1524-1585.
The greatest French poet of the Renaissance, he entered the household
of the Duke of Orleans at the age of ten, spent three years as page
of James V. of Scotland, and traveled much about Europe on various
embassies. At eighteen, attacked by deafness, he withdrew to the
college of Coqueret and was won to poetry by study of the ancients. It
was then that a common love for the classical literatures and a common
zeal for imitating their beauties in French bound him to the other
young men who with him called themselves the Pleiad and set themselves
to the task of renewing French literature in the image of the
literatures of antiquity. In 1550, the year after the appearance of
the manifesto of the young school, the _Défense et Illustration de la
langue française_ of du Bellay, he published a volume of odes. His
fame was instant and immense; he returned in glory to court, and for
forty years the authority of his example was hardly questioned. His
talent was exercised in almost all kinds of verse, chansons, sonnets,
elegies, eclogues, hymns, epistles, and even in the epic, where,
however, his experiment, _la Franciade_, was a complete failure,
abandoned when but four of the proposed twelve cantos were finished.
But his genius was essentially lyric. The ode was his special
contribution to French verse; in it he followed the classical form
with its divisions into strophe, antistrophe, and epode, sometimes in
direct imitation of Pindar, Anacreon, Theocritus, or Horace. His best
work is that in which he freed himself most fully from the influence
of a model. His deepest and truest note's are those that celebrate the
pleasures of this life, the delights of nature, and the inevitable
"cold obstruction" of death.
Works: _Odes_ and _Bocage_, 1550; _Amours_, _Odes_, book v, 1552,
1553; _Hymnes_, 1555, book ii, 1556; _Meslanges_, 1555, book ii, 1559;
_Oeuvres_ (_Amours, Odes, Poèmes, Hymnes_), 4 vols., 1560; _Oeuvres_,
i vol., 1584; recent editions are _Oeuvres complètes_, par P.
Blanchemain, 8 vols., 1857-67 (_Bibliothèque elzévirienne_); par
Marty-Laveaux, 6 vols., 1887 ff.; _Oeuvres choisies_, avec notice de
Sainte-Beuve, I vol.
For reference: Excellent biographical study by Marty-Laveaux in his
edition of the works; Émile Faguet, _le Seizième siècle_, 1893 ;
Sainte-Beuve, _Causeries du lundi_, vol. xii.
7. A CASSANDRE. 8. DESCLOSE, _opened_. 10. A POINT PERDU; _ne_ was
not, and still is not always, required in the question; cf. 164,
22. VESPREE = _soir_; cf. _vêpre_. 13. LAS, _hélas_. 20. FLEURONNE=
_fleurit_.
8. CHANSON. 27. AMOUR, _Cupid_. 1. CHENEVIERE = _chanvre_. 3. MY-NUD,
_half naked_. 19. FOL LE PELICAN; cf. for another use of this popular
notion about the pelican the famous picture in the _Nuit de mai_ of
Alfred de Musset, 150, 12 _ff_. A HÉLÈNE. 26. OYANT, from _ouïr_. 27.
DESJA, _déjà_. 29. BENISSANT VOSTRE NOM, etc., i.e. congratulating you
on being immortalized by the poet's praise.
9. 2. OMBRES MYRTEUX, _shadows of the myrtles_. ÉLÉGIE. 8. VENDEMOIS,
one of the old divisions of France, on the Loire. It was the
birth-place of Ronsard. 10. REMORS; has here rather the sense of
regret. 13. AGEZ, _agés_ the spelling _-ez_ for _-és_ was usual.
22. CHEF = _tête_. 23. DE RECHEF = _de nouveau_. 24. PERRUQUE =
_chevelure_. 26. VERDS, _strong, supple_.
10. DIEU VOUS GARD. 7. GARD, the form of the present subjunctive
regularly descended from the Latin subjunctive in verbs of the first
conjugation. The ending _e_, added later, is due to analogy. 8.
VISTES ARONDELLES, _vites_ (_rapides_) _hirondelles_. 10. TOURTRES =
_tourterelles_. 12. VERDELETS, _verts_; such diminutives were quite
in favor in the language of the time; cf. _rossignolet, nouvelet,
fleurettes_. 15. BOUTONS JADIS COGNUS, etc., i.e. the hyacinth and the
narcissus. 29. AU PRIX DE, _in comparison with_.
11. A UN AUBESPIN. 6. LAMBRUNCHE, _a wild vine_. 10. PERTUIS, _holes_.
12. AVETTES = _abeilles_. 30. RUER = _jeter_.
12. ÉLÉGIE CONTRE LES BÛCHERONS DE LA FORÊT DE GASTINE. Cf. the
poem by Laprade, p. 192. Gastine is in Haut-Poitou, in the present
department of Deux-Sèvres. 14. PERSÉ, _percé_. 15. MASTIN, _mâtin_.
21. PANS, used by Ronsard in the plural as if he thought them a kind
of being, like Satyrs. 22. FANS, now written _faons_, but still
pronounced as if spelled _fans_. 24. PREMIER, used adverbially. 26.
ESTONNER in the older language expressed a physical shock; to _stun_.
28. NEUVAINE, composed of nine. TROPE, _troupe_; the nine muses.
Calliope was the muse of epic poetry, and Euterpe the muse of music
and lyric poetry.
13. 3. ALTEREZ, BRUSLEZ, ETHEREZ, see note on _agez_, 9, 13. 8.
DORDONEENS, referring to the forest of Dordona, in Epirus, where
oracles were rendered from oak trees. According to Greek traditions
the first men lived on acorns and raw flesh. 16. ET QU'EN CHANGEANT DE
FORME, etc., _and that it will change its form and put on a new one_.