an imitation of the Italian poem by Tansillo, in a manner which his
maturer judgment must have condemned. It was not until about his
fortieth year that he found his true direction. Du Vair, with whom
he was acquainted, probably led him to a true conception of the nature
of eloquence. Vigorous of character, clear in understanding, with
no affluence of imagination and no excess of sensibility, Malherbe
was well qualified for establishing lyrical poetry upon the basis
of reason, and of general rather than individual sentiment. He chose
the themes of his odes from topics of public interest, or founded
them on those commonplaces of emotion which are part of the possession
of all men who think and feel. If he composed his verses for some
great occasion, he sought for no curiosities of a private imagination,
but considered in what way its nobler aspects ought to be regarded
by the community at large; if he consoled a friend for losses caused
by death, he held his personal passion under restraint; he generalised,
and was content to utter more admirably than others the accepted
truths about the brevity and beauty of life, and the inevitable doom
of death. What he gained by such a process of abstraction, he lost
in vivid characterisation; his imagery lacks colour; the movement
of his verse is deliberate and calculated; his ideas are rigorously
enchained one to another.

It has been said that poetry--the overflow of individual emotion--is
overheard; while oratory--the appeal to an audience--is heard. The
processes of Malherbe's art were essentially oratorical; the lyrical
cry is seldom audible in his verse; it is the poetry of eloquence
thrown into studied stanzas. But the greater poetry of the seventeenth
century in France--its odes, its satires, its epistles, its noble
dramatic scenes--and much of its prose literature are of the nature
of oratory; and for the progress of such poetry, and even of such
prose, Malherbe prepared a highway. He aimed at a reformation of the
language, which, rejecting all words either base, provincial,
archaic, technical, or over-learned and over-curious, should employ
the standard French, pure and dignified, as accepted by the people
of Paris. In his hands language became too exclusively an instrument
of the intelligence; yet with this instrument great things were
achieved by his successors. He methodised and regulated
versification, insisting on rich and exact rhymes, condemning all
licence and in