h the
varied colour and vivid imagination of the middle age and the
Renaissance, often results in extraordinarily striking expressions.
_L'Eschine azuree_, for instance, is a singularly picturesque, if also
somewhat barbaric, reminiscence of [Greek: eurea nota thalasses]: the
enforcement of the idea of _hora novissima tempora pessima_ in the four
following lines is admirable:--

Nos execrables moeurs, dedans Gomorrhe apprises,
Les troublees saisons, les civiles fureurs,
Les menaces du ciel, sont les avant-coureurs
De Christ, qui vient tenir ses dernieres assises.

In such a passage again as the following, the power and simplicity of
the diction can escape no reader; the piling up of the strokes is worthy
of Victor Hugo:--

Les etoiles cherront. Le desordre, la nuict,
La frayeur, le trespas, la tempeste, le bruit,
Entreront en quartier.

All that was wanting to make Du Bartas a poet of the first rank was some
faculty of self-criticism; of natural _verve_ and imagination as well as
of erudition he had no lack, but in critical faculty he seems to have
been totally deficient. His beauties, rare in kind and not small in
amount, are alloyed with vast quantities of dull absurdity.

[Sidenote: D'Aubigne.]

[Sidenote: Desportes.]

Agrippa d'Aubigne[201] was a few years Du Bartas' junior, and long
outlived him. He was an important prose-writer as well as poet, and his
long life was as full of interesting events as of literary occupations.
At six years old he read Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; a year or two later
his father made him swear, in presence of the gibbeted corpses of the
unsuccessful conspirators of Amboise, to revenge their death. Shortly
afterwards he narrowly escaped the stake. For a time he dwelt with Henry
of Navarre at the court of Charles IX., and there thoroughly imbued
himself with the Ronsardising tradition. But he soon escaped with his
master, and for years was a Calvinist irreconcileable, always for war to
the knife, and as rude and bold in the council chamber as in the field.
The death of his master was unfortunate for D'Aubigne; but, though he at
first opposed the regency of Marie de Medicis, he made terms for
himself. The publication, however, of his 'History' brought enemies on
him, and he fled to Geneva, finishing his days there. His prose works
are too numerous to mention separately: the chief besides his histories
are the _Confession de Sancy_ and the _Aventures du Ba