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Marot has been called the French Chaucer. He resembles the English poet in liveliness of fancy, picturesque imagery, simplicity of expression, and satirical humour; but he has these merits in a far less degree; and in variety of genius, pathos and power, is immeasurably his inferior.

Ronsard, to whom I at length return, was the successor of Marot. In his time the Italian sonnetteers, as Petrarch, Bembo, Sanazzaro, were the prevailing models, and classical pedantry the prevailing taste. Ronsard, having filled his mind with Greek and learning, determined to be a poet,

behind round the head is the legend from the forty-second Psalm, "Comme le cerf braie après le décours des eaues, ainsi brait mon âme après toi, O Dieu !" which is certainly a most extraordinary and profane application. In the days of Diana of Poictiers, Marot had composed a version of the Psalms, then very popular. It was the fashion to sing them to dance and song tunes; and the courtiers and beauties had each their favourite psalm, which served as a kind of devise. This may explain the very singular inscription on this very singular picture.

and looked about for a mistress to be the object of his songs for a poet without a mistress was then an unheard-of anomaly. He fixed upon a beautiful woman of Blois, named Cassandre, whose Greek appellative, it is said, was her principal attraction in his fancy. To her he addressed about two hundred and twenty sonnets, in a style so lofty and pedantic, stuffed with such hard names and philosophical allusions, that the fair Cassandra must have been as wise as her namesake, the daughter of Priam, to have comprehended her own praises.

Ronsard's next love was more interesting. Her name was Marie: she was beautiful and kind: the poet really loved her; and consequently, we find him occasionally descending from his heights of affectation and scholarship, to the language of truth, nature and tenderness. Marie died young; and among Ronsard's most admired poems are two or three little pieces written after her death. As his works are not commonly met with, I give one as a specimen of his style :

EPITAPHE DE MARIE.

Ci reposent les os de la belle Marie,
Qui me fit pour un jour quitter mon Vendomois,*
Qui m'echauffa le sang au plus verd de mes mois;
Qui fut toute mon tout, mon bien, et mon envie.

En sa tombe repose honneur et courtoisie,
Et la jeune beauté qu'en l'ame je sentois,

Et le flambeau d'Amour, ses traits et son carquois,
Et ensemble mon cœur, mes pensées et ma vie.

Tu es, belle Angevine,* un bel astre des cieux;
Les anges, tous ravis, se paissent de tes yeux,
La terre te regrette, O beauté sans seconde !

Maintenant tu es vive, et je suis mort d'ennui,
Malheureux qui se fie en l'attente d'autrui ;

Trois amis m'ont trompé,-toi, l'amour, et le monde.

Ronsard had by this time acquired a reputation which eclipsed that of all his contemporaries. He was caressed and patronised by Charles the Ninth (of hateful memory), who, like Nero, exhibited the revolting combination of a taste for

* Ronsard was a native of the Vendomois, and Marie, of Anjou,

poetry and the fine arts, with the most sanguinary and depraved dispositions. Ronsard, having lost his Marie, was commanded by Catherine de' Medicis to select a mistress from among the ladies of her court, to be the future object of his tuneful homage. He politely left her Majesty to choose for him, prepared to fall in love duly at the royal behest; and Catherine pointed out Helène de Surgeres, one of her maids of honour, as worthy to be the second Laura of a second Petrarch. The docile poet, with zealous obedience, warbled the praises of Helène for the rest of his life. He also consecrated to her a fountain near his château in the Vendomois, which has popularly preserved her name and fame. It is still known as the "Fontaine d'Helène."

Helène was more witty than beautiful, and, though vain of the celebrity she had acquired in the verses of Ronsard, she either disliked him in the character of a lover, or was one of those lofty ladies

Who hate to have their dignity profaned
With any relish of an earthly thought.*

* Ben Jonson.

She desired the Cardinal du Perron would request Ronsard (in her name) to prefix an epistle to the odes and sonnets addressed to her, assuring the world that this poetical love had been purely Platonic. "Madam," said the Cardinal, "you had better give him leave to prefix your picture.”* I presume my fair and gentle readers (I shall none, I am sure, who are not one or the other, or both,) are as tired as myself of all this affectation, and glad to turn from it to the interest of passion and reality.

have

"There is not," says Cowley, "so great a lie to be found in any poet, as the vulgar conceit of men, that lying is essential to good poetry." On the contrary, where there is not truth, there is nothing

Rien n'est beau que le vrai,-le vrai seul est aimable!

* V. Bayle Dictionnaire Historique.-Pierre de Ronsard was born in 1524, and died in 1585.

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