rect French ear as they are, in a moderate use, pleasing to our own. After the appearance of Malherbe, the poetry of Ronsard fell into contempt, and the pure correctness of Louis XIV.'s age was not likely to endure his barbarous innovations and false taste.* Balzac not long afterwards turns his pedantry into ridicule, and, admitting the abundance of the stream, adds that it was turbid. In later times more justice has been done to the spirit and imagination of this poet, without repealing the sentence against his style.‡ Other French 51. The remaining stars of the Pleiad, except perhaps Bellay, sometimes called the French Ovid, and whose "Regrets," or lamentations for his absence poets. from France during a residence at Rome, are almost as querulous, if not quite so reasonable, as those of his prototype on the Ister §, seem scarce worthy of particular notice; for Jodelle, the founder of the stage in France, has deserved much less credit as a poet, and fell into the fashionable absurdity of making French out of Greek. Raynouard bestows some eulogy on Baif. Those who came afterwards were sometimes imitators of Ronsard, and, like most imitators of a faulty manner, far more pedantic and far-fetched than himself. An unintelligible refinement, which every nation in Europe seems in succession to have admitted into its poetry, has consigned much then written in France to oblivion. As large a proportion of the French verse in this period seems to be amatory as of the Italian; and the Italian style is sometimes followed. But a simpler and more lively turn of language, though without the naïveté of Marot, often distin * Goujet, 245. Malherbe scratched out about half from his copy of Ronsard, giving his reasons in the margin. Racan one day looking over this, asked whether he approved what he had not effaced; Not a bit more, replied Malherbe, than the rest. + Encore aujourd'hui il est admiré par les trois quarts du parlement de Paris, et généralement par les autres parlemens de France. L'université et les Jesuites tiennent encore son part contre la cour, et contre l'académie. Ce n'est pas un poëte bien entier, c'est le commencement et la matière d'un poëte. On voit, dans ses œuvres, des parties naissantes, et a demi animées, d'un corps qui se forme La Harpe. Biogr. Univ. "Baif is one of the poets who, in my opinion, have happily contributed by their example to fix the rules of our versification." Journal des Savans, Feb. 1825. guishes these compositions. These pass the bounds of decency not seldom; a privilege which seems in Italy to have been reserved for certain Fescennine metres, and is not indulged to the solemnity of the sonnet or canzone. The Italian language is ill-adapted to the epigram, in which the French succeed so well.* Du Bartas. 52. A few may be selected from the numerous versifiers under the sons of Henry II. Amadis Jamyn, the pupil of Ronsard, was reckoned by his contemporaries almost a rival, and is more natural, less inflated and emphatic than his master.† This praise is by no means due to a more celebrated poet, Du Bartas. His numerous productions, unlike those of his contemporaries, turn mostly upon sacred history; but his poem on the Creation, called La Semaine, is that which obtained most reputation, and by which alone he is now known. The translation by Silvester has rendered it in some measure familiar to the readers of our old poetry; and attempts have been made, not without success, to show that Milton had been diligent in picking jewels from this mass of bad taste and bad writing. Du Bartas, in his style, was a disciple of Ronsard; he affects words derived from the ancient languages, or, if founded on analogy, yet without precedent, and has as little naturalness or dignity in his images as purity in his idiom. But his imagination, though extravagant, is vigorous and original.‡ 53. Pibrac, a magistrate of great integrity, obtained an extraordinary reputation by his quatrains; a series Desportes. of moral tetrastichs in the style of Theognis. These first appeared in 1574, fifty in number, and were augmented Pibrac; * Goujet devotes three volumes, the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth, of his Bibliothèque Française, to the poets of these fifty years. Bouterwek and La Harpe have touched only on a very few names. In the Recueil des Anciens Poëtes, the extracts from them occupy about a volume and a half. † Goujet, xiii. 229. Biogr. Univ. Goujet, xiii. 304. The Semaine of Du Bartas was printed thirty times within six years, and translated into Latin, Italian, German, and Spanish, as well as English. Id. 312., on the authority of La Croix du Maine. Du Bartas, according to a French writer of the next century, used methods of exciting his imagination which I recommend to the attention of young poets. L'on dit en France, que Du Bartas auparavant que de faire cette belle description de cheval ou il a si bien rencontré, s'enfermoit quelquefois dans une chambre, et se mettant à quatre pattes, souffloit, hennissoit, gambadoit, tiroit des ruades, alloit l'amble, le trot, le galop, à courbette, et tachoit par toutes sortes de moyens à bien contrefaire le cheval. Naudé Considérations sur les Coups d'Estat. p. 47. to 126 in later editions. They were continually republished in the seventeenth century, and translated into many European and even oriental languages. It cannot be wonderful that, in the change of taste and manners, they have ceased to be read.* An imitation of the sixth satire of Horace, by Nicolas Rapin, printed in the collection of Auguis, is good and in very pure style.† Philippe Desportes, somewhat later, chose a better school than that of Ronsard; he rejected its pedantry and affectation, and by the study of Tibullus, as well as by his natural genius, gave a tenderness and grace to the poetry of love which those pompous versifiers had never sought. He has been esteemed the precursor of a better era; and his versification is rather less lawless, according to La Harpe, than that of his predecessors. French versification. 54. The rules of metre became gradually established. Few writers of this period neglect the alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes §; but the open metre and vowel will be found in several of the earlier. Du Bartas almost affects the enjambement, or continuation of the sense beyond the couplet; and even Desportes does not avoid it. Their metres are various; the Alexandrine, if so we may call it, or verse of twelve syllables, was occasionally adopted by Ronsard, and in time displaced the old verse of ten syllables, which became appropriated to the lighter style. The sonnets, as far as I have observed, are regular; and this form, which had been very little known in France, after being introduced by Jodelle and Ronsard, became one of the most popular modes of composition. || Several attempts were made to naturalise the Latin metres; but this pedantic innovation could not long have success. Specimens of it may be found in Pasquier. T *Goujet, xii. 266. Biogr. Univ. + Recueil des Poëtes, v. 361. Goujet, xiv. 63. La Harpe. guis, v. 343–377. more common there than in England. But Prosper Marchand ascribes a transAu- lation of the Iliad and Odyssey into regular French hexameters to one Mousset, § Grevin, about 1558, is an exception. of whom nothing is known; on no better Goujet, xii. 159. || Bouterwek, v. 212. authority, however, than a vague passage of D'Aubigné, who "remembered to have seen such a book sixty years ago." Though Mousset may be imaginary, he furnishes an article to Marchand, who Recherches de la France, 1. vii. c. 11. Baif has passed for the inventor of this foolish art in France, which was General character of French poetry. German poetry. 55. It may be said, perhaps, of French poetry in general, but at least in this period, that it deviates less from a certain standard than any other. It is not often low, as may be imputed to the earlier writers, because a peculiar style, removed from common speech, and supposed to be classical, was a condition of satisfying the critics; it is not often obscure, at least in syntax, as the Italian sonnet is apt to be, because the genius of the language and the habits of society demanded perspicuity. But it seldom delights us by a natural sentiment or unaffected grace of diction, because both one and the other were fettered by conventional rules. The monotony of amorous song is more wearisome, if that be possible, than among the Italians. 56. The characteristics of German verse impressed upon it by the meister-singers still remained, though the songs of those fraternities seem to have ceased. It was chiefly didactic or religious, often satirical, and employing the veil of apologue. Luther, Hans Sachs, and other more obscure names, are counted among the fabulists; but the most successful was Burcard Waldis, whose fables, partly from Æsop, partly original, were first published in 1548. The Froschmauseler of Rollenhagen, in 1545, is in a similar style of political and moral apologue with some liveliness of description. Fischart is another of the moral satirists, but extravagant in style and humour, resembling Rabelais, of whose romance he gave a free translation. One of his poems, Die Gluckhafte Schiff, is praised by Bouterwek for beautiful descriptions and happy inventions; but in general he seems to be the Skelton of Germany. Many German ballads belong to this period, partly taken from the old tales of chivalry in these the style is humble, with no poetry except brings together a good deal of learning as to the latinized French metres of the sixteenth century. Dictionnaire Historique. Passerat, Ronsard, Nicolas Rapin, and Pasquier, tried their hands in this style. Rapin improved upon it by rhyming in Sapphics. The following stanzas are from his ode on the death of Ronsard: : Vous que les ruisseaux d'Helicon frequentez, Contre le destin, &c. &c. PASQUIER, ubi supra. that of invention, which is not their own; yet they are truehearted and unaffected, and better than what the next age produced.* SECT. IV.-ON ENGLISH POETRY. Sackville Gascoyne Spenser's Shepherd's Kalendar Improvement in Poetry - England's Helicon — Sidney · Shakspeare's Poems- Poets near the Close of the Century - Translations Paradise of Dainty Devices Spenser's Faery Queen. Scots Paradise of Devices. 57. THE poems of Wyatt and Surrey with several more first appeared in 1557, and were published in a little book, entitled Tottel's Miscellanies. But as both of Dainty these belonged to the reign of Henry VIII. their poetry has come already under our review. It is probable that Lord Vaux's short pieces, which are next to those of Surrey and Wyatt in merit, were written before the middle of the century. Some of these are published in Tottel, and others in a scarce collection; the first edition of which was in 1576, quaintly named, The Paradise of Dainty Devices. The poems in this volume, as in that of Tottel, are not coeval with its publication; it has been supposed to represent the age of Mary, full as much as that of Elizabeth, and one of the chief contributors, if not framers of the collection, Richard Edwards, died in 1566. Thirteen poems are by Lord Vaux, who certainly did not survive the reign of Mary. 58. We are indebted to Sir Egerton Brydges for the republication, in his British Bibliographer, of the Paradise of Dainty Devices, of which, though there of this colhad been eight editions, it is said that not above six copies existed. The poems are almost all short, and by more nearly thirty than twenty different authors. They do not, it must be admitted," says their editor, "belong to the higher classes; they are of the moral and didactic kind. In their subject there is too little variety, as they deal very generally in the common-places of ethics, such as the fickle iv. Bouterwek, vol. ix. Heinsius, vol. Character lection. Beloe's Anecdotes of Literature, vol. v. |