Page:Studies in the history of the renaissance (IA studiesinhistor01pategoog).djvu/155

Rh hereditary in his family. But at this time a sickness attacked him which brought him cruel sufferings and seemed likely to be mortal. It was then for the first time that he read the Greek and Latin poets. These studies came too late to make him what he so much desired to be, a trifler in Greek and Latin verse, like so many others of his time now forgotten; instead, they made him a lover of his own homely native tongue, that poor plante et vergette of the French language. It was through this fortunate shortcoming in his education that he became national and modern, and he learned afterwards to look back on that wild garden of his youth with only half regret. A certain Cardinal du Bellay was the successful man of the family, a man often employed in high official affairs. It was to him that the thought of Joachim turned when it became necessary to choose a profession, and in 1552 he accompanied the Cardinal to Rome. He remained there nearly five years, burdened with the weight of affairs and languishing with home-sickness. Yet it was under these circumstances that his genius yielded its best fruits. From Rome, which to most men of an imaginative temperament like his would have yielded so many pleasureable sensations, with all the curiosities of the Renaissance still fresh there, his thoughts went back painfully, longingly, to the country of