R N R O N 841 Si je pouvois encore de mon cerveau Tirer cinq vers, 1'ouvrage seroit beau ; Mais cependant, je suis dedans 1'onziemc, Et si je croy que je fais le douzieme Ea voila treize ajustez au niveau. Ma foy, c'est fait ! All forms of the rondeau, or rondel, however, are alike in this that the distinguishing metrical emphasis is achieved by a peculiar use of the refrain. Though we have the Eng- lish rondels of Occleve and a set of rondeaus in the Rolliad (written by Dr Lawrence the friend of Burke, according to Mr Gosse, who has given us an admirable essay upon exotic forms of verse), it was not till our own day that the form had any real vogue in England. Considerable attention, however, has lately been given in England to the form. Some of the rondeaus of our own contemporary poets are as bright and graceful as Voiture's own. Mr Swinburne, who in his Century of Roundels was perhaps the first to make the refrain rhyme with the second verse of the first strophe, has brought the form into high poetry. Although the origin of the refrain in all poetry was no doubt the improvisator's need of a rest, a time in which to focus his forces and recover breath for future flights, the refrain has a distinct metrical value of its own ; it knits the structure together, and so intensifies the emotional energy, as we see in the Border ballads, in the Oriana of Lord Tennyson, and in the Sister Helen of Rossetti. The suggestion of extreme artificiality of " difficulty over- come " which is one great fault of the rondeau as a vehicle for deep emotion, does not therefore spring from the use of the refrain, but from the too frequent recur- rence of the rhymes in the strophes for which there is no metrical necessity as in the case of the Petrarchan sonnet. " Difficulty overcome," though a legitimate source of plea- sure in French poetry even of the most serious kind (for the French language is essentially the most unpoetic in Europe), finds no place in the serious poetry of England. In music the " rondo " seeks much the same effect as in poetry, the melodic emphasis of the refrain. The Italian composer Buononcini seems to have been the inventor of the rondo as thus understood. RONSARD, PIERRE DE (1524-1585), "Prince of Poets" (as his own generation in France called him, and as after much change of criticism there is reason for calling him still in reference to that generation and country), was born at the Chateau de la Poissonniere, near the village of Couture in the province of Vendomois (department of Loir-et-Cher) on September 11, 1524. His family are said to have come from the Slav provinces to the south of the Danube (provinces with which the crusades had given France much intercourse) in the first half of the 14th century. Baudouin de Ronsard or Rossart was the founder of the French branch of the house, and made his mark in the early stages of the Hundred Years' War. The poet's father was named Loys, and his mother was Jeanne de Chaudrier, of a family not only noble in itself but well connected. Pierre was the youngest son. Loys de Ronsard was maitre d'hotel du roi to Francis I., whose captivity after Pavia had just been softened by treaty, and he had to quit his home shortly after Pierre's birth. The future Prince of Poets was educated at home for some years and sent to the College de Navarre at Paris when he was nine years old. It is said that the rough life of a mediaeval school did not suit him. He had, however, no long experience of it, being quickly appointed page to the duke of Orleans. When Marguerite of France was married to James V. of Scotland Ronsard was attached to the king's service, and he spent three years in Great Britain. The latter part of this time seems to have been passed in England, though he had, strictly speaking, no business there. On returning to France in 1540 he was again taken into the service of the duke of Orleans. In
- his service he had other opportunities of travel, being
sent to Flanders and again to Scotland. After a time a more important employment fell to his lot, -and he was attached as secretary to the suite of Lazare de Baif, the father of his future colleague in the Pleiade and his com- panion on this occasion, Antoine de Baif, at the diet of Spires. Afterwards he was attached in the same way to the suite of the Cardinal du Bellay-Langey, and his mythical quarrel with Rabelais dates mythically from this period. His apparently promising diplomatic career was, however, cut short by an attack of deafness which no physician could cure, and he determined to devotejiimself to study. The institution which he chose for the purpose among the numerous schools and colleges of Paris was the College Coqueret, the principal of which was Daurat afterwards the "dark star" (as be has been called from his silence in France) of the Pleiade. Baif accompanied Ronsard ; Belleau shortly followed ; Joachim du Bellay, the second of the seven, joined not much later. Muretus, a great scholar and by means of his Latin plays a great influence in the creation of French tragedy, was also a student here. Konsard's period of study occupied seven years, and the first manifesto of the new literary movement, which was to apply to the. vernacular the principles of criticism and scholarship learnt from the classics, came not from him but from Du Bellay. The Defense et Illustration de la Langue Franqaise of the latter appeared in 1549, and the Pleiade may be said to have been then launched. It con- sisted, as its name implies, of seven writers whose names are some- times differently enumerated, though the orthodox canon is beyond doubt composed of Ronsard, Du Bellay, Baif, Belleau, Pontus de Tyard (a man of rank and position who had exemplified the prin- ciples of the friends earlier), Jodelle the dramatist, and Daurat. Ronsard's own work came a little later, and a rather idle story is told of a trick of Du Bellay's which at last determined him to publish. Some single and minor pieces, an epithalamium on Antoiue de Bourbon and Jeanne de Navarre, a " Hymne de la France," an "Ode a la Paix," preceded the publication in 1550 of the four first books ("first" is characteristic and noteworthy) of the Odes of Pierre de Ronsard. This was followed in 1552 by the publication of his Amours with the fifth book of Odes. These books excited a violent literary quarrel. Marot was dead, but he left a numerous school, some of whom saw in the stricter literary critique of the Pleiade, in its outspoken contempt of merely ver- nacular and mediaeval forms and so forth, an insult to the author of the Adolescence Clementine and his followers. The French court, and indeed all French society, was just then much interested in literary questions, and a curious story is told of the rivalry that ensued. Mellin de St Gelais, it is said, the chief of the " JiJcole Marotique " and a poet of no small merit, took up Ronsard's book and read part of it in a more or less designedly burlesque fashion before the king. It may be observed that if he did so it was a dis- tinctly rash and uncourtier-like act, inasmuch as from Ronsard's father's position in the royal household the poet was personally known and liked both by Henry and by his family. At any rate Marguerite the king's sister, who afterwards became duchess of Savoy, is said to have snatched the book from St Gelais and insisted on reading it herself, with the result of general applause. Hence- forward, if not before, his acceptance as a poet was not doubtful, and indeed the tradition of his having to fight his way against cabals is almost entirely unsupported. It is quite true that he more than any other poet has had to suffer detraction from a remarkably different series of opposing forces. But none of these interfered with his popularity in his own time, which was over- whelming and immediate, or with his prosperity, which was unbroken. He published his Hymns, dedicated to Marguerite de Savoie, in 1555, the- conclusion of the Amours in 1556, and then a collection of (Euvres Completes said to be due to the invitation of Mary Stuart, queen of Francis II., in 1560. The rapid change of sovereigns did Ronsard no harm. Charles IX., who succeeded his brother after a very short time, was even better inclined to him than Henry and Francis. He gave him rooms in the palace ; he bestowed upon him divers abbacies and priories ; and he called him and regarded him constantly as his master in poetry. Neither was Charles IX. a bad poet. This royal patronage, however, had its disagreeable side. It excited violent dislike to Ronsard on the part of the Huguenots, who wrote constant pasquinades against him, strove (by a ridiculous exaggera- tion of the Dionysiac festival at Arcueil, in which the friends had indulged to celebrate the success of the first French tragedy, Jodelle's CUopatre) to represent him as a libertine and an atheist, XX. 1 06
