There we have exactly the new character which Marot, coming between Villon and Ronsard, gave in the sixteenth century to French poesy.  We may be more exacting than M. Sainte-Beuve; we may regret that Marot, whilst rescuing it from the streets, confined it too much to the court; the natural and national range of poesy is higher and more extensive than that; the Hundred Years’ War and Joan of Arc had higher claims.  But it is something to have delivered poesy from coarse vulgarity, and introduced refinement into it.  Clement Marot rendered to the French language, then in labor of progression, and, one might say, of formation, eminent service:  he gave it a naturalness, a clearness, an easy swing, and, for the most part, a correctness which it had hitherto lacked.  It was reserved for other writers, in verse and prose, to give it boldness, the richness that comes of precision, elevation, and grandeur.

In 1534, amidst the first violent tempest of reform in France, Clement Marot, accused of heresy, prudently withdrew and went to seek an asylum at Ferrara, under the protection of the duchess, Renee of France, daughter of Louis XII.  He there met Calvin, who already held a high position amongst the Reformers, and who was then engaged on a translation of the Psalms in verse.  The reformer talked to the poet about this grand Hebrew poesy, which, according to M. Villemain’s impression, “has defrayed in sublime coin the demands of human imagination.”  Marot, on returning to France, found the College Royal recently instituted there, and the learned Vatable [Francis Watebled, born at Gamaches, in Picardy, died at Paris in 1547] teaching Hebrew with a great attendance of pupils and of the curious.  The professor engaged the poet to translate the Psalms, he himself expounding them to him word by word.  Marot translated thirty of them, and dedicated them to Francis I., who not only accepted the dedication, but recommended the work and the author to Charles V., who was at that time making a friendly passage through France on his way to put down the insurrection at Ghent.  “Charles V. accepted the said translation graciously” [as appears by a letter in 1559 to Catherine de’ Medici from Villemadon, one of Marguerite of Navarre’s confidential servants], “commended it both by words and by a present of two hundred doubloons, which he made to Marot, thus giving him courage to translate the rest of the Psalms, and praying him to send him as soon as possible the Psalm Confitemini Domino, quoniam bonus [Trust in the Lord, for He is good], so fond was he of it.”  Singular fellow-feeling between Charles V. and his great adversary Luther, who said of that same psalm, “It is my friend; it has saved me in many a strait from which emperor, kings, sages, nor saints could have delivered me!” Clement Marot, thus aided and encouraged in this work which gave pleasure to Francis I. and Charles V., and must have been still more interesting to Calvin and Luther, prosecuted his work and published in 1541 the first thirty psalms; three years afterwards, in 1543, he added twenty others, and dedicated the collection “to the ladies of France,” in an epistle wherein the following verses occur: