t years of his childhood were spent in
the southern town, so that the south entered into him thoroughly. The
language that he never wrote, the Languedoc, was that, perhaps, in which
he thought during all his life. It was his mother's.

It has been noticed by all his modern readers, it will be noticed
probably with peculiar force by English readers, that the fame of Marot
during his lifetime and his historical position as the leader of the
Renaissance has in it something exaggerated and false. One cannot help a
perpetual doubt as to whether the religious quarrel, the influence of
the Court, the strong personal friendships and enmities which surrounded
him had not had more to do with his reputation than his faculty, or even
his genius, for rhyme. Whenever he wanted L100 he asked it of the King
with the grave promise that he would bestow upon him immortality.

From Ronsard, or from Du Bellay, we, here in the north, could understand
that phrase; from Marot it carries a flavour of the grotesque. Ready
song, indeed, and a great power over the material one uses in singing
last indefinitely; they last as long as the sublime or the terrible in
literature, but we forbear to associate with them--perhaps unjustly--the
conception of greatness. If indeed anyone were to maintain that Marot
was not an excellent and admirable poet he would prove himself ignorant
of the language in which Marot wrote, but let the most sympathetic turn
to what is best in his verse, let them turn for instance to that
charming lyric: "A sa Dame Malade" or to "The Ballad of Old Time," or
even to that really large and riotous chorus of the vine, and they will
see that it is the kind of thing which is amplified by music, and which
sometimes demands the aid of music to appear at all. They will see quite
plainly that Marot took pleasure in playing with words and arranged them
well, felt keenly and happily, played a full lyre, but they will doubt
whether poetry was necessarily for him the most serious business of
life.

Why, then, has he taken the place claimed for him, and why is he firmly
secure in the place of master of the ceremonies, as it were, to that
glorious century whose dawn he enjoyed and helped to beautify?

I will explain it.

It is because he is national. He represents not what is most this, or
most that--"highest", "noblest", "truest", "best", and all the rest of
it--in his countrymen, but rather what they have most in common.

Did you meet h