Friars, of the good influence exerted by pious laymen and laywomen in ordinary life. There is doubtless more to be said on these topics than Mr. Coulton has said. But this side of the medal has been abundantly exhibited. Mr. Coulton's business has been to show us the reverse, and this he has done in a way which leaves little to be desired, and which deserves the gratitude of every serious student of medieval history.

It

There is only one-as we may call it, a priori-objection to Mr. Coulton's attitude on which I would add a word. may be suggested that it is a priori incredible that the world could ever have been so very bad. "Surely," it will be said, “in all ages human nature must be very much the same, and experience seems to show that, if few men and women are saints, the majority were never monsters of iniquity." No doubt human nature is much the same, if you make abstraction of all the social institutions, customs, traditions, influences of all kinds, which mould human nature into this pattern or into that. It is precisely because the accumulated influence of centuries of civilisation has so enormously altered human nature that the average man is now incapable of things which were quite everyday incidents of medieval life; how soon he escapes the constraining force of social ideals and institutions he often shows when he goes to a new country, and has to deal with a black population which is hardly regarded as human and is treated as less than human. Individual differences no doubt remain ; and we must remember that it required, in a sense, as much virtue in those days merely to avoid crime as it requires now to be a model citizen or an exemplary philanthropist. If there is one respect in which the Middle Ages were more virtuous than our own age, it is that they seem to have produced more men who rise conspicuously-in ways requiring serious self-denial-above the low average of their contemporaries than our age produces of men who rise conspicuously above the higher but easier average of modern times. It was just, as Mr. Coulton constantly shows us, because the accepted ideal aimed at more than human nature is normally capable of, that medieval Christianity so conspicuously failed in practice to raise average humanity to a high level of

self-control, decency of life, and respect for other people's rights. We seem to be living in an age of higher averages but lower eminences; or is it only that modern heroism and modern sainthood are less picturesque and romantic than the ideal Knight or the ideal Friar of medieval times? At all events the difference between the saint and the sinner do not leap to the eyes, as they did when a life free from murder, manslaughter, or robbery was a rather remarkable achievement; in modern times the wheat and the tares grow together until the harvest.

H. RASHDALL

MB

THE PLÉÏADE1

R. WYNDHAM'S book of selections from the poetry of the Pléiade is a pleasant one both in substance and shape. It is always delightful to be brought back from the social problems and duties which sometimes seem to oppress the twentieth century almost to suffocation, and to be plunged again in the beauty, the laughter, the enthusiasm of the Renaissance. Too often, alas, the volume with such a mission smells so dismally of midnight oil as to banish all the perfume of Ronsard's roses, and is so weighty that to take it up requires a serious effort. Such is far from being the case with Mr. Wyndham's selection. His book is light to read, agreeable to handle, well printed on good paper, with wide margins. The only fault to be found is the lack of an index to the poems. This entails a great loss of time when searching for special passages or comparing translations and originals.

The importance of the Pleiade in French literature is not only æsthetic, it is also historic; not only did it produce some of the most beautiful lyrics in the language, but it affected-to some extent determined-the course French

1 Ronsard and La Pléïade. By George Wyndham. Macmillan & Co. 1906. 5s.

literature was to take for the next two centuries. It is therefore necessary in attempting to appreciate Ronsard and his friends, to consider the state of literature in France towards the middle of the sixteenth century. There were at that moment two main currents; on the one hand there was the French literature properly speaking represented by such men as Marot, Octavien de St. Gelais, Héroet, Scève; on the other hand there was the ever increasing humanist literature written in Latin and modelled on classical works. While some were for continuing the traditions of the glorious Middle Ages in the language their fathers had left them, others thought, as Mr. Wyndham says, "that French did well enough for ordinary business and a good song; dog-Latin for law and history; and that, for higher flights of poetry or philosophy, there was no expedient save to master and employ the vocabularies, syntax, and poetic forms of classic Latin and Greek."

The Pleiade movement may be described as a compromise. Its leaders broke away from French tradition and the natural development of French literature, but they did not join its more violent adversaries in the attempt to destroy a vernacular literature. Du Bellay in the first part of the Déffence et Illustration de la Langue Française points out that the French language in itself is not so contemptible as many people suppose. The names of two of his chapters are "Que la langue Française n'est si pauvre que beaucoup l'estiment," and "Que la langue Française ne doit être nommée barbare." And this is not all. Not only does he urge men to write in French, but he urges them not to confine themselves to translations from the Classics, and one chapter is devoted to proving "Que les traductions ne sont suffisantes pour donner perfection à la langue Française." So far Du Bellay has been defending the vernacular now he changes his point of view and takes up the position of a humanist. Authors, he says, are to write in French, but they are to imitate the Classics. "Se compose donc celui qui voudra enrichir sa langue, à l'imitation des meilleurs auteurs Grecs et Latins; et à toutes leurs grandes vertus, comme à un certain but, dirige la pointe de leur style; car il n'y a point de doute que la plus grand' part de

;

l'artifice ne soit contenue en imitation." This then is the gist of the Pleiade doctrine: the contempt of all French literature of the past (except the Romaunt of the Rose) and the deliberate imitation in French of Greek and Latin writers, in subject, treatment, and technical details.

And it was in this sense that they determined the path their successors were to take. Had it not been for them the traditionalists might have triumphed, and Corneille and Rotrou might be the bright stars of a romantic drama parallel to the Elizabethan or Spanish. Or the victory of the humanists might have delayed the golden age in France a hundred years just as it did in Italy. As it was, if we must lament the suffocation of Corneille, we may render thanks to the Pléiade for the unique beauties of Racine and hold Ronsard to some extent responsible for the criticism of Boileau.

How is it then that we are always being told that the Pléiade had little or no effect on the next generations, that, as Mr. Wyndham says, "their influence . was sharply rejected early in the seventeenth century, and accepted again with diffidence only after an interval of two hundred years "?

It is perhaps owing to a confusion in the mind of the critic between the theory and the practice of Ronsard and his group. For it was their theory alone that survived them. Their poems, it is true, fell, after Malherbe, into an ill-deserved neglect, from which they were only rescued by Sainte Beuve, and their art was thus robbed of its natural fertility. But it must be remarked that the best of their work, the poems most instinct with beauty and truth, have practically no connection with their poetical doctrine.

"Laisse toutes ces vieilles poésies françoises," says Du Bellay, "aux jeux Floraux de Toulouse, et au Puy de Rouen, comme Rondeaux, Ballades, Virelais, Chants Royaux, Chansons, et autres telles épisseries ;" and he recommends instead the cultivation of Epistles, Elegies, Odes, Satires, Epics. And so we find Ronsard producing numberless Elegies and Pindaric Odes, and an endless Epic, modelled in every detail of composition on their classical prototypes.

But these are not the works which have made their

author famous. "The Franciade" as Mr. Wyndham wittily says "fell dead of its own weight;" and the Pindaric Odes, two of which are among these selections, have surely met with the same fate. So long as the Pléiade practised what it preached it was intolerable. But though none of the circle had the strong flight of Milton or the burning intensity of Keats many of them were melodious and delicate singers, and it is in the chanson, which they affected to despise as an épisserie, that all the loveliness of their poetry is to be found. Ronsard may choose to call his lyrics Odes; that is merely a misleading piece of nomenclature.

Only consider the famous poem:

All that gives its worth to such a poem-the tender melancholy, the music, the subtle aroma, exist to a greater or less extent in the Rondeaux of Charles d'Orleans; nor can the idea be claimed as typically classical. In the eighth century Tu Fu, a poet of China wrote: