e bois amoureux,' Tibullus--with an
unfailing delight in all the concatenations of phrase which are foisted
on to unripe youth nowadays in the pages of a Gradus. One might almost
say that he saw his loves at second-hand, through alien eyes, were it
not that he faced them with some directness as physical beings, and that
the artificiality implied in the criticism is incongruous with the
honesty of such a natural man. But apart from a few particulars that
would find a place in a census paper one would be hard put to it to
distinguish Cassandre from Helene. What charming things Ronsard has to
say of either might be said of any charming woman--'le mignard
embonpoint de ce sein,'--

'Petit nombril, que mon penser adore,
Non pas mon oeil, qui n'eut oncques ce bien ...'

And though he assures Helene that she has turned him from his grave
early style, 'qui pour chanter si bas n'est point ordonne,' the
difference is too hard to detect; one is forced to conclude that it is
precisely the difference between a court lady and an inn-keeper's
daughter. As far as art is concerned the most definite and distinctive
thing that Ronsard had to say of any of his ladies is said of one to
whom he put forward none of his usually engrossing pretensions. It was
the complexion of Marguerite of Navarre of which he wrote:--

'De vif cinabre estoit faicte sa joue,
Pareille au teint d'un rougissant oeillet,
Ou d'une fraize, alors que dans de laict
Dessus le hault de la cresme se joue.'

That is, whether it belonged to Marguerite or not, a divine complexion.
It is the kind of thing that cannot be said about two ladies; the image
is too precise to be interchangeable. This may be a reason why it was
applied to a lady _hors concours_ for Ronsard.

But we need, in fact, seek no reason other than the circumscription of
Ronsard's poetical gifts. They reduce to only two--the gift of convinced
commonplace, and the gift of simple melody. His commonplace is genuine
commonplace, quite distinct from the tense and pregnant condensation of
a lifetime of impassioned experience in Dante or Shakespeare; things
that would occur to a bookish country gentleman in after-dinner
conversation, the sentiments that such a rare and amiable person would
underscore in his Horace. (From a not unimportant angle Ronsard is a
minor Horace.) These things are the warp of his poetry; they range from
the familiar 'Le temps s'en va' to the masterly straightforwardness of