Fair hawthorn flowering, With his long arms wound A wild vine has mantled thee o'er. In armies twain, Red ants have ta'en Their fortress beneath thy stock: A cell where their honey they lock. 'Mid thy topmost leaves, Gentle hawthorn, thrive, And for ever alive Mayst thou blossom as now in thy prime; By the wind unbroke, And the thunderstroke, Unspoil'd by the axe or time. In several of his odes there are passages of extraordinary splendour. What can exceed in magnificence this description of Jupiter coming in the form of a swan to Leda? L'or sous la plume reluit D'une semblable lumiere Dessus la neige premiere: Tire ses rames nouvelles. L. iii. O. xx. Premiere Pause. His plumes beneath are glittering bright As when the broad eye of the night Is on the earliest snow. He shaketh once his out-spread wing, And cleaves the sky amain, And at one stroke his new oars fling The billowy air in twain. One of his odes concludes with a wish, to the completion of which I would willingly contribute. After invoking the other heathen deities, he adds Vous dryades et vous fées Qui de joncs simplement coifées Nagez par le crystal des eaux, Fendant des fleuves les entorses, Et qui naissez sous les escorces, Ames vertes des arbrisseaux; ་ Ornez ce livre de lierre, Et bien loin au ciel, de la terre L. iv. O. xv. Ye dryads and ye fays that bind The seventeenth ode of the same book is prettily rendered from the well-known idyllium, whether it be Moschus's or Bion's, which begins— “Εσπερε, τᾶς ἐρατᾶς χρύσεον φάος Αφρογενείας. Ronsard's version of it much excels that by Claudio Tolommei, inserted by Mr. Mathias in his Selections from the Lyrical Poets of Italy, V. iii. p. 227. There have been several attempts to imitate it in our own language. I will not now add another to the number. The third ode of the fifth book is addressed to three English ladies, who had composed a book of Christian Distichs in Latin; which it is said, in a note by Richelet, had been translated into Greek, Italian, and French, and inscribed to Margaret, sister to Henry II.; as Michel de L'Hôpital had remarked in his Third Epistle. The eleventh and twelfth odes are attempts at the Sapphic measure. One, and I believe one only, is in blank verse. It is the eleventh in the third book. It is wonderful how much learning and pains his commentators have thrown away on these poems. Nothing can more prove the high esteem in which they were then held. His Franciade succeeds next. The death of his patron Charles IX. discouraged him from continuing it, and he has left only four books, which, like most of his other writings, are composed of shreds of the Greek and Latin poets, but with some splendid patches of his own interspersed among them. At the end of the fourth book, he has very candidly added this confession: Les Francois qui mes vers liront, "The Frenchmen, who shall read my verses, if they be not Greeks and Romans too, instead of this book will have but a cumbersome weight in their hands." The hero Francus was the same person with Astyanax, and is said to have derived his new name from the Greek compound epithet Pheréenchos, Porte-lance. All this affectation of antiquity is not very consistent with the anger expressed in his Preface against those, who, neglecting their vernacular tongues, composed in the Greek and Latin. "Encore vaudoit-il mieux, comme un bon bourgeois ou citoyen, rechercher et faire un lexicon des viels mots d'Artus, Lancelot, et Gauain, ou commenter le Romant de la Rose, que s'amuser à je ne sçai quelle grammaire Latine qui a passé son temps." "It would be better, like some good burgess or citizen, to search for and make a lexicon of old words from Arthur, Lancelot, or Gawen, or to write notes on the Romant of the Rose, than to amuse oneself with I know not what Latin grammar, that is now completely out of date." There is nothing in the Franciade with which I have been so much pleased as with the meeting between Francus and Hyante. It is copied from Apollonius Rhodius and Valerius Flaccus, but surpasses both. Ils sont long temps sans deviser ensemble Tous deux muets l'un devant l'autre assis: Ainsi qu'on voit, quand l'air est bien rassis, Deux pins plantez aux deux bords du ri vage, Ne remuer ny cime ny fueillage, Between Charles IX. and Ronsard there passed some pleasant verses. The monarch bantered him on his old age, but concluded by owning his own inferiority in the gifts of mind. Par ainsi je conclu, qu'en sçavoir tu me passe, Dautant que mon printemps tes cheveux gris efface. The poet replied, by reminding him, that he must some day be like himself. Charles tel que je suis vous serez quelque jour, that youth is the season of danger and temptation, and that old age has many advantages over it; that the King was wrong to call him old, for that he should yet be able to serve his Majesty at least twenty years Bien calfeutrer sa nef, sa voile bien guinder : tailles, Estre amateur de paix, et non pas de ba- Think not in France, thy voyage, King, shall be Grave in apparel, faithful to thy word; He earnestly exhorted Charles IX. to deliver the Greeks from the tyranny of their Turkish masters: Bref cette Grece, oeil du monde habitable, Ibid. p. 713. Grecia, the world's fair light, that on this earth * This reference is to Claude Binet's folio edition; but I did not make a memorandum of the year. In his verses to Queen Elizabeth he describes England; and having said that Bacchus alone of the Gods had denied it his gifts, he passes an encomium on its native liquor, which would lead one to conclude that the bard had enjoyed his cup of mild ale in this country, as much as he did the bottle of wine that was brought to him from the nearest village, under a hawthorn tree, in his own. Mais quelque jour Cerés la vagabonde Qui pour du vin te doit faire un breuvage Ibid. p. 716. When Ceres o'er the world's four parts had stray'd, She, while her hands two piny torch-lights bore, In his verses to Catherine de' Medici, he tells her that Nature after making her had broken the mould. Elle en rompit le moule, à fin que sans pareille Tu fusses ici-bas du monde la merveille. The Bocage Royal is followed by the Eclogues. At the beginning of the first he commends the beauty of nature unadorned and wild, beyond all the embellishments of art. Car tousiours la nature est meilleure que Among the other sovereigns of Je vy leur grande mer en vagues fluctueuse ; Qui de corps et d'esprits ressemble une immortelle : Je vy d'un clair crystal sa paupiere arrosée, Qui voiroit en la mer ces deux Roynes, fameuses Eclogue Premiere, p. 797. * The British name for ale, pronounced cooroo. Next pass'd I to the British nation o'er, I saw the wild waves of their ocean-flood; For they had vow'd-henceforth, with heart sincere, I saw the Scottish Queen, so fair and wise, In the third Eclogue we have the chief poets of his day, under the names of shepherds. Bellot is Bellay; and Perrot, Ronsard himself; Janot is Jean Dorat; Micheau, Michel de l'Hôpital; Lancelot, Lancelot Carles, a great poet, says the annotator Marcassus; and Bellin, Belleau. In the fourth Eclogue, some of these appear again. In the fifth, we have the two royal brothers, Charles IX. and Henry III. as shepherds, with the names of Carlin and Xandrin. In the second of the Elegies, Ronsard warns his friend Philippe Desportes against harassing his mind with too much study. After the Elegies come two books of Hymns. Towards the end of the third, in the first book, he has made bad work of the story of the Gemini and Idas, which is so beautifully told in Pindar. The seventh, entitled Daimons, is a curious collection of the superstitions that prevailed in his time respecting spirits. Book ii. Hymn ii. he runs a strange parallel between Hercules and Jesus Christ. Hymn xiii. of the Husbandmen to Saint Blaise, is exceedingly pretty. The first book of Poems which is next in order, is inscribed to Mary Stewart, whose captivity he deplores, and blames the cruelty of Elizabeth. In the second poem to her (p. 1174), he represents her leaving Fontainbleau to return to Scotland. In describing the colour of her eyes, which he calls "un peu these verses to the unhappy Queen "I would not chuse in this world a greater honour than to give you pleasure." And towards the conclusion of this P. 1175. "She, courteous as she is, O glorious book, receiving thee with joyful face, and stretching out her hand to thee kindly, will ask thee how Ronsard is, what he is doing, what he is saying, what his present state is: thou shalt say to her, that there is nothing here which gives him pleasure," &c. We cannot leave Ronsard more honourably employed, than in thus endeavouring to alleviate the sufferings of an oppressed, and perhaps an innocent woman. |