Of most of the poets who followed “the conquering banner” of their Prince, Ronsard, as of the lesser learned poets of Spain, no detailed mention can be made here. The abundance of literary talent which has seldom been wanting in France accounts sufficiently for the “crop of poets” which sprang up “at the summons of Du Bellay, and under the hand of Ronsard.” That time of war, oppression, and conspiracy might have seemed to be “wholly consecrated to the Muses.” Olivier de Magny (d. 1560), Jacques Tahureau (1527-1555), Nicolas Denisot (1515-1559), called “le Comte d’Alsinois” by anagram, Louis le Caron (1536-1617), who called himself Charondas, Estienne de la Boetie (1530-1563), the friend of Montaigne, who indeed saved him from oblivion, and others whom it were tedious to mention, were men of talent, respectable members of the army of minor poets, which in nations of considerable literary faculty, and in times of literary vigour, has never been wanting. One really original poet usually makes many who are accomplished, but who without the example might never have written, and would certainly not have written so well. It was perhaps the necessity for finding a rhyme to _haut_ which induced Boileau to quote, from among all the followers of Ronsard, the names of “Desportes and Bertaut.” His dogmatic assertion that they were made “more restrained” by the fall of Ronsard is perfectly unfounded. Desportes (1546-1606), who in character was a courtier of the baser kind, owed his great popularity at Court to the fact that he was an echo of one part of Ronsard.[93] Bertaut (1552-1611), another courtier, was also another Desportes. Their greater measure was mainly due to the fact that they represented the decadence of their school.
There are, however, three poets of the later sixteenth century in France who stand apart, though all are fairly describable as followers of Ronsard, and to one of them it was given, in the French phrase, to “tell its fact” to the meticulous criticism of Malherbe. They are Du Bartas, Aubigné, and Regnier.
Guillaume Salluste, Seigneur du Bartas, was born in or about 1544, at Montfort, near Auch, in Gascony. He served Henry IV. both in diplomacy and in war, and died in 1590 of wounds received at the battle of Ivry. Du Bartas was one of the many of his time who in a once favourite phrase were “tam Marte quam Mercurio,” equally devoted to arms and to letters. On the suggestion of Jeanne d’Albret, the Queen of Navarre, he began by writing a poem on the story of Judith; but his fame was gained by the _Semaine_, or “Week of Creation,” published in 1579. It was followed by the _Uranie_, the _Triomphe de la Foi_, and the _Seconde Semaine_, of which part was published in 1584, and which remained unfinished at his death. Du Bartas is an interesting figure, and his literary fortune has been curious. With men of his class in France a profession of Protestantism was commonly only a form of political opposition. They were “of the Religion” because they were the enemies of the House of Guise, and the great majority of them fell away from it in the following generations. But with Du Bartas the religious enthusiasm was manifestly real. He was of the Puritan type, and in that lies part, at least, of the explanation of his strange literary fortune in his own country. He was at first extraordinarily popular. Even Ronsard praised him, and sent him a present of a pen. But his party began to claim that he was the superior of the courtier poet. This not unnaturally drew from Ronsard the emphatic denial of the sonnet to Daurat, and the opinion of Frenchmen has been favourable to the older poet. Du Bartas has been treated with neglect, and even contempt, by his own countrymen.[94] Abroad he has had better fortune. He was widely translated. The English version of Joshua Sylvester was long popular with us, and in comparatively recent times he has been praised by Goethe for showing qualities wanting in other Frenchmen. But Frenchmen, to whom the Puritan type has always been uncongenial, have disliked him on those very grounds. They have always insisted on looking exclusively at his faults, his want of taste, his provincialism, and his pedantry. All are undeniable, but the critics who have endeavoured to secure justice for the Pléiade ought to have remembered that this last was only an exaggeration of the teaching of Ronsard and Du Bellay. They had recommended adaptation of the language of classic poetry, Greek and Latin. They had used inversions, and had argued that French writers were entitled to form compound words on the Greek model. Du Bellay, for example, justifies the construction of such a word as “fervêtu.” Du Bartas certainly took a very wide licence in this respect. He wrote such lines as--
