s, but in thy priory of Saint Cosme, with marble for a monument,
and no green grass to cover thee. Restless wert thou in thy life; thy
dust was not to be restful in thy death. The Huguenots, _ces nouveaux
Chretiens qui la France ont pillee_, destroyed thy tomb, and the warning
of the later monument,

ABI, NEFASTE, QUAM CALCAS HUMUM SACRA EST,

has not scared away malicious men. The storm that passed over France a
hundred years ago, more terrible than the religious wars that thou didst
weep for, has swept the column from the tomb. The marble was broken by
violent hands, and the shattered sepulchre of the Prince of Poets gained
a dusty hospitality from the museum of a country town. Better had been
the laurel of thy desire, the creeping vine, and the ivy tree.

Scarce more fortunate, for long, than thy monument was thy memory.
Thou hast not encountered, Master, in the Paradise of Poets, Messieurs
Malherbe, De Balzac, and Boileau--Boileau who spoke of thee as _Ce poete
orgueilleux trebuche de si haut!_

These gallant gentlemen, I make no doubt, are happy after their own
fashion, backbiting each other and thee in the Paradise of Critics. In
their time they wrought thee much evil, grumbling that thou wrotest in
Greek and Latin (of which tongues certain of them had but little skill),
and blaming thy many lyric melodies and the free flow of thy lines. What
said M. de Balzac to M. Chapelain? 'M. de Malherbe, M. de Grasse, and
yourself must be very little poets, if Ronsard be a great one.' Time has
brought in his revenges, and Messieurs Chapelain and De Grasse are as
well forgotten as thou art well remembered. Men could not always be deaf
to thy sweet old songs, nor blind to the beauty of thy roses and thy
loves. When they took the wax out of their ears that M. Boileau had
given them lest they should hear the singing of thy Sirens, then they
were deaf no longer, then they heard the old deaf poet singing and made
answer to his lays. Hast thou not heard these sounds? have they not
reached thee, the voices and the lyres of Theophile Gautier and Alfred
de Musset? Methinks thou hast marked them, and been glad that the old
notes were ringing again and the old French lyric measures tripping to
thine ancient harmonies, echoing and replying to the Muses of Horace and
Catullus. Returning to Nature, poets returned to thee. Thy monument has
perished, but not thy music, and the Prince of Poets has returned to his
own again in a glorious R