the rapidity of the gesture of his mind as in that of
his body: in his being attracted here and there, watching this and that
suddenly, like a bird.

He was national in his power of sharp recovery from any emotion back
into his normal balance.

He was national in that he depended upon companions, and stood for a
crowd, and deplored all isolation. He was national in that he had
nothing strenuous about him, and that he was amiable, and if he had
heard of "earnest" men, he would have laughed at them a little, as
people who did not see the whole of life.

He was especially national (and it is here that the poet returns) in
that most national of all things--a complete sympathy with the
atmosphere of the native tongue. Thus men debate a good deal upon the
poetic value of Wordsworth, but it is certain, when one sees how bathed
he is in the sense of English words, their harmony and balance, that the
man is entirely English, that no other nation could have produced him,
and that he will be most difficult for foreigners to understand. You
will not translate into French or any other language the simplicity of:

"Glimpses that should make me less forlorn."

Nor can you translate, so as to give its own kind of grandeur

"Et arrivoit pour benistre la vigne."

Apart from his place in letters, see how national he is in what he does!

He buys two bits of land, he talks of them continually, sees to them,
visits them. They are quite little bits of land. He calls one Clement,
and the other Marot! Here is a whimsicality you would not find, I think,
among another people.

He has the hatred of "sprawling" in his particular art which is the
chief aesthetic character of the French; but he has the tendency to
excess in opinion or in general expression which is their chief
political fault.

It is thus, then, that I think he should be regarded and that I would
desire to present him. It is thus, I am sure, that he should be read if
one is to know why he has taken so great a place in the reverence and
the history of the French people.

And it is in this aspect that he may worthily introduce much greater
things, the Pleiade and Ronsard.

OF COURTING LONG AGO.
(_The Eighth of the Roundels._)

This is a fair enough specimen of Marot at his daily gait: an easy
versifier "on a theme" and no more. I have said that it is unjust to
judge him on that level, and I have said why; but I giv