A Short History of French Literature Part 21

[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 Baf, 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 ent.i.tled _Pet.i.tes 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: Baf.]

Jean Antoine de Baf[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 Baf, French amba.s.sador at Venice, and of a n.o.ble lady of that city. Marriage was impossible, for Lazare de Baf, 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. Baf was, except Jodelle, the youngest member of the Pleiade, but he early distinguished himself by his expertness in the cla.s.sical languages. He began in French, like the majority of his school, with a collection of sonnets and other pieces, ent.i.tled _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. Baf 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 Pa.s.se-Temps_, a poetical miscellany of merit.

Lastly, in 1581, appeared a curious work, ent.i.tled _Les Mimes_, composed of octosyllabic dizains, half-moral, half-satirical in tone and subject.

Baf, 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. Baf, 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 craftsmans.h.i.+p that Baf 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-surpa.s.sed examples of this kind of composition which the cla.s.sical languages afford. He was a diligent panegyrist of country life and country ways, but no single work of his in this cla.s.s comes up to the masterpieces of Ronsard, Du Bellay, and Belleau. Range, variety, and inventiveness of spirit are Baf'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 Ill.u.s.tration_. 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 t.i.tular 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, Pa.s.serat, 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 Baf. 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, Baf, Belleau and Jodelle--figure, and he was as strenuous in carrying out the recommendations of Du Bellay's _Ill.u.s.tration_ 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; and in both his volumes of sonnets, but especially in the _Soupirs_, excellent examples of the form are to be found. Magny had a strong feeling for the formal art of poetry, and it was thus natural that he should eagerly embrace the gospel of Ronsard. But besides this, he had a true poetical imagination, and a real command of poetical language. A sonnet in dialogue, which greatly attracted the admiration of Colletet, the historian of French poetry in the next age, is perhaps not much more than a _tour de force_. But many of his other pieces show real feeling, and have a certain youthfulness about them which suits well with the sentiments they express, and the ardour of literary as well as amatory devotion which the poet endeavours to convey.

[Sidenote: Tahureau.]

Still younger and probably still more short-lived, but superior as a poet, was Jacques Tahureau[199]. He was born at Le Mans of a n.o.ble family, and died at the age of twenty-eight. But his life, if short, was a happy one, and, like most of his contemporaries, he published a volume of amatory sonnets under the t.i.tle, gracefully affected even for that age of graceful affectation, of _Mignardises Amoureuses de l'Admiree_.

Unlike many of the heroines of the Pleiade and their satellites, who are either known or shrewdly suspected to have been imaginary, the _Admiree_ of Tahureau was a real person. What is more, he married her, and they lived together for three years before his early death. Before the _Mignardises_, he had published a _Premier Recueil_, and after them he produced a third volume of odes, sonnets, etc. All three display the same peculiarities, and these peculiarities are sufficiently remarkable.

Tahureau was named by the flattery and the cla.s.sical fancies of his contemporaries the French Catullus, and the parallel is not so rash as might be thought. It is true that it came originally from Du Bellay in one of his satirical veins. But a later poetical critic, Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, is more precise in his description, and oddly enough uses the very term which was afterwards applied in England to Shakespeare's youthful sonnets. Tahureau, he says:--

Nous affrianda tous au sucre de cet art.

The author of the _Mignardises_ is indeed somewhat 'sugared' in his style of writing; but there are genuine pa.s.sion and genuine poetical feeling as well in his verse. Of the minor poets of the time he is probably the best.

[Sidenote: Minor Ronsardists.]

Before noticing the four remaining poets who have been mentioned as occupying the highest places next to the Pleiade itself, a brief review of the minor poets until the end of the century may be given. etienne de la Boetie wrote poems which, though they have some of the stiffness and a little of the hollowness of his _Contre-un,_ possess a certain grandeur of sentiment and a knack of diction other than commonplace, which explain Montaigne's admiration. Claude b.u.t.tet is chiefly remarkable for having made a curious attempt to combine the cla.s.sicism of the new school with the romanticism of the old. He wrote Sapphics in rhyme, an idea sufficiently ingenious, but hardly successful. Yet it is fair to remember that some of the varieties of Leonine verse lacked neither force nor elegance. The truth is, that these cla.s.sic metres are so alien to all modern tongues, that, rhymed or unrhymed, they are doomed to failure. Jean de la Peruse was, like Magny and Tahureau, a poet who died before he had reached his term. At twenty-five few men have left lasting works. Yet La Peruse not only produced a tragedy of some merit, but minor poems promising more. Jean Doublet was a much older man, and is chiefly noticeable as an example of the writers who, beginning with Marot, or even with Cretin, and the Rhetoriqueurs for models, bowed to the overmastering influence of the Pleiade. Docility of this kind, however, rarely promises much poetical worth, and Doublet was not a great poet; but his poems, which have had better fortune in the way of reprints than those of greater men, show power of versification.

Amadis Jamyn was a somewhat more distinguished poet than those who have just been mentioned. Born in 1540, he came to Paris, when the triumph and supremacy of Ronsard was completely a.s.sured, and was taken under the protection of the Prince of Poets. He was also honoured, as we have seen, by being allowed to stand by the side of Ronsard, of Baf, of Desportes, at the funeral of Remy Belleau. He translated the last twelve books of the Iliad to complete Salel, and began a translation of the Odyssey; besides which he wrote a poem on the Chase, another on Generosity, and, like everybody else at the time, abundance of miscellaneous pieces. He was a good scholar, and there was more ease in his verse than is usually to be found in his contemporaries (save the greatest of them), who too often allowed their cla.s.sical studies to stiffen and starch their verse. Another admirable poet, though of no great compa.s.s, was the dramatist Grevin. His _Villanesques_, a modified form of the favourite Villanelle, which had survived the other _epiceries_ condemned by Du Bellay, are singularly graceful and tender, epithets which are also applicable to his _Baisers_. The brothers La Taille also, like Grevin, are chiefly known as dramatists. Jean de la Taille, though but a boy of ten years old when the _style Marotique_ was swept out of fas.h.i.+on, had sufficient independence to compose _blasons_ (and very pretty ones) of the daisy and the rose. Others of his poems have mediaeval forms or settings, but he imitated Ronsard in his _Mort de Paris_, and Du Bellay in his _Courtisan Retire_. The works of Jacques de la Taille, who died young, were chiefly epigrams. Guy du Faur de Pibrac wrote moral quatrains, which had a great vogue, and which in a way deserved it. Nicolas Rapin was, with the exception of Pa.s.serat, the chief of the poets of the _Menippee_, a remarkable group, who will be noticed further when we come to that singular production. But Pa.s.serat himself deserves more notice than simply as a political satirist and a famous Latin scholar. Of all the poets of the sixteenth century before Regnier and after Marot, Pa.s.serat was the one who possessed most comic talent. His works are full of little touches which exhibit this, while at the same time he was a master of the graceful love of poetry which imitation of the ancients had made fas.h.i.+onable. His Villanelle 'J'ai perdu ma Tourterelle' is probably the most elegant specimen of a poetical trifle that the age produced, and has of late years attracted great admiration. Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, a lawyer, the author of an Art of Poetry, and of the first satires, so called, in French, had a good deal of poetical power, which he expended chiefly on pastoral subjects; but unfortunately his command of language and style was by no means always equal to his command of fresh and agreeable imagery and sentiment.

[Sidenote: Du Bartas.]

Guillaume de Sal.u.s.te du Bartas[200], the 'Protestant Ronsard,' was born in 1544 at Montfort, near Auch, served Henry of Navarre in war and diplomacy, was wounded at Ivry, and died of his wounds in 1590. His first work was _Judith_; then followed _La Premiere Semaine_, and next _Uranie_, _Le Triomphe de la Foi_, and the _Seconde Semaine_. He also wrote numerous smaller poems, including one on the battle of Ivry. The 'First Week of Creation' is his greatest and most famous work. It went through thirty editions in a few years; was translated into English by Sylvester, gave not a little inspiration to Milton, and was warmly admired by Goethe. Ronsard at first eagerly welcomed Du Bartas; but his jealousy being aroused by the pretensions of the Calvinist party to set up their poet as a rival to himself, he resented this in an indignant and vigorous address to Daurat, which contains some very just criticisms on Du Bartas. Nevertheless the merits of the latter are extremely great, and his personage and work very interesting. It has been said of him that he represents, in the first place, the extreme development of the Ronsardising innovation; in the second place, the highest literary culture attained by the French Calvinists. Inferior to D'Aubigne in knowledge of the world, in the choice of subjects perennially interesting, and in terse vigour of expression, Du Bartas was the superior of the great Protestant satirist in picturesqueness, in imagination, and in facility of descriptive power. The stately and gorgeous abundance of the vocabulary with which the h.e.l.lenising and Latinising innovations of the Pleiade enriched the French language supplied him with colours and material to work with, and his own genius did the rest. His attempt to naturalise Greek compounds, such as 'Aime-Lyre,' 'Donne-ame,' and the rest, has done him more harm than anything else; but his combination of cla.s.sical learning, with the varied colour and vivid imagination of the middle age and the Renaissance, often results in extraordinarily striking expressions.

_L'Eschine azuree_, for instance, is a singularly picturesque, if also somewhat barbaric, reminiscence of [Greek: eurea nota thala.s.ses]: the enforcement of the idea of _hora novissima tempora pessima_ in the four following lines is admirable:--

Nos execrables moeurs, dedans Gomorrhe apprises, Les troublees saisons, les civiles fureurs, Les menaces du ciel, sont les avant-coureurs De Christ, qui vient tenir ses dernieres a.s.sises.

In such a pa.s.sage again as the following, the power and simplicity of the diction can escape no reader; the piling up of the strokes is worthy of Victor Hugo:--

Les etoiles cherront. Le desordre, la nuict, La frayeur, le trespas, la tempeste, le bruit, Entreront en quartier.

All that was wanting to make Du Bartas a poet of the first rank was some faculty of self-criticism; of natural _verve_ and imagination as well as of erudition he had no lack, but in critical faculty he seems to have been totally deficient. His beauties, rare in kind and not small in amount, are alloyed with vast quant.i.ties of dull absurdity.

[Sidenote: D'Aubigne.]

[Sidenote: Desportes.]

Agrippa d'Aubigne[201] was a few years Du Bartas' junior, and long outlived him. He was an important prose-writer as well as poet, and his long life was as full of interesting events as of literary occupations.

At six years old he read Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; a year or two later his father made him swear, in presence of the gibbeted corpses of the unsuccessful conspirators of Amboise, to revenge their death. Shortly afterwards he narrowly escaped the stake. For a time he dwelt with Henry of Navarre at the court of Charles IX., and there thoroughly imbued himself with the Ronsardising tradition. But he soon escaped with his master, and for years was a Calvinist irreconcileable, always for war to the knife, and as rude and bold in the council chamber as in the field.

The death of his master was unfortunate for D'Aubigne; but, though he at first opposed the regency of Marie de Medicis, he made terms for himself. The publication, however, of his 'History' brought enemies on him, and he fled to Geneva, finis.h.i.+ng his days there. His prose works are too numerous to mention separately: the chief besides his histories are the _Confession de Sancy_ and the _Aventures du Baron de Faeneste_, both satirical in character and full of vigour. He began as a poet by poems in the lighter Pleiade style, but his masterpiece is the strange work called _Les Tragiques_. This consists of seven books, amounting to not much less than ten thousand lines, and ent.i.tled _Miseres_, _Princes_, _La Chambre Doree_, _Les Feux_, _Les Fers_, _Vengeance_, _Jugement_. The poem is half historical and half satirical, dealing with the religious wars, the persecution of the Huguenots, the abuses of the administration, and of contemporary manners, etc. Nothing equal to the best verses of this singular book had yet been seen in France, and not much equal to them has been produced since. The tone of sombre and impressive declamation had been to some extent antic.i.p.ated by Du Bartas, but chiefly for purposes of description. D'Aubigne turned it to its natural use in invective, and the effect is often extraordinarily fine.

Very copious citation would be necessary to show its excellence: but before Victor Hugo there is nothing in French equal to D'Aubigne at his best in point of clangour of sound and impetuosity of rhythm. It is noteworthy that Du Bartas' _Semaine_, with the _Tragiques_ and the tragedies of Garnier, finally established the Alexandrine as the indispensable metre for serious and impa.s.sioned poetry in France.

Hitherto the decasyllable and the dodecasyllable had been used indiscriminately, and Ronsard's _Franciade_ is written in the former.

But after the three poets just mentioned, the Alexandrine became invariable; the decasyllable being left for light and occasional work, as a sort of medium in usage as in bulk between the Alexandrine and the octosyllable. The truth is that, until the improvements of language and style which the Pleiade had introduced, the Alexandrine couplet had not had either suppleness or dignity enough for the work. It was lumbering and disjointed. As soon, however, as the cla.s.sical turn, inseparable from a specially cla.s.sical metre, had been given to the language, it at once took its place and has ever since kept it, though in the century succeeding it was deprived of much of its force by arbitrary rules. The lines of Boileau condemning Ronsard[202] have inseparably connected Desportes and Bertaut, and have given them a position in literary history which is as intrinsically inaccurate as it is unduly high.

Neither approaches Du Bartas or D'Aubigne in poetical excellence or in adroit carrying out of Ronsardism. But neither was in the least made _retenu_ by Ronsard's failure, and it did not enter the head of themselves or any of their contemporaries, till their last days, that Ronsard had failed. Philippe Desportes[203] was a very unclerical cleric, a successful courtier and diplomatist, a great favourite with the ladies of the court. He was also a poet of little vigour, but of great sweetness, much elegance of style and form, and extraordinary neatness, if not originality, of expression. With Jamyn he was the most prominent of Ronsard's own particular disciples. His poetical works are sharply divided, like those of Herrick and Donne and some other poets, on the one hand, into poems of a very mundane character, collections of sonnets after the Pleiade fas.h.i.+on to real or imaginary heroines, celebrations of the ladies and the _mignons_ of the court of Henri III., imitations of Italian verse, and the like; on the other, into devotional poems, which include some translations of the Psalms of not a little merit. Personally Desportes appears to have been a self-seeker and a sycophant; not without good nature, but covetous, intriguing, corrupt, given to base compliances. He was Du Bellay's _poete courtisan_ in the worst sense of the phrase[204]. But working at leisure and with care, and undistracted by any literary or sentimental enthusiasm, he found means to give to his work a polish and correctness which many of his contemporaries of greater talent did not, or could not, give. In this fact the explanation of Boileau's commendation--for it is no doubt meant, relatively speaking, for commendation--is probably to be found.

[Sidenote: Bertaut.]

Jean Bertaut was, to use a metaphor frequently employed in literary history, the 'moon' of Desportes. Like him, he is a poet rather elegant than vigorous, rather correct than spirited. Like him, he wrote light verse and devotional poems, and, as in the case of Desportes, the religious poems are--rather contrary to the reader's expectation--the best of the two. His work, however, was even more limited in amount than that of his contemporary.

FOOTNOTES:

[192] The list is sometimes given rather differently; instead of Jodelle and Pontus de Tyard, Scevole de St. Marthe and Muretus are subst.i.tuted.

But the enumeration in the text is the accepted one.

[193] Ed. Blanchemain. 8 vols. Paris, 1857-67.

[194] The term usually applied to him by contemporaries.

[195] Ed. Marty-Laveaux. 2 vols. Paris, 1866-7.

[196] Ed. Gouverneur. 3 vols. Paris, 1866.

[197] Not recently re-edited in full. In selection by Becq de Fouquieres. Paris, 1874.

[198] Recently edited in 5 vols. by Courbet. Paris, v. d.

[199] Ed. Blanchemain. 2 vols. Geneva, 1869.

[200] Du Bartas, always unjustly treated in France, probably from a curious tradition of mingled sectarian and literary jealousy, has not been reprinted of late years. The edition used is that of 1610-1611.

Paris, 2 vols, folio.

[201] Ed. Reaume and de Caussade. Vols. 1-4. Paris, 1873-7. There is another volume to follow.

[202] Here are these celebrated lines:--

Ronsard, qui le suivit, par une autre methode Reglant tout, brouilla tout, fit un art a sa mode, Et toutefois longtemps eut un heureux destin.

Mais sa muse en Francais parlant Grec et Latin Vit dans l'age suivant, par un retour grotesque, Tomber de ses grands mots le faste pedantesque.

Ce poete orgueilleux, trebuche de si haut, Rendit puis retenus Desportes et Bertaut.

_Art Poet._, Chant i.

[203] Ed. Michiels. Paris, 1858.