Avant qu'Amour du Chaos ocieux Sans art, sans forme etoient brouillez les cieux. Dedans mon corps, lorde et grosse matiere, Pure par lui mon essence s'est faite, Or ever Love drew forth the slumbering light, Earth, sea, and sky, without his primal ray, Scarce life enough to stir the lumpish clay, His influence my blood and spirits warm'd; The fifty-ninth is an imitation of Bembo. Du froid hyver la poignante gelée, Ainsi j'allois sans espoir de dommage, Le jour qu'un oeil sur l'Avril de mon age Si There is more elasticity and come suol, poi che'l verno aspro e rio, Da buon arcier che di nascosto scocchi. Moss' io, Donna, quel dì che bei vostri occhi M'impiagar lasso tutto 'l lato manco. As when fresh spring apparels wood and plain, Sports with light foot, and feeds and sports again; Nor aught he fears from meshes or from bow, Has pierced, and panting on the earth he lies: In my life's April thus wont I to go, Of harm unfearing, where my fancy led, Ere the dart reach'd me from her radiant eyes. The hundred and sixty-second, to Baïf, proves his high esteem for that writer, whom we have seen so much disparaged. Pendant, Baïf, que tu frapes au but Charge de vins son epaule feconde, The conclusion of this is from Petrarch : where the variety in the metre gives the Italian poet a striking advantage over Ronsard. Baïf, who, second in our age to none, Dost with free step to Virtue's summit mount, Rich Sabut lifts his grape-empurpled mount, Love still attends, and ever at my side There is more nature and passion in the two hundred and fourteenth sonnet, which begins Quand je te voy, discourant à par toy, than I have observed in any of the others. The Second Book of his Amours, which contains, besides other short poems, eighty sonnets, is devoted to the praises of his Marie, the last thirteen being written after her death. It is confessedly in a more familiar style than the First Book; yet is filled with images drawn from the heathen mythology. J'aime la fleur de Mars, j'aime la belle rose, L'autre qui a le nom de ma belle Maistresse, Mon coeur, que doucement un bel oeil emprisonne. Lié de ses cheveux, me fit une couronne. Le Second Livre des Amours. Son. 28. Two flowers I love, the March-flower and the rose, The March-flower that of her the name doth bear, Three birds I love; one, moist with May-dew, goes In one of his odes (Book v. O.xi.) he again expresses his preference for these two flowers, the rose, and the violet, which he calls the flower of March, and supposes to bear the name of his Marie. That the lark was his favourite bird, appears from a passage in his Gayetez: Alouette, Ma doucelette mignolette, Qui plus qu'un rossignol me plais Qui chante en un bocage epais. After a few sonnets and madrigals on another lady, whom he calls Astree, and of whom we are not told whether she was of the Queen Mother's choosing or his own, we proceed to his two books of sonnets on Helene. These are a hundred and forty-two in number. He begins with swearing to her by her brothers Castor and Pollux; by the vine that enlaced the elm; by the meadows and woods, then sprouting into verdure (it was the first day of May); by the young Spring, eldest son of Nature; by the crystal that rolled along the streams; and by the nightingale, the miracle of birds, that she should be his last venture. Ce premier jour de May, Helene je vous jure Par Castor, par Pollux, vos deux freres jumeaux, Par la vigne enlassée à l'entour des or Whether she was so or not, does not, I think, appear; but it was full time, for he was about fifty years old. There is, however, another short book, entitled Amours Diverses; and besides this, a large gleaning of sonnets and odes, many of them on the same subject, which he did not think worth gathering; but which his editors were careful enough to pick up and store along with the rest. Amongst these are some which for more reasons than one I cannot recommend to the notice of my reader. We will pass them, and go on to his odes. These may be divided into two classes; some, in which he has imitated the ancients; and others, that are the offspring of his own feelings and fancy. In the former, unhappily the larger number, Anacreon, Pindar, Callimachus, Horace, are all laid under contribution by turns, and that with no sparing hand. It was in his ability to transfuse the spirit of the old Theban into Gallic song, or as he called it, to Pindarise, that he most prided himself, and it was here that he most egregiously failed. Si dès mon enfance Nothing can well be more unlike At the beginning of the next century, there was a translation of all Pindar into French, partly in prose and partly in verse. It is not mentioned by Heyne when he is recounting the versions that have been made of that writer; nor have I seen any notice of it elsewhere. I will add the title of the book, and a specimen of it, taken from the beginning, which will be enough to satisfy any reader's curiosity :-Le Pindare Thebain. return even a faint echo of it. But those who are acquainted with that poet, know that another of his distinctions consists, not only in the hardiness of his metaphors, but in the no less light than firm touch with which he handles them. One instance will be enough to show how ill Ronsard has represented this characteristic of his model. Pindar, speaking of a man who had not, through neglect or forgetfulness, his task to do when it ought to have been already done, says, that "he did not come, bringing with him Excuse, the daughter of Afterthought;" or literally, "of the late-minded Epimetheus." Ὃς οὐ τὴν Ἐπιμαθέος Pyth. V. 38. How has Ronsard contrived to spoil this in his application of it to the Constable Montmorency! Qui seul mettoit en evidence L. i. O. i. Strophe 6. Another of Pindar's excellences are those yvapai, sentences, or maxims, the effect of which results not more from their appositeness than their compression. One of these is, that "Envy is better than pity," pέoowv yap oirripμov póvoc, which Ronsard has left indeed no longer one of the dark sayings of the wise, but has made almost ludicrous by the light in which he has placed it :— C'est grand mal d'etre miserable, Mais c'est grand bien d'etre envié. L. i. O. x. Strophe 22. Sometimes on Pindar's stock he engrafts a conceit, than which no fruit can be more alien to the parent tree. Thus, of a passage in the Second Pythian, v. 125 to 130, in which the Theban appears to intimate, as he does elsewhere more plainly, that he expects a reward for his song; Ronsard avails himself to tell his patron, that he shall see how liberally his praises will sound, if "a present gilds the chord," Prince je t'envoye cette ode, This is truly anti-pindaric. Of that other class of odes, which appear more like the overflowings of his own mind, and which have a better chance of pleasing the English reader at least, I would point out the following:-in the first book, the Traduction meslce de vers et de prose. Par le Sieur Lagausie. 1626. 8vo. Paris. Chez La force de chasque element Paroit par leurs effects contraires, Mais le moindre de l'eau surmonte absolument Tous ceux de ses trois freres. Parmy les differens metaux Des thresors d'un superbe avare L'esclat de l'or fait treuver faux L'esclat des autres le plus rare, Brillant contre eux comme un flambeau qui luit Dans les tenebres de la nuict, Si tant est que mon coeur se pique De soin de descrire un combat Dont tous les Grecs vont voir l'esbat, Il faut parler de l'Olympique. D'autant que comme on voit que l'astre du soleil Esclaire la vaste estendue De l'air sans avoir son pareil. Je ne sçaurois non plus treuver un tournay comparable à l'Olympique, &c. seventeenth; in the second, the cle- Dieu vous gard, messagers fidelles Hupes, cocus, rossignolets, Animez les bois verdelets. Dieu vous gard, belles paquerettes, Et vous boutons jadis cognus Les douces herbes suçotez; Cent mille fois je resaluë O que j'aime ceste saison, God shield ye, heralds of the spring, That make your hundred chirpings heard God shield ye, Easter daisies all, God shield ye, bright embroider'd train A hundred thousand times I call- This season how I love! This merry din on every shore, For winds and storms, whose sullen roar |