Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/276

256 frigid by the vein of humour which pervades them. Voiture can mingle flattery and badinage with the most airy playfulness—

"Julie a l'esprit et les yeux                        Plus brillant et plus radieux,                                     Landrirette,                         Que l'astre du jour et midi,                                     Landriry.

Elle a tout en perfection, Hors qu'elle a trop d'aversion, Landrirette, Pour les amants et les souris, Landriry."

It is in this airy spirit that he composed most of his rondeaux—a form which had been too much neglected after Marot by the serious poets of the Pleiad. The famous Ma foi is a good example, and so is Un buveur d'eau; but in Dans la prison he strikes a more serious note, and in En bon Français he uses the form to attack Godeau with vivacity and point. Of his sonnets, the best known is the "Il faut finir mes jours en l'amour d'Uranie," over the respective merits of which and of the sonnet in octosyllables, Job, of Isaac Benserade (1612-1694), the graceful poet of the king's "ballets mythologiques," a lively discussion went on for some time in the circle of the Hôtel. His verse-epistles are easy, natural, and gay. The most philosophic and felicitous is that to the Prince of Condé "sur son retour d'Allemagne" on the vanity of posthumous fame. "Préciosité" or Marinism found in the verse of Voiture