ron de Faeneste_,
both satirical in character and full of vigour. He began as a poet by
poems in the lighter Pleiade style, but his masterpiece is the strange
work called _Les Tragiques_. This consists of seven books, amounting to
not much less than ten thousand lines, and entitled _Miseres_,
_Princes_, _La Chambre Doree_, _Les Feux_, _Les Fers_, _Vengeance_,
_Jugement_. The poem is half historical and half satirical, dealing with
the religious wars, the persecution of the Huguenots, the abuses of the
administration, and of contemporary manners, etc. Nothing equal to the
best verses of this singular book had yet been seen in France, and not
much equal to them has been produced since. The tone of sombre and
impressive declamation had been to some extent anticipated by Du Bartas,
but chiefly for purposes of description. D'Aubigne turned it to its
natural use in invective, and the effect is often extraordinarily fine.
Very copious citation would be necessary to show its excellence: but
before Victor Hugo there is nothing in French equal to D'Aubigne at his
best in point of clangour of sound and impetuosity of rhythm. It is
noteworthy that Du Bartas' _Semaine_, with the _Tragiques_ and the
tragedies of Garnier, finally established the Alexandrine as the
indispensable metre for serious and impassioned poetry in France.
Hitherto the decasyllable and the dodecasyllable had been used
indiscriminately, and Ronsard's _Franciade_ is written in the former.
But after the three poets just mentioned, the Alexandrine became
invariable; the decasyllable being left for light and occasional work,
as a sort of medium in usage as in bulk between the Alexandrine and the
octosyllable. The truth is that, until the improvements of language and
style which the Pleiade had introduced, the Alexandrine couplet had not
had either suppleness or dignity enough for the work. It was lumbering
and disjointed. As soon, however, as the classical turn, inseparable
from a specially classical metre, had been given to the language, it at
once took its place and has ever since kept it, though in the century
succeeding it was deprived of much of its force by arbitrary rules. The
lines of Boileau condemning Ronsard[202] have inseparably connected
Desportes and Bertaut, and have given them a position in literary
history which is as intrinsically inaccurate as it is unduly high.
Neither approaches Du Bartas or D'Aubigne in poetical excellence or in
adroit carrying o