tienne Dolet and Amyot at their head,
had begun to transfer to the vernacular, in versions or in original
work, the principles of style which they had admired and imitated in the
classics. On the other hand, Marot, representing the extreme vernacular
school, succeeded, tolerably early in the period, in refining and
chastening the language of the fifteenth century to such an extent that
his style, transmitted through La Fontaine, and then through the
lighter work of the eighteenth century, has retained a certain hold on
literature for its particular purpose almost to the present day. The
most remarkable writer, from the point of view of style, in this part of
the century is perhaps Bonaventure des Periers, who displays both the
vernacular purity free from classical mixture, and at the same time the
Renaissance admiration and imitation of the classics in a very high
degree. Yet the same lesson is taught by the prose of Des Periers as by
the verse of Marot. The language had not as yet arrived at its full
growth, it had not taken in its full supply of nourishment. It was
therefore not equal to the complete duties of a literary tongue. It
wanted enriching, strengthening, educating.

This task it was which was performed, and performed on the whole with
remarkable skill and success, by the Pleiade movement. It is not easy to
fix on any period in the history of any other language in which, at an
interval of fifty years, the advance in the capacities, as distinguished
from the mere accomplishments of the tongue, is so noticeable as it is
in French between 1550 and 1600. It is not merely that between these
dates writers of talent and even genius may be mentioned by the dozen,
that the language can boast of having added to its stores the odes of
Ronsard, the sonnets of Du Bellay, the myriad graceful songs of the
lesser poets of the Pleiade, the stately descriptions of Du Bartas, the
fiery invective of D'Aubigne, the polished satire of Regnier, the essays
of Montaigne, the immortal pasquinades of the Menippee--it is that the
whole constitution and organisation of the language has been
strengthened and improved. That the secret of the Alexandrine has at
last been mastered means that the whole future course of French poetry
is in a manner mapped out. That lyric measures have been devised,
intricate, not merely in arrangement like those of the mediaeval forms,
but in harmony, means that at any future time French poets who choose to
re