the direction of
Daurat, a scholar of renown, studied for years at the College Coqueret.
Here Du Bellay, Belleau, Baif, were his fellow-students, and the four
with their master, with Etienne Jodelle, and with Pontus de Tyard,
afterwards bishop of Chalon, formed, as has been said, the Pleiade
according to the most orthodox computation. The idea conceived and
carried out in these studious years (by Ronsard himself and Du Bellay
beyond all doubt in the first place) was the reformation of French
language and French literature by study and imitation of the ancients.
In 1549 the manifesto of the society issued, in the shape of Du Bellay's
_Defense et Illustration de la Langue Francaise_, and in 1550 the first
practical illustration of the method was given by Ronsard's _Odes_. The
principles of the _Defense et Illustration_ may be thus summarised. The
author holds that the current forms of literature, dizains, rondeaus,
etc., are altogether too facile and easy, that the language used is too
pedestrian, the treatment wanting in gravity and art. He would have Odes
of the Horatian kind take the place of Chansons, the sonnet, _non moins
docte que plaisante invention Italienne_, of dizains and huitains,
regular tragedy and comedy of moralities and farces, regular satires of
Fatrasies and Coq-a-l'ane. He takes particular pains to demonstrate the
contrary proposition to Wordsworth's, and to prove that merely natural
and ordinary language is not sufficient for him who in poesy wishes to
produce work deserving of immortality. He ridicules the mediaeval
affectations and conceits of some of the writers of his time, who gave
themselves such names as 'Le Banni de Liesse,' 'Le Traverseur des Voies
Perilleuses,' etc. He speaks, indeed, not too respectfully of mediaeval
literature generally, and uses language which probably suggested Gabriel
Harvey's depreciatory remarks about the _Fairy Queen_ forty years later.
In much of this there is exaggeration, and in much more of it mistake.
By turning their backs on the middle ages--though indeed they were not
able to do it thoroughly--the Pleiade lost almost as much in subject and
spirit as they gained in language and formal excellence. The laudation
of the sonnet, while the ballade and chant royal, things of similar
nature and of hardly less capacity, are denounced as _epiceries_,
savours of a rather Philistine preference for mere novelty and foreign
fashions. But, as has been already pointed out, Du