queen's children, the model for the Diane Chasseresse in the Louvre and châtelaine d'Anêt, with its fanciful traceries and elaborate parterres, are both so typical of that transitional age that each might exhaust an essay. Ronsard, alone, sang voluminously to Cassandra, Marie, Helène; frequently to Marguerite, Duchesse de Savoie, and Marie Stuart. And surely Ronsard loved that queen. Else could he have put into the mouth of Charles IX. the address to the shade of his elder brother Ah! frère mien, tu ne dois faire plainte, Sein contre sein, valait ta royauté. Yet Ronsard loved divine beauty even more; perhaps loved most, certainly cared most for, the art by which he expressed his love, and, though he loved them, cared least for the beautiful women whose human loveliness helped him to detect Divine Beauty and braced him to elaborate her ritual. The last line of his last love sonnet runs : Car l'Amour et la Mort n'est qu'une mesme chose. He uses his head for the expression of his art, not for the analysis of his emotion. Neither shall I seek to follow out their diplomatic journeys. Briefly, they sojourned often in Italy, or at Lyons, and spent sweet and splendid days, described by Brantôme, among the many castles in the wide valley of the Loire. Ronsard's Odes were at the outset vehemently attacked, but, first aided by the protection of his Marguerite, sister to Henri II., and then winning on their merits, his poetry and the poetry of his companions carried all before it at the court and in the country. Ronsard won a greater fame than was ever accorded to a poet in his lifetime. He was acclaimed a Horace, a Pindar, a Petrarch. The Academy of the Floral Games at Toulouse sent him a silver Minerva; his king must have him at all times by his side; our own Elizabeth gave him a diamond-comparing its water to the purity of his verse; and Marie Stuart, when others had deserted his old age, a buffet worth two hundred crowns, addressed 'A Ronsard l'Apollon de la source des Muses.' Châtelard read his Hymn to Death, and no other office, for consolation on the scaffold. Montaigne, who could confer dignity beyond the gift of kings, writes, say in 1575: 'Since Ronsard and Du Bellay have raised our French poetry to a place of honour, I see no apprentice so little but he must inflate phrases and order cadences much about as they do. For the common herd there were never so many poets, but easy enough as it is for these to reproduce their rhymes, they still fall short enough of imitating the rich descriptions of the one, and the delicate inventions of the other.' The striking feature in the lives of Ronsard and his companions is their rapid recognition; but this instant glory was soon followed by sudden eclipse. The last decade of Henri II.'s reign (1549-1559) comprises most of the work for which he and his comrades are famous. Through these years of poetry and pageantry, storms, political and religious, were silently brewing to burst over the head of Henri's son, and incidentally to turn Ronsard the poet into a pamphleteer. But whilst they lasted the Pléiade saw crowns of lesser states pushed about like pieces in a game; yet with all Europe for the chess-board, and with players whose gestures and apparel still shine from between the wars of dynasties and the wars of religion, as from a sunny patch between the shadows of two thunder-clouds. Beneath that shaft of light their lives and poetry glisten. They watched the game of high politics, wrote sonnets to the players, and often took a hand in it themselves. Its extension over Europe, demanding long travel and exile abroad, changed the inspiration of their art, and charged it with splendid colours. But, of them all, Ronsard was the only one who lived on into the silence of old age amidst altered and uncongenial surroundings. He saw his companions die; Du Bellay and De Magny in 1560, Jodelle in 1573, Belleau in 1577. His Franciade fell dead of its own weight, and was forgotten in the horrors of the St. Bartholomew. Even from as early as 1560 an unmoral delight in mere learning and the love of beauty was no longer possible. His heart, as a patriot, bled for France in her misery of religious war, which ever seemed to him, as a Catholic, wicked and irrational. So he set aside his theories of art, his stately measures and plaintive melodies, and took his stand, like a man, in the midst of his country's dissensions. This aspect of his life is so rarely considered that I recommend the study of his Discours, or poetical pamphlets, to any who would understand the attitude of a liberal and cultivated scholar, who yet struck in, hard, on the side of Royalty and Catholicism, rather because he was a philosophic conservative by temperament than because he held any precise views on religion or politics. In his elegy on the tumult of Amboise, he writes, 1560: Ainsi que l'ennemi par livres a séduit Le peuple dévoyé qui faussement le suit, But he was not content with diatribes. According to De Thou, he placed himself, in 1562, at the head of the gentry and routed the Huguenot pillagers. 'Quâ ex re commota nobilitas arma subit, duce sibi delecto, Petro Ronsardo' (Livre xxx. 1562). The most interesting account of his way of thinking and living is to be found in his Response aux injures et calomnies de je ne sçay quels prédicantereaux et misnistreaux de Genêve. The brutalities of the attack-Le Temple de Ronsard-which he countered in this reply justify its violence, and challenge his parade of worldly amenities. He had been accused of being a turncoat Huguenot, an unavowed Catholic priest, a pagan who sacrificed a buck in all seriousness to a heathen god, an evil-liver, and of much else which cannot conveniently be repeated. So he describes himself, without extenuation, in this vein : 'Waking, I say my prayers; get up, dress, study, composing or reading, in pursuit of my destiny for four or five hours. When weary I go to church. There follows an hour's talk and dinner: "Sobre repas, grace, amuçement." If fine, I wander in a wood or village, and seek solitary places. J'aime fort les jardins qui sentent le sauvage, 'In bad weather I go into society, play cards, take part in gymnastics, leaping, wrestling, or fencing, and make jokes et à la vérité Je ne loge chez moi trop de sévérité J'ayme à faire l'amour, j'ayme à parler aux femmes, La musique et le luth ennemis de soucy. 'When the dusky night ranges the stars in order and curtains the sky and earth with veils, without a care I go to bed, and there, lifting my eyes, voice, and heart up to the vault of heaven, I make my orison, praying the divine goodness for gentle pardon of my failing. For the rest I am neither rebellious nor illnatured. I do not back my rule with the sword. Thus I live; if your life be better, I do not envy. Let it be better by all means.' Au reste je ne suis ny mutin ny meschant, He explains that he is not a priest; but, in those places where it is right to display the office and duty of a devout heart, he is a stout pillar of the Church, wearing the proper vestments of the minor orders. which he had taken, with certain priories conferred on him for his services, by his king. With his astounding touch of unconventional admiration for all living creatures, he compares himself in his cope to a snail on an April morning : Par le trou de la chappe apparoit eslevé Mon col brave et gaillard, comme le chef lavé |