Bellay was right in
the main, and it must especially be insisted on that his aim was to
strengthen and reform, not to alter or misguide, the French language.
The peroration of the book in a highly rhetorical style speaks of the
writer and his readers as having 'echappe du milieu des Grecs et par les
escadrons Romains pour entrer jusqu'au sein de la tant desiree France.'
That is to say, the innovators are to carry off what spoils they can
from Greece and Rome, but it is to be for the enrichment and benefit of
the French tongue. Frenchmen are to write French, not Latin and Greek;
but they are to write it not merely in a conversational way, content as
Du Bellay says somewhere else, 'n'avoir dit rien qui vaille aux neuf
premiers vers, pourvu qu'au dixieme il y ait le petit mot pour rire.'
They are to accustom themselves to long and weary studies, 'ear ce sont
les ailes dont les escripts des hommes volent au ciel,' to imitate good
authors, not merely in Greek and Latin, but in Italian, Spanish, or any
other tongue where they may be found. Such was the manifesto of the
Pleiade; and no one who has studied French literature and French
character, who knows the special tendency of the nation to drop from
time to time into a sterile self-admiration, and an easy confidence that
it is the all-sufficient wonder of the world, can doubt its wisdom.
Certainly, whatever may be thought of it in the abstract, it was
justified of its children. The first of these was, as has been said,
Ronsard's _Odes_, published in 1550. These he followed up, in 1552, by
_Les Amours de Cassandre_, in 1553 by a volume of _Hymnes_, as well as
by _Le Bocage Royal_, _Les Amours de Marie_, sonnets, etc., all of
which were, in 1560, republished in a collected edition of four
volumes. From the first Ronsard had been a very popular poet at court,
where, according to a well-known anecdote, Marguerite de Savoie, the
second of the Valois Marguerites, snatched his first volume from Mellin
de Saint Gelais, who was reading it in a designed tone of burlesque, and
reading it herself to her brother Henry II. and the court, obtained a
verdict at once for the young poet. The accession of Charles IX. brought
Ronsard still more into favour, and during the next ten years he
produced many courtly poems of the occasional kind, besides others to
suit his own pleasure. In 1572 the first part of his most ambitious, but
perhaps least successful, work appeared. This was the _Franciade_,