[442a] Graphic illustrations of the attitude of Ronsard and his friends to a Greek poet like Anacreon appear in Anacréon et les Poèmes anacréontiques, Texte grec avec les Traductions et Imitations des Poètes du XVIe siècle, par A. Delboulle (Havre, 1891). A translation of Anacreon by Remy Belleau appeared in 1556. Cf. Sainte-Beuve’s essay, ‘Anacreon au XVIe siècle,’ in his Tableau de la Poésie française au XVIe siècle (1893), pp. 432-47. In the same connection Recueil des plus beaux Epigrammes grecs, mis en vers françois, par Pierre Tamisier (edit. 1617), is of interest.
[442b] Italy was the original home of the sonnet, and it was as popular a poetic form with Italian writers of the sixteenth century as with those of the three preceding centuries. The Italian poets whose sonnets, after those of Petrarch, were best known in England and France in the later years of the sixteenth century were Serafino dell’ Aquila (1466-1500), Jacopo Sannazzaro (1458-1530), Agnolo Firenzuola (1497-1547), Cardinal Bembo (1470-1547), Gaspara Stampa (1524-1553), Pietro Aretino (1492-1557), Bernardo Tasso (1493-1568), Luigi Tansillo (1510-1568), Gabriello Fiamma (d. 1585), Torquato Tasso (1544-1595), Luigi Groto (fl. 1570), Giovanni Battista Guarini (1537-1612), and Giovanni Battista Marino (1565-1625) (cf. Tiraboschi’s Storia della Letteratura Italiana, 1770-1782; Dr. Garnett’s History of Italian Literature, 1897; and Symonds’s Renaissance in Italy, edit. 1898, vols. iv. and vi.) The notes to Watson’s Passionate Centurie of Love, published in 1582 (see p. 103, note), to Davison’s Poetical Rhapsody, edited by Mr. A. H. Bullen in 1891, and to the Poems of Drummond of Hawthornden, edited by Mr. W. C. Ward in 1894, give many illustrations of English sonnetteers’ indebtedness to Serafino, Groto, Marino, Guarini, Tasso, and other Italian sonnetteers of the sixteenth century.
[445] There are modern reprints of most of these books, but not of all. There is a good reprint of Ronsard’s works, edited by M. P. Blanchemain, in La Bibliothèque Elzévirienne, 8 vols. 1867; the Étude sur la Vie de Ronsard, in the eighth volume, is useful. The works of Remy Belleau are issued in the same series. The writings of the seven original members of ‘La Pléiade’ are reprinted in La Pléiade Française, edited by Marty-Laveaux, 16 vols., 1866-93. Maurice Sève’s Délie was reissued at Lyons in 1862. Pierre de Brach’s poems were carefully edited by Reinhold Dezeimeris (2 vols., Paris, 1862). A complete edition of Desportes’s works, edited by Alfred Michiels, appeared in 1863. Prosper Blanchemain edited a reissue of the works of Louise Labé in 1875. The works of Jean de la Taille, of Amadis Jamyn, and of Guillaume des Autels are reprinted in Trésor des Vieux Poètes Français (1877 et annis seq.) See Sainte-Beuve’s Tableau Historique et Critique de la Poésie Française du XVIe Siècle (Paris, 1893); Henry Francis Cary’s Early French Poets (London, 1846); Becq de Fouquières’ Œuvres choisies des Poètes Français du XVIe Siècle contemporains avec Ronsard (1880), and the same editor’s selections from De Baïf, Du Bellay, and Ronsard; Darmesteter et Hatzfeld’s Le Seizième Siècle en France—Tableau de la Littérature et de la Langue (6th edit., 1897); and Petit de Julleville’s Histoire de la Langue et de la Littérature Française (1897, iii. 136-260).