transmuted into, as it were, an inward religion, secret and passionate, of beauty.'

In the fifth place, they had all the Latin authors at their finger-ends. Yet they knew them for literary echoes, calling Horace the Latin Pindar.' To Du Bellay the Iliad is 'admirable,' the Eneid 'laborious.' But of the Latins they set Virgil on a lonely eminence.

And so, lastly, they deliberately sought their inspiration in the fullest measure from the Greeks. Ronsard tells us that he once shut himself up for three days to read the Iliad at a sitting. But since their main intention was lyric, their chief model was Pindar. I can speak of Pindar only at second-hand. Accepting Professor Butcher for my guide, I learn that Pindar made a twofold claim. On the one hand, he claimed constant inspiration, enthusiasm, and something of a divine importance attaching to lyric poetry as such; on the other, that lyric poets were the trustees and exponents of an intricate traditional artifice with subtle laws which they alone understood and always obeyed. Now that is precisely the double claim put forward by Ronsard.

After Pindar, among Greek sources, the Pléiade drew largely on Theocritus, Callimachus, Lycophron, and generally on the Alexandrine poets who flourished at the court of the Ptolemies. Brunetière insists on this, and approves their choice, since, being absorbed in remaking a language and designing poetical forms, what they needed were writing-masters.' In the great edition of Ronsard's works of 1623, a commentator, Marcassus, refers the reader to Lycophron for the elucidation of classical machinery in the very poem from which I quoted the apostrophe to Roland and 'les palladins de France.'

That

illustrates the multiplicity of the Pléiade's sources, and the impartiality with which they tapped them even for one poem. They drew also on the Greek Anthology, republished at Paris in 1551, so that all the flowers of Meleager passed into their verse; and, later, on the Anacreon, published by Estienne at Paris for the first time in 1554.

If you except the Troubadours, there is scarce a stream of lyric verse, ancient or modern, which they did not sedulously conduct into the swollen river of their song; and, apart from literary origins, they laid much else under contribution: the splendour of courts, the pageant of embassies, the weariness of exile, the loveliness of women, the glory of gardens -much, too, which they accepted frankly from wild Nature, or went curiously to seek even from among the appliances of industry in towns.

The aim of their art is declared in Du Bellay's Défense et Illustration, and in Ronsard's prefaces to his Odes and the Franciade.

They did not embark on a wanton quest after novelty. Rather, they were confronted by two real difficulties-the poverty of language and the degradation of poetry-which had to be surmounted before French could become a medium for modern literature. The French language had never been amplified and elevated to the pitch required for that purpose. French poetry had fallen and shrunk from the state it once held in the hands of Chaucer's masters. The Pléiade found a language too scanty to convey the new features of Renaissance civilisation, and quite unfitted to express conceptions imported from Greek thought. For that, in its loftier and more suggestive phases, poetry, the first and last mode of speech, is needed; but their native poetry

was worn down to a jingle. What was to be done? The common view among any who saw the difficulty and sought a solution, seems to have been that French did well enough for ordinary business and a good song; dog-Latin for law and history; and that, for higher flights of poetry or philosophy, there was no expedient save to master and employ the vocabularies, syntax, and poetic forms of classic Latin and Greek.

Against this the Pléiade protested. Du Bellay, in the first book of his manifesto, defends the French language. All languages, he argues, are, so to say, 'born equal.' All were made in the same way, for the same purpose, viz. by the human fancy to interchange the conceptions of the human mind. New things must always have demanded new words, and there is no reason why that process should not be continued. French is not a barbarous tongue, nor so poor as many assert. In so far as it is poor it is only so because our ancestors, like the early Romans, were too busy with war to waste time on words. The right plan is to follow the example set by the Romans, that is, to enrich our own vocabulary by acclimatising classic words, and to give it flexibility and point by imitating classic models. In his second book, passing from the poverty of language to the abasement of poetry, he urges that French poetry can be lifted from the rut. The authors of the Roman de la Rose ought to be read, not for imitation, but to secure a first image of the French tongue. Of recent poets some have done well, and France is obliged to them. But much better may be done. natural gift is not enough. Forasmuch as our court poets drink, eat, and sleep at their ease, he who would be read and remembered must endure hunger

A

and thirst and long watches. These are the wings on which the writings of men soar up to heaven. The poet is to avoid copying mere tricks, to develop his own individuality, and to imitate those of a kindred genius, otherwise his imitation will resemble that of a monkey. He is to read Greek and Latin authors day and night and to forswear 'Rondeaux, ballades, vyrelaiz . . . et autres telles épiceries.' Odes are to be written by setting to work as Horace did, so as to achieve a standard till then unattempted. Poetry of this kind is to be distinguished from the vulgar, enriched and illustrated with appropriate words and carefully chosen epithets, adorned with solemn sayings, and varied in every way with poetic colour and decoration.

Epigrams and satires are deprecated. Sonnets, the learned and pleasant invention of Italy, are praised. The long poem is to be essayed, but let the theme be taken from old French romances. Idleness and luxury have destroyed the desire of immortality; but glory is the only ladder upon whose rungs mortals may with a light step ascend to heaven and make themselves the companions of the gods. Use words which are purely French, neither too common nor too far-fetched, and, if you like, sometimes annex some antique term and set it, as it were a precious stone, in your verse. Rhyme is of the essence of French verse. It must be rich; free rather than constrained; accepted rather than sought out; appropriate and natural; in short, such that the verse falling on it shall not less content the ear than music well harmonised when it falls on a perfect chord. Blank verse is a more doubtful matter; but as painters and sculptors use greater pains to make nude figures of lovely and good

proportion, so must blank verse be athletic and muscular.

He attacks the court versifiers, prays to Apollo that France may engender a poet whose resonant lute shall silence the wheezy bagpipes of the day, and, after exhorting the French to write in their own tongue, concludes with an eulogy of France.

Ronsard repeats much of this thesis in his prefaces. He dwells on the salient paradox that, whilst the French language was still prattling in infancy, French poetry was languishing and grimacing towards death. But he chiefly insists on the necessity of designing varied metres and rhyme-schemes for lyric poetry, attesting and the duality of his argument is an index to his aim-first, the example of Pindar, and secondly, the diversity of Nature, which exacts an infinite response to her moods.

For the rest, he makes short work of his critics, saying, in the sturdy vernacular which he could ever command for all his artifice: 'If, reader, you are astonished at the sudden changes in my manner of writing, you are to understand that when I have bought my pen, my ink, and my paper, they belong to me, and I may honestly do what I please with my own.'

ACHIEVEMENT AND INFLUENCE

There can be no question of the vast material embraced by the Pléiade, and the high aim envisaged in their attempt to renew language and revive lyrics. But two questions obtrude. What did they accomplish? What influence did they exert? Again we have diverse judgments. It is for students of the Renaissance, and, not least, for students of our nation, to seek the final, decree. We cannot know