fine line or gesture or expression,
the turn of a wrist, the tapering of a finger. In Ronsard's time that
rougher element seemed likely to predominate. No one can turn over the
pages of Rabelais without feeling how much need there was of softening,
of castigation. To effect this softening is the object of the revolution
in poetry which is connected with Ronsard's name. Casting about for the
means of thus refining upon and saving the character of French
literature, he accepted that influx of Renaissance taste, which, leaving
the buildings, the language, the art, the poetry of France, at bottom,
what they were, old French Gothic still, gilds their surfaces with a
strange, delightful, foreign aspect passing over all that Northern land,
in itself neither deeper nor more permanent than a chance effect of
light. He reinforces, he doubles the French daintiness by Italian
finesse. Thereupon, nearly all the force and all the seriousness of
French work disappear; only the elegance, the aerial touch, the perfect
manner remain. But this elegance, this manner, this daintiness of
execution are consummate, and have an unmistakable aesthetic value.

So the old French chanson, which, like the old Northern Gothic ornament,
though it sometimes refined itself into a sort of weird elegance, was
often, in its essence, something rude and formless, became in the hands
of Ronsard a Pindaric ode. He gave it structure, a sustained system,
strophe and antistrophe, and taught it a changefulness and variety of
metre which keep the curiosity always excited, so that the very aspect
of it, as it lies written on the page, carries the eye lightly onwards,
and of which this is a good instance:--

Avril, la grace, et le ris
De Cypris,
Le flair et la douce haleine;
Avril, le parfum des dieux,
Qui, des cieux,
Sentent l'odeur de la plaine;

C'est toy, courteis et gentil,
Qui, d'exil
Retire ces passageres,
Ces arondelles qui vont,
Et qui sont
Du printemps les messageres.

That is not by Ronsard, but by Remy Belleau, for Ronsard soon came to
have a school. Six other poets threw in their lot with him in his
literary revolution--this Remy Belleau, Antoine de Baif, Pontus de
Tyard, Etienne Jodelle, Jean Daurat, and lastly Joachim du Bellay; and
with that strange love of emblems which is characteristic of the time,
which covered all the works of Francis the First with the salamander,
and all the works of Henry the Second w