Page:Studies in the history of the renaissance (IA studiesinhistor01pategoog).djvu/154

132 possible to have this impulse in Greek and Latin, dead languages, péris et mises en reliquaires de livres. By aid of this poor plante et vergette of the French language, he must speak delicately, movingly, if he is ever to speak so at all; that, or none, must be for him the medium of what he calls, in one of his great phrases, le discours fatal des choses mondaines; and it is his patriotism not to despair of it; he sees it already, parfait en toute élégance et venuste de paroles.

Du Bellay was bom in the disastrous year 1525, the year of the battle of Pavia and the captivity of Francis the First. His parents died early, and to him, as the youngest of the family, his mother's little estate on the Loire side, ce petit Lyrè, the beloved place of his birth descended. He was brought up by a brother only a little older than himself; and left to themselves the two boys passed their lives in day-dreams of military glory. Their education was neglected; 'the time of my youth,' says Du Bellay, 'was lost, like the flower which no shower waters, and no hand cultivates.' He was just twenty years old when this brother died, leaving Joachim to be the guardian of his child. It was with regret, with a shrinking feeling of incapacity, that he took upon him the burden of this responsibility. Hitherto he had looked forward to the profession of a soldier,