Ballads and Lyrics of Old France, with Other Poems

Transcribed from the 1872 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
WITH OTHER POEMS .
A. LANG.
LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1872.
TO
E. M. S.
I. Charles D’Orleans, who has sometimes, for no very obvious reason, been styled the father of French lyric poetry, was born in May, 1391. He was the son of Louis D’Orleans, the grandson of Charles V., and the father of Louis XII. Captured at Agincourt, he was kept in England as a prisoner from 1415 to 1440, when he returned to France, where he died in 1465. His verses, for the most part roundels on two rhymes, are songs of love and spring, and retain the allegorical forms of the Roman de la Rose.
II. François Villon, 1431–14-? Nothing is known of Villon’s birth or death, and only too much of his life. In his poems the ancient forms of French verse are animated with the keenest sense of personal emotion, of love, of melancholy, of mocking despair, and of repentance for a life passed in taverns and prisons.
III. Joachim Du Bellay, 1525–1560. The exact date of Du Bellay’s birth is unknown. He was certainly a little younger than Ronsard, who was born in September, 1524, although an attempt has been made to prove that his birth took place in 1525, as a compensation from Nature to France for the battle of Pavia. As a poet Du Bellay had the start, by a few mouths, of Ronsard; his Recueil was published in 1549. The question of priority in the new style of poetry caused a quarrel, which did not long separate the two singers. Du Bellay is perhaps the most interesting of the Pleiad, that company of Seven, who attempted to reform French verse, by inspiring it with the enthusiasm of the Renaissance. His book L’Illustration de la langue Française is a plea for the study of ancient models and for the improvement of the vernacular. In this effort Du Bellay and Ronsard are the predecessors of Malherbe, and of André Chénier, more successful through their frank eagerness than the former, less fortunate in the possession of critical learning and appreciative taste than the latter. There is something in Du Bellay’s life, in the artistic nature checked by occupation in affairs—he was the secretary of Cardinal Du Bellay—in the regret and affection with which Rome depressed and allured him, which reminds the English reader of the thwarted career of Clough.