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 poéte
orgueilleux trébuché 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 Théophile 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 Restoration.
Through the dust and smoke of ages, and through the centuries of wars we
strain our eyes and try to gain a glimpse of thee, Master, in thy good
days, when the Muses walked with thee. We seem to mark thee wandering
silent through some little village, or dreaming in the woods, or
loitering among thy lonely places, or in gardens where the roses blossom
among wilder flowers, or on river banks where the whispering poplars and
sighing reeds make answer to the murmur of the waters. Such a picture
hast thou drawn of thyself in the summer afternoons.
Je m'en vais pourmener tantost parmy la plaine,
Tantost en un village, et tantost en un bois,
Et tantost par les lieux solitaires et cois.
J'aime fort les jardins qui sentent le sauvage,
J'aime le flot de l'eau qui gazou'ille au rivage.
Still, methinks, there was a book in the hand of the grave and learned
poet; still thou wouldst carry thy Horace, thy Catullus, thy Theocritus,
through the gem-like weather of the _Renouveau_, when the woods
were enamelled with flowers, and the young Spring was lodged, like a
wandering prince, in his great palaces hung with green:
Orgueilleux de ses fleurs, enflé de sa jeunesse,
Logé comme un grand Prince en ses vertes maisons!
Thou sawest, in these woods by Loire side, the fair shapes of old
religion, Fauns, Nymphs, and Satyrs, and heard'st in the nightingale's
music the plaint of Philomel. The ancient poets came back in the train
of thyself and of the Spring, and learning was scarce less dear to thee
than love; and thy ladies seemed fairer for the names they borrowed from
the beauties of forgotten days, Helen and Cassandra. How sweetly didst
thou sing to them thine old morality, and how gravely didst thou teach
the lesson of the Roses! Well didst thou know it, well didst thou love
the Rose, since thy nurse, carrying thee, an infant, to the holy font,
let fall on thee the sacred water brimmed with floating blossoms of the
Rose!
Mignonne, allons voir si la Rose,
Qui ce matin avoit desclose
Sa robe de pourpre au soleil,
A point perdu ceste vespree
Les plis de sa robe pourpree,
Et son teint au votre pareil.
And again,
La belle Rose du Printemps,
Aubert, admoneste les hommes
Passer joyeusement le temps,
Et pendant que jeunes nous sommes,
Esbattre la fleur de nos ans.
In the same mood, looking far down the future, thou sangest of thy
lady's age, the most sad, the most beautiful of thy sad and beautiful
lays; for if thy bees gathered much honey 't was somewhat bitter to
taste, as that of the Sardinian yews. How clearly we see the great hall,
the grey lady spinning and humming among her drowsy maids, and how
they waken at the word, and she sees her spring in their eyes, and they
forecast their winter in her face, when she murmurs ''Twas Ronsard sang
of me.'
Winter, and summer, and spring, how swiftly they pass, and how early
time brought thee his sorrows, and grief cast her dust upon thy head.
Adieu ma Lyre, adieu fillettes,
Jadis mes douces amourettes,
Adieu, je sens venir ma fin,
Nul passetemps de ma jeunesse
Ne m'accompagne en la vieillesse,
Que le feu, le lict et le vin.
Wine, and a soft bed, and a bright fire: to this trinity of poor
pleasures we come soon, if, indeed, wine be left to us. Poetry herself
deserts us; is it not said that Bacchus never forgives a renegade? and
most of us turn recreants to Bacchus. Even the bright fire, I fear,
was not always there to warm thine old blood, Master, or, if fire there
were, the wood was not bought with thy book-seller's money. When autumn
was drawing in during thine early old age, in 1584, didst thou not write
that thou hadst never received a sou at the hands of all the publishers
who vended thy books? And as thou wert about putting forth the folio
edition of 1584, thou didst pray Buon, the bookseller, to give thee
sixty crowns to buy wood withal, and make thee a bright fire in winter
weather, and comfort thine old age with thy friend Gallandius. And if
Buon will not pay, then to try the other book-sellers, 'that wish to
take everything and give nothing.'
Was it knowledge of this passage, Master, or ignorance of everything
else, that made certain of the common steadfast dunces of our days speak
of thee as if thou hadst been a starveling, neglected poetaster, jealous
forsooth, of Maitre Francoys Rabelais? See how ignorantly M. Fleury
writes, who teaches French literature withal to them of Muscovy, and
hath indited a Life of Rabelais. 'Rabelais était revétu d'un emploi
honorable; Ronsard était traité en subalterne,' quoth this wondrous
professor. What! Pierre de Ronsard, a gentleman of a noble house,
holding the revenue of many abbeys, the friend of Mary Stuart, of the
Duc d'Orléans, of Charles IX., _he_ is _traité en subalterne_, and is
jealous of a frocked or unfrocked _manant_ like Maitre Francoys! And
then this amazing Fleury falls foul of thine epitaph on Mai'tre Francoys
and cries, 'Ronsard a voulu faire des vers méchants; il n'a fait que de
méchants vers.' More truly saith M. Sainte-Beuve, 'If the good Rabelais
had returned to Meudon on the day when this epitaph was made over the
wine, he would, methinks, have laughed heartily.' But what shall be said
of a Professor like the egregious M. Fleury, who holds that Ronsard was
despised at Court? Was there a party at tennis when the king would not
fain have had thee on his side, declaring that he ever won when Ronsard
was his partner? Did he not give thee benefices, and many priories, and
call thee his father in Apollo, and even, so they say, bid thee sit down
beside him on his throne? Away, ye scandalous folk, who tell us that
there was strife between the Prince of Poets and the King of Mirth.
Naught have ye by way of proof of your slander but the talk of Jean
Bernier, a scurrilous, starveling apothecary, who put forth his fables
in 1697, a century and a half after Mai'tre Francoys died. Bayle quoted
this fellow in a note, and ye all steal the tattle one from another
in your dull manner, and know not whence it comes, nor even that Bayle
would none of it and mocked its author. With so little knowledge is
history written, and thus doth each chattering brook of a 'Life swell
with its tribute, that great Mississippi of falsehood,' Biography.