FOOTNOTES:
[17] From the "Défence et Illustration de la Langue Françoise." Translated for this collection by Eric Arthur Bell. Du Bellay belonged to a group of sixteenth-century writers known as the Pléiade, who took upon themselves the mission of reducing the French language, in its literary forms, to something comparable to Greek and Latin. Mr. Saintsbury says they "made modern French—made it, we may say, twice over"; by which he means that French, in their time, was revolutionized, and that, in the Romantic movement of 1830, Hugo and his associates were armed by the work of the Pléiade for their revolt against the restraints of rule and language that had been imposed by the eighteenth century.
[18] Du Bellay here refers to the unhappy political state of France during his short life of thirty-six years. He was born one year before the defeat of Francis I at Pavia. When twenty years old, Henry VIII in league with Charles V had invaded France. Fourteen years later the country was distracted by disastrous religious wars which led up to the massacre of St. Bartholomew a few years after his death.
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
Born in France in 1583, died in 1592; educated at a college in Bordeaux; studied law; attached to the court of Francis II in 1559, and to the person of Henry III in 1571; traveled in Germany, Italy and Switzerland in 1580; made mayor of Bordeaux in 1581; published his "Essays" in 1580, the first English translation, made by Florio, appearing in 1603.