ique products of the
mature poetical genius of France. But Marot's gift was not wide enough
for the voluminous energies of the age; and it was not until a
generation later, in the work of the _Pleiade_--a group of writers of
whom RONSARD was the chief, and who flourished about the middle of the
sixteenth century--that the poetical spirit of the French Renaissance
found its full expression.

The mere fact that the _Pleiade_ formed a definite school, with common
principles and a fixed poetical creed, differentiates them in a striking
way from the poets who had preceded them. They worked with no casual
purpose, no merely professional art, but with a high sense of the glory
of their calling and a noble determination to give to the Muses whom
they worshipped only of their best. They boldly asserted--in Du Bellay's
admirable essay, _La Defense et Illustration de la Langue
Francaise_--the right of the French language to stand beside those of
the ancients, as a means of poetical expression; and they devoted their
lives to the proof of their doctrine. But their respect for their own
tongue by no means implied a neglect of the Classics. On the contrary,
they shared to the full the adoration of their contemporaries for the
learning and the literature of the Ancient World. They were scholars as
well as poets; and their great object was to create a tradition in the
poetry of France which should bring it into accord with the immortal
models of Greece and Rome. This desire to imitate classical literature
led to two results. In the first place, it led to the invention of a
great number of new poetical forms, and the abandonment of the old
narrow and complicated conventions which had dominated the poetry of
the Middle Ages. With the free and ample forms of the Classics before
them, Ronsard and his school enfranchised French verse. Their technical
ability was very great; and it is hardly too much to say that the result
of their efforts was the creation of something hitherto lacking in
French literature--a poetical instrument which, in its strength, its
freedom, its variety of metrical resources, and its artistic finish, was
really adequate to fulfil the highest demands of genius. In this
direction their most important single achievement was their elevation of
the 'Alexandrine' verse--the great twelve-syllabled rhyming couplet--to
that place of undisputed superiority over all other metres which it has
ever since held in French poetry.