roduced by
some of the mechanical sonnet sequences of his contemporaries. No one
reading Ronsard ever felt the tedium of mere nullity. It would be hard
to find in the whole of M. van Bever's exhaustive edition of 'Les
Amours'[9] a single piece which has not its sufficient charge of gusto.
When you are tired, it is because you have had enough of that particular
kind of man and mind; you know him too well, and can reckon too closely
the chances of a shock of surprise.

[Footnote 9: _Les Amours_. Par Pierre de Ronsard. Texte etabli par
Ad. van Bever. Two volumes. (Paris: Cres.)]

With the more obvious, and in their way delightful, surprises Ronsard
is generous. He can hold the attention longer than any poet of an equal
tenuity of matter. Chiefly for two reasons, of which one is hardly
capable of further analysis. It is the obvious reality of his own
delight in 'Petrarchising.' He is perpetually in love with making; he
disports himself with a childlike enthusiasm in his art. There are
moments when he seems hardly to have passed beyond the stage of naive
wonder that words exist and are manipulable.

'Dous fut le trait, qu'Amour hors de sa trousse
Pour me tuer, me tira doucement,
Quand je fus pris au dous commencement
D'une douceur si doucettement douce....'

Ronsard is here a boy playing knucklebones with language; and some of
his characteristic excellences are little more than a development of
this aptitude, with its more striking incongruities abated. A modern ear
can be intoxicated by the charming jingle of

'Petite Nimfe folastre,
Nimfette que j'idolastre....'

One does not pause to think how incredibly naive it is compared with
Villon, who had not a fraction of Ronsard's scholarship, or even with
Clement Marot; naive both in thought and art. As for the stature of the
artist, we are back with Charles of Orleans. It would be idle to
speculate what exactly Villon would have made of the atomic theory had
he read Lucretius; but we are certain that he would have done something
very different from Ronsard's

'Les petits cors, culbutant de travers,
Parmi leur cheute en biais vagabonde,
Heurtes ensemble ont compose le monde,
S'entr'acrochant d'acrochemens divers....'

For this is not grown-up; the cut to simplicity has been too short. So
many of Ronsard's verses flow over the mind, without disturbing it; fall
charmingly on the ear, and leave no echoes. But for the moment we share
his enjoym