Page:Studies in the history of the renaissance (IA studiesinhistor01pategoog).djvu/159

Rh exquisite and various music than that of the older French verse, or of the classical poets. The music of the measured scanned verse of Latin and Greek poetry is one thing; the music of the rhymed, unscanned verse of Villon and the old French poets, the poésie chantee, is another. To unite together these two kinds of music in a new school of French poetry, to make verse which would scan and rhyme as well, to search out and harmonise the measure of every syllable and unite it to the swift, flitting, swallow-like motion of rhyme, to penetrate their poetry with a double music,—this was the ambition of the Pleiad. They are insatiable of music, they cannot have enough of it; they desire a music of greater compass perhaps than words can possibly yield, to drain out the last drops of sweetness which a certain note or accent contains.

This eagerness for music is almost the only serious thing in the poetry of the Pleiad; and it was Goudimel, the severe and protestant Goudimel, who set Ronsard's songs to music. But except in this these poets are never serious. Mythology, which with the great Italians had been a motive so weighty and severe, becomes with them a mere toy. That 'lord of terrible aspect,' Amor, has become the petit enfant Amour. They are full of fine railleries; they delight in diminutives, ondelette, fondelette,