informed that an earlier edition, printed in Spain, has lately been discovered. In these there is a certain prolixity and hardness of style, a want of connexion, a habit of repeating verses or entire passages from others. They have nothing of the marvellous, nor borrow anything from Arabian sources. In some others of the more ancient poetry, there are traces of the oriental manner, and a peculiar tone of wild melancholy. The little poems scattered through the prose romance, entitled, Las Guerras de Granada, are rarely, as I should conceive, older than the reign of Philip II. These Spanish ballads are known to our public, but generally with inconceivable advantage, by the very fine and animated translations of Mr. Lockhart." SECT. III.-ON FRENCH AND GERMAN POETRY. French Poetry Ronsard His Followers German Poetry. poets numerous. 47. THIS was an age of verse in France; and perhaps in French no subsequent period do we find so long a catalogue of her poets. Goujet has recorded not merely the names, but the lives, in some measure, of nearly two hundred, whose works were published in this half century. Of this number scarcely more than five or six are much remembered in their own country. It is possible, indeed, that the fastidiousness of French critics, or their idolatry of the age of Louis XIV., and of that of Voltaire, may have led to a little injustice in their estimate of these early versifiers. Our own prejudices are apt of late to take an opposite direction. The Moorish ballads, with a very few exceptions, belong to the reigns of Philip II. and Philip III., and those of the Cid, about which so much interest has been taken, are the latest, and among the least valuable of all. All these are, I believe, written on the principle of assonances. An admirable romance on a bullfight, in Mr. Lockhart's volume, is faintly to be traced in one introduced in Las Guerras de Granada; but I have since found it much more at length in another collection. It is still, however, far less poetical than the English imitation. Change in the tone of French poetry. 48. A change in the character of French poetry, about the commencement of this period, is referable to the general revolution of literature. The allegorical personifications which, from the era of the Roman de la Rose, had been the common field of verse, became far less usual, and gave place to an inundation of mythology and classical allusion. The Désir and Reine d'Amour of the older school became Cupid with his arrows and Venus with her doves; the theological and cardinal virtues, which had gained so many victories over Sensualité and Faux Semblant, vanished themselves from a poetry which had generally enlisted itself under the enemy's banner. This cutting off of an old resource rendered it necessary to explore other mines. All antiquity was ransacked for analogies; and where the images were not wearisomely common-place, they were absurdly far-fetched. This revolution was certainly not instantaneous; but it followed the rapid steps of philological learning, which had been nothing at the accession of Francis I., and was every thing at his death." In his court, and in that of his son, if business or gallantry rendered learning impracticable, it was at least the mode to affect an esteem for it. Many names in the list of French poets are conspicuous for high rank, and a greater number are among the famous scholars of the age. These, accustomed to writing in Latin, sometimes in verse, and yielding a superstitious homage to the mighty dead of antiquity, thought that they ennobled their native language by destroying her idiomatic purity. 49. The prevalence, however, of this pedantry was chiefly owing to one poet, of great though shortlived renown, Pierre Ronsard. He was the first of seven contemporaries in song under Henry II., then 2 [Sainte-Beuve, in his learned Tableau de la Poésie Française au seizième siècle, Paris, 1828, speaks of this revolution in taste, which substituted a classical school for that of the middle ages, kept up as it had been by Marot and his contemporaries, as almost sudden :Tout enfin semble promettre à Marot une postérité d'admirations encore plus que de rivaux, et à la poésie un perfectionnement paisible et continu, lorsqu'à l'improviste la génération nouvelle réclame contre une admiration jusque là VOL. II. Ronsard. unanime, et, le détachant brusquement du passé, déclare qu'il est temps de s'ouvrir par d'autres voies un avenir de gloire. L'Illustration de la Langue Française, par Joachim Dubellay, est comme le manifeste de cette insurrection soudaine, qu'on peut dater de 1549. The extracts which he proceeds to give from this work of Dubellay prove that it was at least intended to recommend the cultivation of style in the native language through a careful study of classical models.-1847.] I denominated the French Pleiad; the others were Jodelle, Bellay, Baif, Thyard, Dorat, and Belleau. Ronsard, well acquainted with the ancient languages, and full of the most presumptuous vanity, fancied that he was born to mould the speech of his fathers into new forms more adequate to his genius. Je fis des nouveaux mots, His style, therefore, is as barbarous, if the continual adoption of Latin and Greek derivatives renders a modern language barbarous, as his allusions are pedantic. They are more ridiculously such in his amatory sonnets; in his odes these faults are rather less intolerable, and there is a spirit and grandeur which show him to have possessed a poetical mind." The popularity of Ronsard was extensive; and, though he sometimes complained of the neglect of the great, he wanted not the approbation of those whom poets are most ambitious to please. Charles IX. addressed some lines to Ronsard, which are really elegant, and at least do more honour to that prince than anything else recorded of him; and the verses of this poet are said to have lightened the weary hours of Mary Stuart's imprisonment. On his death in 1586 a funeral service was performed in Paris with the best music that the king could command; it was attended by the Cardinal de Bourbon and an immense concourse; eulogies in prose and verse were recited in the university; and in those anxious moments, when the crown of France was almost in its agony, there was leisure to lament that Ronsard had been withdrawn. How differently attended was the grave of Spenser! 50. Ronsard was capable of conceiving strongly, and bringing his conceptions in clear and forcible, though seldom in pure or well-chosen language, before the mind. The poem, entitled Promesse, which will be found in Auguis's Recueil des Anciens Poëtes, is a proof of this, and excels what little besides I have read of this poet. Bouterwek, whose criticism on Ronsard appears fair and just, and who gives him, and those who belonged to his school, credit for a 199. Goujet, Bibliothèque Française, xii. b Id. 216. • Id. 207. perceiving the necessity of elevating the tone of French verse above the creeping manner of the allegorical rhymers, observes that, even in his errors, we discover a spirit striving upwards, disdaining what is trivial, and restless in the pursuit of excellence. But such a spirit may produce very bad and tasteless poetry. La Harpe, who admits Ronsard's occasional beauties and his poetic fire, is repelled by his scheme of versification, full of enjambemens, as disgusting to a correct French ear as they are, in a moderate use, pleasing to our own. After the appearance of Malherbe, the poetry of Ronsard fell into contempt, and the pure correctness of Louis XIV.'s age was not likely to endure his barbarous innovations and false taste." Balzac not long afterwards turns his pedantry into ridicule, and, admitting the abundance of the stream, adds that it was turbid. In later times more justice has been done to the spirit and imagination of this poet, without repealing the sentence against his style." 51. The remaining stars of the Pleiad, except perhaps Bellay, sometimes called the French Ovid, and Other French whose "Regrets," or lamentations for his absence poets. from France during a residence at Rome, are almost as querulous, if not quite so reasonable, as those of his prototype on the Ister, seem scarce worthy of particular notice; for Jodelle, the founder of the stage in France, e Geschichte der Poésie, v. 214. f Goujet, 245. Malherbe scratched out about half from his copy of Ronsard, giving his reasons in the margin. Racan one day looking over this, asked whether he approved what he had not effaced. Not a bit more, replied Malherbe, than the rest. Encore aujourd'hui il est admiré par les trois quarts du parlement de Paris, et généralement par les autres parlemens de France. L'université et les Jésuites tiennent encore son part contre la cour, et contre l'académie. . . . Ce n'est pas un poëte bien entier, c'est le commencement et la matière d'un poëte. On voit, dans ses œuvres, des parties naissantes, et à demi animées, d'un corps qui se forme et qui se fait, mais qui n'a garde d'estre achevé. C'est une grande source, il faut l'avouer; mais c'est une source troublée et boueuse; une source, où non seulement il y a moins d'eau que de limon, mais où l'ordure empêche de couler l'eau. Œuvres de Balzac, i. 670, and Goujet, ubi supra. La Harpe. Biogr. Univ. [M. Sainte-Beuve has devoted a whole volume to a selection from Ronsard, Paris, 1828, to whom, without undue praise, he has restored a more honourable place than Malherbe and those who took their tone from him had assigned him. The extracts are chiefly from his lighter poetry, in which the pedantry of his more pompous style does not much appear. Though with little invention, and indeed a large proportion of these selections is taken from Latin or Greek poets, Ronsard is often more happy in expression, and more spirited, as well as gay, in sentiment, than we should expect to find after reading his laboured poems. -1847.] i Goujet, xiii. 128. Auguis. has deserved much less credit as a poet, and fell into the fashionable absurdity of making French out of Greek. Raynouard bestows some eulogy on Baif.* Those who came afterwards were sometimes imitators of Ronsard, and, like most imitators of a faulty manner, far more pedantic and far-fetched than himself. An unintelligible refinement, which every nation in Europe seems in succession to have admitted into its poetry, has consigned much then written in France to oblivion. As large a proportion of the French verse in this period seems to be amatory as of the Italian; and the Italian style is sometimes followed. But a simpler and more lively turn of language, though without the naïveté of Marot, often distinguishes these compositions. These pass the bounds of decency not seldom; a privilege which seems in Italy to have been reserved for certain Fescennine metres, and is not indulged to the solemnity of the sonnet or canzone. The Italian language is ill-adapted to the epigram, in which the French succeed so well." Du Bartas. 52. A few may be selected from the numerous versifiers under the sons of Henry II. Amadis Jamyn, the pupil of Ronsard, was reckoned by his contemporaries almost a rival, and is more natural, less inflated and emphatic than his master." This praise is by no means due to a more celebrated poet, Du Bartas. His numerous productions, unlike those of his contemporaries, turn mostly upon sacred history; but his poem on the Creation, called La Semaine, is that which obtained most reputation, and by which alone he is now known. The translation by Silvester has rendered it in some measure familiar to the readers of our old poetry; and attempts have been made, not without success, to show that Milton had been diligent in picking jewels from this mass of bad taste and bad writing. Du Bartas, in his style, was a disciple of Ronsard; he affects words derived from the ancient languages, or, if founded on analogy, yet without precedent, and has as |