, while owing much to the _Lusus_ of the Venetian poet
Navagero, have in them the true breath of the fields; it is his _douce_
province of Anjou which inspires him; the song to _Venus_ in its
happiest stanzas is only less admirable than the _Vanneur de Ble_,
with which more than any other single poem the memory of Du Bellay
is associated. The personal note, which is in general absent from
the poetry of Ronsard, is poignantly and exquisitely audible in the
best pieces of Du Bellay. He did not live long enough to witness the
complete triumph of the master; in 1560 he died exhausted, at the
age of thirty-five.

The Pleiade served literature by their attention to form, by their
skill in poetic instrumentation; but they were incapable of
interpreting life in any large and original way. In the hands of their
successors poetry languished for want of an inspiring theme. PHILIPPE
DESPORTES (1546-1606) was copious and skilful in his reproduction
and imitation of Italian models; as a courtier poet he reduced
literary flattery to a fine art; but his mannered graces are cold,
his pretence of passion is a laboured kind of _esprit_. A copy of
his works annotated by the hand of Malherbe survives; the comments,
severe and just, remained unpublished, probably because the writer
was unwilling to pursue an adversary whom death had removed from his
way. Jean Bertaut, his disciple, is a lesser Desportes. Satire was
developed by Jean Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, and to him we owe an _Art
Poetique_ (1575) which adapts to his own time the teaching of
Aristotle and Horace. More interesting than these is JEAN PASSERAT
(1534-1602), whose spirit is that of old France in its mirth and
mockery, and whose more serious verse has the patriotism of French
citizenship; his field was small, but he tilled his field gaily and
courageously. The villanelle _J'ai perdu ma tourterelle_ and the ode
on May-day show Passerat's art in its happiest moments.

The way for a reform in dramatic poetry had been in some degree
prepared by plays of the sixteenth century, written in Latin--the
work of Buchanan, Muret, and others--by translations from Terence,
Sophocles, Euripides, translations from Italian comedy, and
renderings of one Spanish model, the highly-popular _Celestina_ of
Fernando de Rojas. The Latin plays were acted in schools. The first
performance of a play in French belonging to the new tendency was
that of Ronsard's translation of the Plutus of Aristophanes,