Eschanges des Pierres
Precieuses_. These little myths and metamorphoses of gems are
ingenious and graceful. The delicate feeling for nature which Belleau
possessed is seen at its best in the charming song _Avril_, included
in his somewhat incoherent _Bergerie_. Among his papers was found,
after his death, a comedy, _La Reconnue_, which, if it has little
dramatic power, shows a certain instinct for satire.

[Footnote 2: The "Baifin verse," French not classical, is of fifteen
syllables, divided into hemistichs of seven and eight syllables.]

These are minor lights in the poetical constellation; but the star
of JOACHIM DU BELLAY shines with a ray which, if less brilliant than
that of Ronsard, has a finer and more penetrating influence. Du Bellay
was born about 1525, at Lire, near Angers, of an illustrious family.
His youth was unhappy, and a plaintive melancholy haunts his verse.
Like Ronsard he suffered from deafness, and he has humorously sung
its praises. _Olive_, fifty sonnets in honour of his Platonic or
Petrarchan mistress, Mlle. de Viole (the letters of whose name are
transposed to Olive), appeared almost at the same moment as the
earliest _Odes_ of Ronsard; but before long he could mock in sprightly
stanzas the fantasies and excesses of the Petrarchan style. It was
not until his residence in Rome (1551) as intendant of his cousin
Cardinal du Bellay, the French ambassador, that he found his real
self. In his _Antiquites de Rome_ he expresses the sentiment of ruins,
the pathos of fallen greatness, as it had never been expressed before.
The intrigues, corruption, and cynicism of Roman society, his broken
health, an unfortunate passion for the Faustina of his Latin verses,
and the longing for his beloved province and little Lire depressed
his spirits; in the sonnets of his _Regrets_ he embodied his intimate
feelings, and that lively spirit of satire which the baseness of the
Pontifical court summoned into life. This satiric vein had, indeed,
already shown itself in his mocking counsel to _le Poete courtisan_:
the courtier poet is to be a gentleman who writes at ease; he is not
to trouble himself with study of the ancients; he is to produce only
pieces of occasion, and these in a negligent style; the rarer and
the smaller they are the better; and happily at last he may cease
to bring forth even these. Possibly his _poete courtisan_ was Melin
de Saint-Gelais. As a rural poet Du Bellay is charming; his _Jeux
Rustiques_