SIC CONSTRUXIT CLAUDI HW’
IAT ΡΟΣ DECORI URBIS
AC POSTERITATI CONSULENS,[94]
—you sympathise at once in the pride and delight which this child of the new era must have taken in the new birth of old things revealed to him by the Italian artists of the Renaissance. The front of this house may be compared with the entrance of the Château d’Anet, built by Philip Delorme at the same period (1548), and now preserved in L’École des Beaux Arts at Paris.
About the same time, in the domain of literature, the satiric turn of mind which we have noted as typical of his countrymen, was illustrated by a young poet of good Chartrain family, named Laurent des Moulins. He wrote a long poetical satire, which is, however, really only a sermon in verse, entitled Le Catholicon des mal advisés. It is an allegorical vision, written after the manner of the Roman de la Rose. For Master Laurent, like all the poets of the fourteenth and fifteenth century, cast his verses in the mould of Guillaume de Loris and Jean de Meung. He turns a good verse out of that mould now and again, and he writes with a genuine moral intention, so that, in spite of his oddities, his tediousness and his prosaic view of life, he goes some way towards filling up, for the curious student of French letters, the dreary gap which separates Villon from Marot. He shows us the usual dreamer falling asleep, like William Langland, ‘on a May morning on Malvern Hills,’ and seeing troops of types in whom there is no good. And of them (‘All I saw sleeping, as I shall you tell’) he writes in several thousand lines, good, bad and indifferent,—
‘Mêlant le vin rouge avec le vin blanc.’
Very different in style and in spirit from this sombre and unpolished poet was Philippe Desportes, Abbot of Tiron and Josaphat (1546-1606), the favourite poet, first, of Charles IX., who gave him ten thousand crowns for his La Mort de Rodomont, and afterwards of Henry III. and his mignons.
To them this most unclerical cleric, this courtier poet and successful diplomatist, wrote in his earlier days songs and sonnets of remarkable sweetness and grace, and was rewarded with poetic crowns and many abbacies. Devoid of the poetic passion and picturesque invention of his master, Ronsard, he was often content to translate or imitate an Italian celebration of an imaginary mistress, and to compensate by his gift of happy expression for his utter lack of sentiment or enthusiasm. Though the most prominent of Ronsard’s own particular disciples, his style is so simple and correct that he seems to be rather a forerunner of Malherbe than a follower of the school which had endeavoured to introduce into French poetry curious words and a peculiar phraseology, and to substitute, for simplicity and directness of speech, ingenious periphrases.
The following villanelle, charming in its neatness of expression and polished elegance of style and form, is, I think, a good example of Desportes at his best in his lighter and more mundane manner. It was repeated, one may note, by Henri de Guise at Blois a few minutes before he fell by the dagger of an assassin.
‘Rozette, pour un peu d’absence
Votre cœur vous avez changé
Et moi, sachant cette inconstance,
Le mien, autre part j’ai rangé.
Jamais plus beauté si légère
Sur moi tant de pouvoir n’aura.
Nous verrons, volage bergère,
Qui premier s’en repentira.
Tandis qu’en pleurs je me consume
Maudissant cet éloignement,
Vous, n’aimiez que par coutume
Caressiez un nouvel amant.
Jamais légère girouette
Au vent si tôt ne se vira.
Nous verrons, bergère Rozette,
Qui premier s’en repentira.
Où sont tant de promesses saintes,
Tant de pleurs versés en partant?
Est-il vrai que ces tristes plaintes
Sortissent d’un cœur inconstant?
Dieux, que vous êtes mensongère!
Maudit soit qui plus vous croira!
Nous verrons, volage bergère,
Qui premier s’en repentira.