of their contemporaries for the learning and the literature of the Ancient World.  They were scholars as well as poets; and their great object was to create a tradition in the poetry of France which should bring it into accord with the immortal models of Greece and Rome.  This desire to imitate classical literature led to two results.  In the first place, it led to the invention of a great number of new poetical forms, and the abandonment of the old narrow and complicated conventions which had dominated the poetry of the Middle Ages.  With the free and ample forms of the Classics before them, Ronsard and his school enfranchised French verse.  Their technical ability was very great; and it is hardly too much to say that the result of their efforts was the creation of something hitherto lacking in French literature—­a poetical instrument which, in its strength, its freedom, its variety of metrical resources, and its artistic finish, was really adequate to fulfil the highest demands of genius.  In this direction their most important single achievement was their elevation of the ‘Alexandrine’ verse—­the great twelve-syllabled rhyming couplet—­to that place of undisputed superiority over all other metres which it has ever since held in French poetry.

But the Pleiade’s respect for classical models led to another and a far less fortunate result.  They allowed their erudition to impinge upon their poetry, and, in their eagerness to echo the voice of antiquity, they too often failed to realize the true bent either of their own language or their own powers.  This is especially obvious in the longer poems of Ronsard—­his Odes and his Franciade—­where all the effort and skill of the poet have not been enough to save his verse from tedium and inflation.  The Classics swam into the ken of these early discoverers in such a blaze of glory that their eyes were dazzled and their feet misled.  It was owing to their very eagerness to imitate their great models exactly—­to ’ape the outward form of majesty’—­that they failed to realize the true inward spirit of Classical Art.

It is in their shorter poems—­when the stress of classical imitation is forgotten in the ebullition of individual genius—­that Ronsard and his followers really come to their own.  These beautiful lyrics possess the freshness and charm of some clear April morning, with its delicate flowers and its carolling birds.  It is the voice of youth that sings in light and varied measures, composed with such an exquisite happiness, such an unlaboured art.  The songs are of Love and of Nature, of roses, skylarks and kisses, of blue skies and natural joys.  Sometimes there is a sadder note; and the tender music reminds us of the ending of pleasures and the hurrying steps of Time.  But with what a different accent from that of the dark and relentless Villon!  These gentle singers had no words for such brutalities.

    Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, a la chandelle—­