fifty years of
practice on the plan of Jodelle had not yet resulted in the composition
of one really dramatic play. In short, though the Pleiade movement had
begun by being nothing if not critical, it had not kept up the habit of
self-criticism. The application of this criticism was what was left for
the seventeenth century to supply, and at the same time the elaboration
of a complete and workman-like prose style. We shall see how early and
how eagerly this task was accepted, and how thoroughly it was carried
out; so thoroughly, that the seventeenth century is the age of perfect
French prose. But what was gained in prose was lost in poetry, and,
putting the dramatists aside, the drop in this respect from the
sixteenth to the seventeenth century is immense. The sixteenth is,
putting our own days out of question, the palmy time of poetry in
France. The urbanity of Marot, the stately grace of Ronsard and his
followers, the majesty of Du Bartas, the fire of D'Aubigne, the nervous
and yet effortless strength of Regnier, have never been surpassed, and
until the last half century they have rarely been equalled. If to this
be added the more irregular and unequal, but hardly inferior merits of
the best sixteenth-century prose, the inexhaustible humour of Rabelais,
the simplicity and varied colour of the great memoir-writers, the subtle
eloquence of Montaigne, it may perhaps seem that the period can contest
the primacy with any other. The dispute between it and its successor is,
however, only an instance of one which recurs again and again in
literature, and which neither need nor should be handled here at
length.

BOOK III.

THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

CHAPTER I.

POETS.

[Sidenote: Malherbe.]

The history of the poetry of the seventeenth century in France naturally
and necessarily opens with Malherbe, though he was forty-five years old
at its beginning, and considerably the senior of Regnier, who has been
included among the poets of the Renaissance. Francois de Malherbe[224]
was born at Caen in 1555, being the eldest son of his father, another
Francois de Malherbe, and both on the father's and mother's side of
noble family. He was educated at his native town, in Germany and in
Paris, and when he was twenty-one he entered the army. He married in
1581, and had three children, two of whom died young--a circumstance not
immaterial in connection with his most famous poem, which is a
'Consolation' to a certain M