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BALLADS AND LYRICS OF OLD FRANCE: WITH OTHER POEMS
Translations
LIST OF POETS TRANSLATED
I. CHARLES D'ORLEANS, who has sometimes, for no very obvious
reason, been styled the father of French lyric poetry, was born in
May, 1391. He was the son of Louis D'Orleans, the grandson of
Charles V., and the father of Louis XII. Captured at Agincourt, he
was kept in England as a prisoner from 1415 to 1440, when he
returned to France, where he died in 1465. His verses, for the
most part roundels on two rhymes, are songs of love and spring, and
retain the allegorical forms of the Roman de la Rose.
II. FRANCOIS VILLON, 1431-14-? Nothing is known of Villon's birth
or death, and only too much of his life. In his poems the ancient
forms of French verse are animated with the keenest sense of
personal emotion, of love, of melancholy, of mocking despair, and
of repentance for a life passed in taverns and prisons.
III. JOACHIM DU BELLAY, 1525-1560. The exact date of Du Bellay's
birth is unknown. He was certainly a little younger than Ronsard,
who was born in September, 1524, although an attempt has been made
to prove that his birth took place in 1525, as a compensation from
Nature to France for the battle of Pavia. As a poet Du Bellay had
the start, by a few mouths, of Ronsard; his Recueil was published
in 1549. The question of priority in the new style of poetry
caused a quarrel, which did not long separate the two singers. Du
Bellay is perhaps the most interesting of the Pleiad, that company
of Seven, who attempted to reform French verse, by inspiring it
with the enthusiasm of the Renaissance. His book L'Illustration de
la langue Francaise is a plea for the study of ancient models and
for the improvement of the vernacular. In this effort Du Bellay
and Ronsard are the predecessors of Malherbe, and of Andre Chenier,
more successful through their frank eagerness than the former, less
fortunate in the possession of critical learning and appreciative
taste than the latter. There is something in Du Bellay's life, in
the artistic nature checked by occupation in affairs--he was the
secretary of Cardinal Du Bellay--in the regret and affection with
which Rome depressed and allured him, which reminds the English
reader of the thwarted career of Clough.
IV. REMY BELLEAU, 1528-1577. Du Belleau's life was spent in the
household of Charles de Lorraine, Marquis d'Elboeuf, and was marked
by nothing more eventful than the usual pilgrimage to Italy, the
sacred land and sepulchre of art.
V. PIERRE RONSARD, 1524-1585. Ronsard's early years gave little
sign of his vocation. He was for some time a page of the court,
was in the service of James V. of Scotland, and had his share of
shipwrecks, battles, and amorous adventures. An illness which
produced total deafness made him a scholar and poet, as in another
age and country it might have made him a saint and an ascetic.
With all his industry, and almost religious zeal for art, he is one
of the poets who make themselves, rather than are born singers.
His epic, the Franciade, is as tedious as other artificial epics,
and his odes are almost unreadable. We are never allowed to forget
that he is the poet who read the Iliad through in three days. He
is, as has been said of Le Brun, more mythological than Pindar.
His constant allusion to his grey hair, an affectation which may be
noticed in Shelley, is borrowed from Anacreon. Many of the sonnets
in which he 'petrarquizes,' retain the faded odour of the roses he
loved; and his songs have fire and melancholy and a sense as of
perfume from 'a closet long to quiet vowed, with mothed and
dropping arras hung.' Ronsard's great fame declined when is
Malherbe came to 'bind the sweet influences of the Pleiad,' but he
has been duly honoured by the newest school of French poetry.
VI. JACQUES TAHUREAU, 1527-1555. The amorous poetry of Jacques
Tahureau has the merit, rare in his, or in any age, of being the
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