a
dull epic. At the death of Charles, Ronsard retired to his native
province, where he had an abbacy, Croix-Val. Here all his poetical
powers returned, and in his last _Amours, Sonnets to Helene_, and other
pieces, some of his very best work is to be found. The year before his
death he produced an edition of his works much altered, but by no means
invariably improved.

There are few poets to whose personal merits there is more unanimity of
trustworthy testimony than there is to those of Ronsard. From the time
of his betaking himself to literary work, he seems to have been wholly
given to study, and to the contemplation of natural beauty. Although
jealous of his own great reputation, and liable to be nettled when it
was imperilled, as it was by Du Bartas, he was as a rule singularly
placable in literary quarrels. The story of his quarrelling with
Rabelais is late, unsupported, and to all appearance fabulous; while, on
the other hand, the passages which have been supposed to reflect on the
Pleiade in the writings of Rabelais can, for chronological reasons, by
no possibility refer to Ronsard or his friends. Lastly, the poet appears
to have had no thought of writing for gain, and though, like all his
contemporaries, he did not scruple to solicit favours from the king, he
was in no way importunate or servile. But while his personal character,
as well as the extraordinary esteem in which he was held by all his
contemporaries, has never been seriously contested, critical estimates
of his literary work have strangely varied. To his own age he was the
'Prince of Poets.' His successor, Malherbe, behaved to him as certain
popes are reported to have behaved to their predecessors,
excommunicating him in the literary sense. Boileau, with his usual
ignorance of French literature before his own day, described his work in
lines which French schoolboys long learnt by heart, and which are as
false in fact as they are imbecile in criticism. Fenelon was almost the
only sincere partisan he had for two centuries. But when the Romantic
movement began Ronsard was for a while almost restored to the position
he held in his lifetime, and his works became a kind of Bible to the
disciples of Sainte-Beuve and the followers of Hugo. The strong
mediaeval revival which accompanied the movement was however
unfavourable to Ronsard, and he has again sunk, though not very low, in
the general estimation of French critics. The history is curious, and as
a l