The Prince Of French Poets

( Originally Published 1919 )

IT is difficult nowadays to conceive that, within half a century of his death, Ronsard's fame suffered so dark an eclipse that no new edition of his works was called for between 1629 and 1857. When he died, he was, as M. Jusserand reminds us, the most illustrious man of letters in Europe. He seemed, too, to have all those gifts of charm—charm of mood and music—which make immortality certain. And yet, in the rule-of-thumb ages that were to follow, he sank into such disesteem in his own country that Boileau had not a good word for him, and Voltaire roundly said of him that he " spoiled the language." Later, we have Arnauld asserting that France had only done herself dishonour by her enthusiasm for " the wretched poetry of Ronsard." Fénelon, as M. Jusserand tells us, discusses Ronsard as a linguist, and ignores him as a poet.

It was the romantic revival of the nineteenth century that placed Ronsard on a throne again. Even to-day, however, there are pessimistic Frenchmen who doubt whether their country has ever produced a great poet. Mr. Bennet has told us of one who, on being asked who was the greatest of French poets, replied : " Victor Hugo, hélas ! " And in the days when Hugo was still but a youth the doubt must have been still more painful. So keenly was the want of a national poet felt that, if one could not have been discovered', the French would have had to invent him. It was necessary for the enthusiastic young romanticists to possess a great indigenous figure to stand beside those imported idols —Shakespeare, Byron, Goethe, and Dante. Sainte-Beuve, who brought out a Ronsard anthology with a critical essay in 1828, showed them where to look. After that, it was as though French literature had begun with Ronsard. He was the " ideal ancestor." He was, as it were, a rediscovered fatherland. But his praise since then has been no mere task of patriotism. It has been a deep enthusiasm for literature. You cannot imagine," wrote FIaubert, in 1852, what a poet Ronsard is. What a poet ! What a poet ! What wings ! . . This morning, at half-past twelve, I read a poem aloud which almost upset my nerves, it gave me so much pleasure." That may be taken as the characteristic French View of Ronsard. It may be an exaggerated view. It may be fading to some extent before modern influences. But it is unlikely that Ronsard's reputation in his own country will ever again be other than that of a great poet.

At the same time, it is not easy, on literary grounds, to acquiesce in all the praises that have been heaped upon him. One would imagine from Flaubert's exclamations that Ronsard had a range like Shelley's, whereas, in fact, he was more comparable with the English cavalier poets. He had the cavalier poet's gift of making love seem a profession rather than a passion. He was always very much a gentleman, both in his moods and his philosophy. A great deal of his best poetry is merely a variation on carpe, diem. On the other hand, though he never went very deep, or very high, he did express real sentiments and' emotions in poetry. Few poets have sung the regret for youth more sincerely and more beautifully, and, with Ronsard, regret for the lost wonder of his own youth was perhaps the acutest emotion he ever knew. He was himself, in his early years, one of those glorious youths who have the genius of charm and comeliness, of grace and strength and the arts. He excelled at football as in lute-playing. He danced, fenced, and rode better than the best ; and, with his noble countenance, his strong limbs, his fair beard, and his " eyes full of gentle gravity," he must have been the picture of the perfect courtier and soldier. Above all, we are told, his conversation was delightful. He had " the gift of pleasing." When he went to Scotland in 1537 with Madeleine, the King's daughter, to attend as page her tragic marriage with James V, James was so attracted by him that he did not allow him to leave the country for two years. With every gift of popularity and success, with the world apparently already 'at his feet, Ronsard was suddenly struck down by an illness that crippled his whole life. He became deaf, or hall-deaf. His body was tortured with arthritis and recurrent attacks of gout. His career as a courtier lay in ruins before him.

Possibly, had it not been so, his genius as a poet would have spent itself in mere politeness. The loss of his physical splendour and the death of more than one of his companions, however, filled him with an extreme sense of the transitoriness of the beauty of the world —of youth and fame and flowers—and turned him both to serious epicureanism and to serious writing. By the year 155o he was leading the young men of France in a great literary renaissance--a reaction against the lifeless jingle of ballades and punning rhymes. Like du Bellay, he asked himself and his contemporaries :---

" Are we, then, less than the Greeks and Romans? And he set out to lay the foundations in France of a literature as individual in its genius as the ancient classics. M. Jusserand, in a most interesting chapter, relates the story of the battles over form and language which were fought by French men of letters in the days of La 'Pléiade. In an age of, awakenings, of conquests, of philosophies, of discussions on everything under the sun, the literature of tricksters was ultimately bound to give way before the bold originality and the sincerities of the new school. But Ronsard had to endure a whole parliament of mockery before the day of victory.

Of his life, apart from his work in literature, there is little to tell. For a man who lived in France in days when Protestantism and Catholicism were murderously at one another's throats, he had a peculiarly uneventful career. This, too, though he threw himself earnestly into the battle against the heretics. He had begun by sympathizing with Protestantism, because it promised much-needed reforms in the Church ; but the sympathy, was short-lived. In 1553, though a layman, he was himself filling various ecclesiastical offices. He drew the salaries of several priories during his life, more lowly paid priests apparently doing the work. Though an earnest Catholic, however, Ronsard was never faith-less to friends who took the other side. He published his kindly feelings towards Odet de Coligny, the Admiral's cardinal brother, for instance, who had adopted Protestantism and married, and, though he could write bloodily enough against his sectarian enemies, the cry for tolerance, for pity, for peace, seems continually to force itself to his lips amid the wars of the time. M. Jusserand lays great stress on the plain-spokenness of Ronsard. He praises especially the courage with which the poet often spoke out his mind to kings and church-men, though no man could write odes fuller of exaggerated adulation when they were wanted. He sometimes counselled kings, we are told, " in a tone that, after all our revolutions, no writer would dare to employ to-day." Perhaps M. Jusserand over-estimates the boldness with which his hero could remind kings that they, like common mortal's, were made of mud. He has done so, I imagine, largely in order to clear him from the charge of being a flatterer. It is interesting to be re-minded, by the way, that one of his essays in flattery was an edition of his works dedicated, by order of Catherine de Médicis, to Elizabeth of England, whom he compared to all the incomparables, adding a eulogy of " Mylord Robert Du-Dle comte de l'Encestre " as the ornament of the English, the wonder of the world. Elizabeth was de-lighted, and gave the poet a diamond for his pretty book.

But Ronsard does not live in literature mainly as a flatterer. Nor is he remembered as a keeper of the conscience of princes, or as a religious controversialist. If nothing but his love-poems had survived, we should have almost all his work that is of literary importance. He fell in love in the grand manner three times, and from these three passions most of his good poetry flowed. First there was Cassandre, the beautiful girl of Florentine extraction, whom he saw singing to her lute, when he was only twenty-two, and loved to distraction. She married another and became the star of Ronsard's song. She was the irruptive heroine of that witty and delightful sonnet on the Iliad:---

Je veux lire en trois jours l'Iliade d'Homère,
Et pour ce, Corydon, ferme bien l'huis sur moi ;
Si rien me vient troubler, je t'assure ma foi,
Tu sentiras combien pesante est ma colère.

Je ne veux seulement que notre chambrière
Vienne faire mon lit, ton compagnon ni toi ;
Je veux trois jours entiers demeurer à recoi,
Pour folâtrer après une semaine entière.

Mais, si quelqu'un venait de la part de Cassandre,
Ouvre-lui tôt la porte, et ne le fais attendre,
Soudain entre en ma chambre et me viens accoutrer.

Je veux tant seulement à lui seul me montrer ;
Au reste, si un dieu voulait pour moi descendre
Du ciel, ferme la porte et ne le laisse entrer.

Nine years after Cassandre came Marie, the fifteenyear-old daughter of an Angevin villager, nut-brown, smiling, and with cheeks the colour of a May rose. She died young, but not before she had made Ronsard suffer by coquetting with another lover. What is more important still, not before she had inspired him to write that sonnet which has about it so much of the charm of the morning :—

Mignonne, levez-vous, vous êtes paresseuse,
Ja la gaie alouette au ciel a fredonné,
Et jà le rossignol doucement jargonné,
Dessus l'épine assis, sa complainte amoureuse.

Sus ! debout ! allons voir l'herbelette perleuse,
Et votre beau rosier de boutons couronné,
Et vos oeillets aimés auxquels aviez donné
Hier au soir de l'eau d'une main si soigneuse.

Harsoir en vous couchant vous jurâtes vos yeux
D'être plus tôt que moi ce matin éveillée :
Mais le dormir de l'aube, aux filles gracieux,

Vous tient d'un doux sommeil encor les yeux sillées.
Ça, ça, que je les baise, et votre beau tetin,
Cent fois, pour vous apprendre à vous lever matin.

Ronsard was old and grey—at least, he was old before his time and grey—when he met Hélène de Sorgères, maid of honour to the Queen, and began the third of his grand passions. He lived all the life of a young lover over again. They went to dances together, Hélène in a mask. Hélène gave her poet a crown of myrtle and laurel. They had childish quarrels and swore eternal fidelity. It was for her that Ronsard made the most exquisite of his sonnets : Quand vous serez bien vieille —a sonnet of which Mr. Yeats has written a magical version in English.