ia, owing
to religious and political causes, before the Renaissance made its way
to her shores. But in France the two currents met, though the earlier
had lost most of its force, and, according to the time-honoured
parallel, flowed on long together before they coalesced. In the
following chapters we shall trace the history of this process, and here
we shall trace the first stage of it in reference to French poetry. In
the period of which Marot is the representative name, the earlier force
was still dominant in externals; in that of which Ronsard is the
exponent, the Greek and Latin element shows itself as, for the moment,
all-powerful.

[Sidenote: Jean le Maire.]

[Sidenote: Jehan du Pontalais.]

Between the _rhetoriqueurs_ proper, the Chastellains and the Cretins and
the Molinets on the one hand, and Marot and his contemporaries and
disciples on the other, a school of poets, considerable at least in
numbers, intervened. The chief of these was Jean le Maire des
Belges[165]. He was the nephew of Molinet, and his birth at Belges or
Bavia in Hainault, as well as his literary ancestry and predilections,
inclined him to the Burgundian, or, as it was now, the Austrian side.
But the strong national feeling which was now beginning to distinguish
French-speaking men threw him on the side of the King of Paris, and he
was chiefly occupied in his serious literary work on tasks which were
wholly French. His _Illustrations des Gaules_ is his principal prose
work, and in this he displays a remarkable faculty of writing prose at
once picturesque and correct. The titles of his other works (_Temple
d'Honneur et de Vertu_, etc.) still recall the fifteenth century, and
the Latinising tradition of Chartier appears strong in him. But at the
same time he Latinises with a due regard to the genius of the language,
and his work, pedantic and conceited as it frequently is, stands in
singular contrast to the work of some of his models. Something not
dissimilar, though in this case the _rhetoriqueur_ influence is less
apparent, may be said of Pierre Gringore, whose true title to a place in
a history of French literature is, however, derived from his dramatic
work, and who will accordingly be mentioned later. Nor had the tradition
of Villon, overlaid though it was by the abundance and popularity of
formal and allegorising poetry, died out in France. At least two
remarkable figures, Jehan du Pontalais and Roger de Collerye, represent
it in the fi