iterature.
There were some absurdities committed by the Pleiade no doubt, as there
always are in enthusiastic crusades of any kind: but it must never be
forgotten that they had a solid basis of philological truth to go upon.
French, after all, despite a strong Teutonic admixture, was a Latin
tongue, and recurrence to Latin, and to the still more majestic and
fertile language which had had so much to do in shaping the literary
Latin dialect, was natural and germane to its character. In point of
fact, the Pleiade made modern French--made it, we may say, twice over;
for not only did its original work revolutionise the language in a
manner so durable that the reaction of the next century could not wholly
undo it, but it was mainly study of the Pleiade that armed the great
masters of the Romantic movement, the men of 1830, in their revolt
against the cramping rules and impoverished vocabulary of the eighteenth
century. The effect of the change indeed was far too universal for it to
be possible for any Malherbe or any Boileau to overthrow it. The whole
literature of the nation, at a time when it was wonderfully abundant and
vigorous, 'Ronsardised' for nearly fifty years, and such practice at
such a time never fails to leave its mark. The actual details of the
movement cannot better be given than by going through the list of its
chief participators.

[Sidenote: Ronsard.]

[Sidenote: The Defense et Illustration de la Langue Francaise.]

Pierre de Ronsard[193], Prince of Poets[194], was born at La
Poissonniere, in the Vendomois, or, as it was then more often called,
the Gatinais, on the banks of the river Loir, in 1524. He died in his
own country in the year 1585, acknowledged, not merely in France but out
of it, as the leader of living poets. His early life, however, was
rather that of a man of action than of a poet, and one of the most
studious of poets. His father was an old courtier and servant of
Francis I., whose companion in captivity he had been, and Ronsard
entered upon court life when he was a boy of ten years old. He visited
Scotland and England in the suite of French ambassadors, and remained
for some considerable time in Great Britain. He was also attached to
embassies in Flanders, Holland, and Germany. But before he was of age he
fell ill, and though he recovered, it was at the cost of permanent
deafness, which incapacitated him for the public service. He threw
himself on literature for a consolation, and under