[159]. L’Instructif de la seconde Rhétorique, or Le Jardin de Plaisance.
[160]. Grant et vray art de pleine Rhétorique, Rouen, 1521.
[161]. Rhétorique Métrifiée, Paris, 1539. Between Fabri and Gratien du Pont appeared in 1529 Geoffrey Tory’s Champfleury, a more grammatical than critical miscellany, which is elsewhere glanced at; and the very noteworthy critical remarks prefixed by Marot to his edition of Villon in 1533. M. Gaston Paris is assuredly right when he calls this (in his charming little book on the author of the Ballade des Pendus, Paris, 1901) “un des plus anciens morceaux de critique littéraire que l’on ait écrits en français,” and its appreciative sympathy, if not co-extensive with the merits of the work, leaves little to desire in the points which it touches. In fact, the mere selection of Villon and of the Roman de la Rose, as the subjects of his editorial care, shows in Master Clement the presence of a deep instinctive critical faculty, which has only partially and incidentally developed itself. In this, as in not a few other points, Marot himself seems to me to have had for the most part inadequate justice from critics; though here as elsewhere it may be allowed that time and circumstance prevented him from doing himself justice. His intense affection for literature and poetry, the light glancing quality of his wit and intellect, the absence of all pomposity, pedantry, and parade, and the shrewd sense which (in judgment if not quite in conduct) distinguished him, go very far to constitute the equipment of the accomplished critic. But his short life, perhaps a certain instability of character, and the immature condition of the special state of literature in his time, with the ever-deplorable distractions of the religious upheaval, gave him little chance.
[162]. With the Lyons reprint (v. infra) of Sibilet and the Quintil Horatien is given an Autre Art Poétique, short and strictly practical. It notices Ronsard, but gives the old forms.
[163]. It would be clearly improper to load this book with much general French literary history. But those who would thoroughly appreciate the position may find an endeavour to put it briefly in my Short History of the subject, Book II. chaps, i., ii., and iv. (6th ed., Oxford, 1901). If they want more they had better go to MM. Darmesteter and Hatzfeld’s admirable Seizième Siècle in France (Paris, 1878), or, best of all, to the last 150 pp. of the first vol. of Crepet’s Poètes Français. M. Ch. d’Héricault’s prefaces here, with his introduction to Marot (ed. Garnier), are not likely to be soon equalled.
[164]. For a poet of such eminence and a book of such importance, Du Bellay and the Défense are curiously difficult of access. M. Marty-Laveaux' ed. of the Works, with the Pléiade generally (Paris, 1876), is very scarce and dear. M. Becq de Fouquières’ Selections are, it is said, out of print, though they can be obtained. A Versailles reprint I know only through the British Museum Catalogue. It is odd how, in almost all languages, reprinting, like a more agreeable, if less troublesome, process, seems to “go by favour.”
[165]. That quoted supra, at i. 316.
[166]. Of course in an earlier stage you do get much more. English, for instance, profited almost infinitely by translation from French and from Latin prose in the late fourteenth century, and throughout the fifteenth. But French was past this stage, or nearly past it, when Du Bellay wrote.
[167]. L’Evolution des genres (Paris, 1890), p. 43 sq.
[168]. M. Brunetière quotes this famous and striking expression, but complains that we are not told how it is to be done. Our English supplies a sufficient reply to this in famous words, “by reading, marking, learning, and inwardly digesting.”