Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/686

 650 FRANCE [LITERATURE. Marot. Pasquier, Rabelais, Des Pericrs, Herbcray des Essarts, Amyot, Gamier, Marot, Ronsard and the rest of the Pleiade, and filially Regnier. These great writers are not merely remark able for the vigour and originality of their thoughts, the freshness, variety, and grace of their fancy, the abundance of their learning, and the solidity of their arguments in the cases where argument is required. Their great merit Ls the creation of a language and a style able to give expression to these good gifts. The foregoing account of the mediaeval literature of France will have shown sufficiently that it is not lawful to despise the literary capacities and achieve ments of the older French. But the old language, with all its merits, was ill-suited to be a vehicle for any but the simpler forms of literary composition. Pleasant or affecting tales could be told in it with interest and pathos. Songs of charming naivete&quot; and grace could be sung ; the require ments of the epic and the chronicle were suitably furnished. But its vocabulary was limited, not to say pcor ; it was barren of the terms of art and science ; it did not readily lend itself to sustained eloquence, to impassioned poetry, or to logical discussion. It had been too long accustomed to leave these things to Latin as their natural and legitimate exponent, and it bore marks of its original character as a lingua ru-stica, a tongue suited for homely conversation, for folk-lore and for ballads, rather than for the business of the forum and the court, the speculations of the study, and the declamation of the theatre. Efforts had indeed been made, culminating iu the heavy and tasteless erudition of the schools of Chartier and Cretin, to supply the defect ; but it was reserved for the 16th century completely to efface it. The series of prose writers from Calvin to Montaigne, of poets from Marot to Regnier, elaborated a language yielding to no modern tongue in beauty, richness, flexibility, and strength,- a language which the reactionary purism of suc ceeding generations defaced rather than improved, and the merits of which have in our own time been triumphantly vindicated by the confession and the practice of all the greatest writers of modern France. 16th Century Poetry. The first few years of the 16th century were naturally occupied rather with the last de velopments of the mediaeval forms than with the pro duction of the new model. The clerks of the Bazoche and the Confraternity of the Passion still produced and acted mysteries, moralities, and farces. Cretin, Le Maire, and Meschinot wrote elaborate allegorical and rhetorical poetry. Chansons de gestes, rhymed romances, and fab liaux had long ceased to be written. But the press was multiplying the contents of the former in the prose form which they had finally assumed, and in the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles there already existed admirable specimens of the short prose talc. The first note of the new literature was sounded by C16ment Marot (1497-1544). The son of an elder poet, Jehan des Mares called Marot, Clement at first wrote, like his father s contemporaries, allegori cal and mythological poetry, afterwards collected in a volume with a charming title, L 1 Adolescence Clementine. Born in 1497, it was not till he was nearly thirty years old that his work became really remarkable. From that time forward till his death, about twenty years afterwards, he was much involved in the troubles and persecutions of the Huguenot party to which he belonged ; nor was the protec tion of Marguerite d Angouleme, the chief patroness of Huguenots and men of letters, always efficient. But his troubles, so far from harming, helped his literary faculties ; and his epistles, epigrams, blasons (descendants of the mediaeval dits), and coq-ct-Fdne became remarkable for their easy and polished style, their light and graceful wit, and a certain elegance which had not as yet been even attempted in any modern tongue, though the Italian humanists had not been far from it in some of their Latin compositions. Around Marot arose a whole school of disciples and imi tators, such as Roger de Collerye, Brodeau (died 1540), the great authority on rondeaux, Sceve, a fertile author of blasons, Salel, Marguerite herself (1492-1549), of whom more hereafter, and Melin de St Gelais (1486-1558), of whom the first and the last are the most remarkable. Collerye is a poet of poverty, like so many other French bards from Rutebceuf downwards ; St Gelais, son of a poetic bishop of the same name (Octavien de St Gelaia, 1465-1502), is a courtly writer of occasional pieces, who sustained as well as he could the style Marotique against Rdnsard, and who has the credit of introducing the regular sonnet into French. But the inventive vigour of the age was so great that one school had hardly become popular before another pushed it from its stool. Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585) was the chief of this latter. At first a courtier and a diplomatist, physical disqualification made him change his career. He began to study the classics under Daurat, and with his master and five other writers, Jodelle, Belleau, Dubellay, Baif, and Pontus de Tyard, composed the famous &quot; Plelade.&quot; &amp;gt; The object of this band was to bring the French language, in vocabulary, constructions, and application, on a level with the classical tongues by unlimited borrowings from the latter. They were not far from turning the whole Latin dictionary into the French tongue. They would have imported the Greek licence of compound words, though the genius of the French language is but little adapted thereto; and they wished to reproduce in French the regular tragedy, the Pindaric and Horatian ode, the Virgilian epic, &c. Being all men of the highest talent, and not a few of them men of great genius, they achieved much that they designed, and even where they failed exactly to achieve it, they very often indirectly produced results as important and more beneficial than those which they intended. Their ideal of a separate poetical language distinct from that intended for prose use was indeed a doubtful if not a dangerous one, and the wholesale Latinizing and Hellenizing of their mother tongue, by which they aimed at it, was still more dangerous and doubtful. But it is certain that Marat, while setting an example of elegance and grace not easily to be imitated, set also an example of trivial and, so to speak, pedestrian language which was only too imitable. If France was ever to possess a literature containing something besides fabli aux and farces, the tongue must be enriched and strength ened. This accession of wealth and vigour it received from Ronsard and the Ronsardists. Doubtless they went too far, and provoked to some extent the reaction which Malherbe led. Their importations were indiscriminate, and sometimes unnecessary. It is almost impossible to read the Franciade of Ronsard, and not too easy to read the tragedies of Jodelle and Gamier, fine as the latter are in parts. But the best of Ronsard s sonnets and odes, the finest of Dubellay s Antiquites de Rome (translated into English by Spenser), the exquisite Vanneur of the same author, and the Avril of Belleau, even the finer passages of D Aubigne&quot; and Du Bartas, are not only admirable in themselves, and of a kind not previously found in French literature, but are also such things as could not have been previously found, for the simple reason that the medium of expression was wanting. They constructed that medium for themselves, and no force of the reaction which they provoked was able to undo their work. Adverse criticism and the natural course of time rejected much that they had added. The charming diminutives they loved so much went out of fashion ; their compounds (for the most part, it must be confessed, justly) had their letters of natural ization promptly cancelled ; many a gorgeous adjective, in cluding some which could trace their pedigree to the earliest ages of French literature, but which bore an unfor tunate likeness to the new comers, was proscribed. But for all that no language has ever had its destiny influenced Ilo: i The 1 le ..