till the extreme end of the period that a great literature was
forthcoming—in France almost the whole century was marked
by the production of capital works in every branch of literary
effort. Not even the 17th century, and certainly not the 18th,
can show such a group of prose writers and poets as is formed
by Calvin, St Francis de Sales, Montaigne, du Vair, Bodin,
d’Aubigné, the authors of the Satire Ménippée, Monluc,
Brantôme, Pasquier, Rabelais, des Periers, Herberay des Essarts,
Amyot, Garnier, Marot, Ronsard and the rest of the “Pléiade,”
and finally Regnier. These great writers are not merely remarkable
for the vigour and originality of their thoughts, the freshness,
variety and grace of their fancy, the abundance of their learning
and the solidity of their arguments in the cases where argument
is required. Their great merit is the creation of a language and
a style able to give expression to these good gifts. The foregoing
account of the medieval literature of France will have shown
sufficiently that it is not lawful to despise the literary capacities
and achievements of the older French. But the old language,
with all its merits, was ill-suited to be a vehicle for any but
the simpler forms of literary composition. Pleasant or affecting
tales could be told in it with interest and pathos. Songs of charming
naïveté and grace could be sung; the requirements of the
epic and the chronicle were suitably furnished. But it was barren
of the terms of art and science; it did not readily lend itself to
sustained eloquence, to impassioned poetry or to logical discussion.
It had been too long accustomed to leave these things to
Latin as their natural and legitimate exponent, and it bore
marks of its original character as a lingua rustica, a tongue suited
for homely conversation, for folk-lore and for ballads, rather than
for the business of the forum and the court, the speculations of
the study, and the declamation of the theatre. Efforts had indeed
been made, culminating in the heavy and tasteless erudition of
the schools of Chartier and Crétin, to supply the defect; but
it was reserved for the 16th century completely to efface it.
The series of prose writers from Calvin to Montaigne, of poets
from Marot to Regnier, elaborated a language yielding to no
modern tongue in beauty, richness, flexibility and strength,
a language which the reactionary purism of succeeding generations
defaced rather than improved, and the merits of which have
in still later days been triumphantly vindicated by the confession
and the practice of all the greatest writers of modern France.
16th-Century Poetry.—The first few years of the 16th century were naturally occupied rather with the last developments of the medieval forms than with the production of the new model. The clerks of the Bazoche and the Confraternity of the Passion still produced and acted mysteries, moralities and farces. The poets of the “Grands Rhétoriqueurs” school still wrote elaborate allegorical poetry. Chansons de geste, rhymed romances and fabliaux had long ceased to be written. But the press was multiplying the contents of the former in the prose form which they had finally assumed, and in the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles there already existed admirable specimens of the short prose tale. There even were signs, as in some writers already mentioned and in Roger de Collérye, a lackpenny but light-hearted singer of the early part of the century, of definite enfranchisement in verse. But the first note of the new literature was sounded by Marot. Clément Marot (1496/7–1544). The son of an elder poet, Jehan des Mares called Marot (1463–1523), Clément at first wrote, like his father’s contemporaries, allegorical and mythological poetry, afterwards collected in a volume with a charming title, L’Adolescence clémentine. It was not till he was nearly thirty years old that his work became really remarkable. From that time forward till his death, about twenty years afterwards, he was much involved in the troubles and persecutions of the Huguenot party to which he belonged; nor was the protection of Marguerite d’Angoulême, the chief patroness of Huguenots and men of letters, always efficient. But his troubles, so far from harming, helped his literary faculties; and his epistles, epigrams, blasons (descendants of the medieval dits), and coq-à-l’âne became remarkable for their easy and polished style, their light and graceful wit, and a certain elegance which had not as yet been even attempted in any modern tongue, though the Italian humanists had not been far from it in some of their Latin compositions. Around Marot arose a whole school of disciples and imitators, such as Victor Brodeau (1470?–1540), the great authority on rondeaux, Maurice Scève, a fertile author of blasons, Salel, Marguerite herself (1492–1549), of whom more hereafter, and Mellin de Saint Gelais (1491–1558). The last, son of the bishop named above, is a courtly writer of occasional pieces, who sustained as well as he could the style marotique against Ronsard, and who has the credit of introducing the regular sonnet into French. But the inventive vigour of the age was so great that one school had hardly become popular before another pushed it from its stool, and even of the Marotists just mentioned Scève and Salel are often regarded as chief and member respectively of a Lyonnese coterie, intermediate between the schools of Marot and of Ronsard, containing other members of repute such as Antoine Heroët and Charles Fontaine and Ronsard. claiming Louise Labé (v. inf.) herself. Pierre de Ronsard (1524–1585) was the chief of this latter. At first a courtier and a diplomatist, physical disqualification made him change his career. He began to study the classics under Jean Daurat (1508–1588), and with his master and five other writers, Étienne Jodelle (1532–1573), Rémy Belleau (1528–1577), Joachim du Bellay (1525–1560), Jean Antoine de Baïf (1532–1589), and Pontus de Tyard (d. 1605, bishop of Châlons-sur-Saône), composed the famous “Pléiade.” The object of this band was to bring the French language, in vocabulary, The Pléiade. constructions and application, on a level with the classical tongues by borrowings from the latter. They would have imported the Greek licence of compound words, though the genius of the French language is but little adapted thereto; and they wished to reproduce in French the regular tragedy, the Pindaric and Horatian ode, the Virgilian epic, &c. But it is an error (though one which until recently was very common, and which perhaps requires pretty thorough study of their work completely to extirpate it) to suppose that they advocated or practised indiscriminate borrowing. On the contrary both in du Bellay’s famous manifesto, the Deffense et illustration de la langue française, and in Ronsard’s own work, caution and attention to the genius and the tradition of French are insisted upon. Being all men of the highest talent, and not a few of them men of great genius, they achieved much that they designed, and even where they failed exactly to achieve it, they very often indirectly produced results as important and more beneficial than those which they intended. Their ideal of a separate poetical language distinct from that intended for prose use was indeed a doubtful if not a dangerous one. But it is certain that Marot, while setting an example of elegance and grace not easily to be imitated, set also an example of trivial and, so to speak, pedestrian language which was only too imitable. If France was ever to possess a literature containing something besides fabliaux and farces, the tongue must be enriched and strengthened. This accession of wealth and vigour it received from Ronsard and the Ronsardists. Doubtless they went too far and provoked to some extent the reaction which Malherbe led. Their importations were sometimes unnecessary. It is almost impossible to read the Franciade of Ronsard, and not too easy to read the tragedies of Jodelle and Garnier, fine as the latter are in parts. But the best of Ronsard’s sonnets and odes, the finest of du Bellay’s Antiquités de Rome (translated into English by Spenser), the exquisite Vanneur of the same author, and the Avril of Belleau, even the finer passages of d’Aubigné and du Bartas, are not only admirable in themselves, and of a kind not previously found in French literature, but are also such things as could not have been previously found, for the simple reason that the medium of expression was wanting. They constructed that medium for themselves, and no force of the reaction which they provoked was able to undo their work. Adverse criticism and the natural course of time rejected much that they had added. The charming diminutives they loved so much went out of fashion; their compounds (sometimes it must be confessed, justly) had their letters of naturalization promptly cancelled; many a gorgeous adjective, including some which could trace
