Durham, mentions
that they were written a year before, while travelling in France. They
are closely modelled on the two series of 'Sonnets Spirituels' which the
Abbe Jacques de Billy published in Paris in 1573 and 1578 respectively.
A long series of 'Sonnets Spirituels' written by Anne de Marquets, a
sister of the Dominican Order, who died at Poissy in 1598, was first
published in Paris in 1605. In 1594 George Chapman published ten sonnets
in praise of philosophy, which he entitled 'A Coronet for his Mistress
Philosophy.' In the opening poem he states that his aim was to dissuade
poets from singing in sonnets 'Love's Sensual Empery.' In 1597 Henry
Locke (or Lok) appended to his verse-rendering of Ecclesiastes {441a} a
collection of 'Sundrie Sonets of Christian Passions, with other
Affectionate Sonets of a Feeling Conscience.' Lok had in 1593 obtained a
license to publish 'a hundred Sonnets on Meditation, Humiliation, and
Prayer,' but that work is not extant. In the volume of 1597 his sonnets
on religious or philosophical themes number no fewer than three hundred
and twenty-eight. {441b}

Thus in the total of sonnets published between 1591 and 1597 must be
included at least five hundred sonnets addressed to patrons, and as many
on philosophy and religion. The aggregate far exceeds two thousand.

X.--BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ON THE SONNET IN FRANCE, 1550-1600.

Ronsard (1524-1585) and 'La Pleiade.' Desportes (1546-1606).

In the earlier years of the sixteenth century Melin de Saint-Gelais
(1487-1558) and Clement Marot (1496-1544) made a few scattered efforts at
sonnetteering in France; and Maurice Seve laid down the lines of all
sonnet-sequences on themes of love in his dixains entitled 'Delie'
(1544). But it was Ronsard (1524-1585), in the second half of the
century, who first gave the sonnet a pronounced vogue in France. The
sonnet was handled with the utmost assiduity not only by Ronsard, but by
all the literary comrades whom he gathered round him, and on whom he
bestowed the title of 'La Pleiade.' The leading aim that united Ronsard
and his friends was the re-formation of the French language and
literature on classical models. But they assimilated and naturalised in
France not only much that was admirable in Latin and Greek poetry, {442a}
but all that was best in the recent Italian literature. {442b} Although
they were learned poets, Ronsard and the majority of his associates had a
natural lyric ve