[1197] Goujet, xiii. 304. The Semaine of Du Bartas was printed thirty times within six years, and translated into Latin, Italian, German, and Spanish, as well as English. Id. 312, on the authority of La Croix du Maine.
Du Bartas, according to a French writer of the next century, used methods of exciting his imagination which I recommend to the attention of young poets. L’on dit en France, que Du Bartas auparavant que de faire cette belle description de cheval ou il a si bien rencontré, s’enfermoit quelquefois dans une chambre, et se mettant à quatre pattes, souffloit, hennissoit, gambadoit, tirait des ruades, alloit l’amble, le trot, le galop, â courbette, et tachoit par toutes sortes de moyens à bien contrefaire le cheval. Naudé’s Considérations sur les Coups d’Estat. p. 47.
Pibrac; Desportes. 53. Pibrac, a magistrate of great integrity, obtained an extraordinary reputation by his quatrains; a series of moral tetrastichs in the style of Theognis. These first appeared in 1574, fifty in number, and were augmented to 126 in later editions. They were continually republished in the seventeenth century, and translated into many European and even oriental languages. It cannot be wonderful that, in the change of taste and manners, they have ceased to be read.[1198] An imitation of the sixth satire of Horace, by Nicolas Rapin, printed in the collection of Auguis is good and in very pure style.[1199] Philippe Desportes somewhat later chose a better school than that of Ronsard; he rejected its pedantry and affectation, and by the study of Tibullus, as well as by his natural genius, gave a tenderness and grace to the poetry of love which those pompous versifiers had never sought. He has been esteemed the precursor of a better æra; and his versification is rather less lawless,[1200] according to La Harpe, than that of his predecessors.
[1198] Goujet, xii. 266. Biogr. Univ.
[1199] Recueil des Poëtes, v. 361.
[1200] Goujet, xiv. 63. La Harpe. Auguis, v. 343-377.
French metre and versification. 54. The rules of metre became gradually established. Few writers of this period neglect the alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes;[1201] but the open vowel will be found in several of the earlier. Du Bartas almost affects the enjambement, or continuation of the sense beyond the couplet; and even Desportes does not avoid it. Their metres are various; the Alexandrine, if so we may call it, or verse of twelve syllables, was occasionally adopted by Ronsard, and in time displaced the old verse of ten syllables, which became appropriated to the lighter style. The sonnets, as far as I have observed, are regular; and this form, which had been very little known in France, after being introduced by Jodelle and Ronsard, became one of the most popular modes of composition.[1202] Several attempts were made to naturalise the Latin metres; but this pedantic innovation could not long have success. Specimens of it may be found in Pasquier.[1203]
[1201] Grevin, about 1558, is an exception. Goujet, xii. 159.
[1202] Bouterwek, v. 212.
[1203] Recherches de la France, l. vii. c. 11. Baif has passed for the inventor of this foolish art in France, which was more common there than in England. But Prosper Marchand ascribes a translation of the Iliad and Odyssey into regular French hexameters to one Moysset, of whom nothing is known; on no better authority, however, than a vague passage of D’Aubigné, who “remembered to have seen such a book sixty years ago.” Though Mousset may be imaginary, he furnishes an article to Marchand, who brings together a good deal of learning as to the Latinized French metres of the sixteenth century. Dictionnaire Historique.