f the great flow of
inspiration which had characterised the sixteenth century, it was of no
small importance that the art of perfect expression should be cultivated
in French. Voiture was one of those who contributed most to the
cultivation of this art. His letters are as correct as those of Balzac,
and much less stilted; and of his poetry it is sufficient to say that
nothing more charming of the kind has ever been written than the sonnet
to Uranie, which stirred up a literary war, or the rondeau 'Ma foi c'est
fait de moi.' This last put once more in fashion a beautiful and
thoroughly French form, which it had been one of the worst deeds of the
Pleiade to make unfashionable. The chief rival of Voiture was Benserade,
a much younger man, whose sonnet on Job was held to excel, though it
certainly does not, that to Uranie. Benserade was of higher birth and
larger fortune than Voiture, and long outlived him. He was a great
writer of ballets or masques, and not unfrequently, like Voiture, showed
that a true poet underlay the fantastic disguises he put on. Around
these two are grouped numerous minor poets of different merit.
Boisrobert, the favourite of Richelieu and the companion of Rotrou and
Corneille in that minister's band of 'five poets;' Maleville, who in one
of the sonnet-tournaments of the time, that of the _Belle Matineuse_,
was supposed to have excelled even Voiture; Colletet, whose poems make
him less important in literature than his Lives of the French poets,
which unfortunately perished during the Commune before they had been
fully printed; Gomberville, more famous as a novelist; Sarrasin, an
admirable prose writer, and a clever composer of ballades and other
light verse; Godeau, a bishop and a very clever versifier; Blot, who was
rather a political than a social rhymer; Marigny, who was also famous
for his Mazarinades, but whose satirical power was by no means the only
side of his poetical talent; Charleval, whose personal popularity was
greater than his literary ability; Maucroix, the friend of La Fontaine;
Segrais, an eclogue writer of no small merit; Chapelle, an idle
epicurean, who derives most of his fame from the fact of his having been
intimate with all the foremost literary men of the time, and from his
having composed, in company with Bachaumont, a _Voyage_ in mixed prose
and verse, the form of which was long very popular in France and was
imitated with especial success by Anthony Hamilton and Voltaire;