Clement Marot

something to do with his subsequent misfortunes.

The publication of the psalms gave the Sorbonne a handle, and the book was condemned by that body. In 1543 it was evident that he could not rely on the protection of Francis. Marot accordingly fled to Geneva ; but he had, like most of his friends, been at least as much of a freethinker as of a Protestant, and the austere city of Calvin was no place for him. He had again to fly, and made his way into Piedmont, and he died at Turin in the autumn of 1544.

In character Marot seems to have been a typical Frenchman of the old stamp, cheerful, good-humoured and amiable enough, but probably not very much disposed to elaborately moral life and conversation or to serious reflection. With other poets like Mellin de Saint Gelais and Bordeau, with prose writers like Rabelais and Bonaventure Desperiers, he was always on excellent terms.

His importance in the history of French literature is very great, and was long rather under than over-valued. Coming im mediately before a great literary reform—that of the Pleiade- Marot was both eclipsed and decried by the partakers in that reform. In the reaction against the Pleiade he recovered honour; but its restoration to virtual favour, a perfectly just restoration, again unjustly depressed him. Marot was a reformer, and a re former on perfectly independent lines, and he carried his own reform as far as it would go. His early work was couched in the

rhetoriqueur style, the distinguishing characteristics of which are elaborate metre and rhyme, allegoric matter and pedantic language. In his second stage he entirely emancipated himself from this, and became one of the easiest, least affected and most vernacular poets of France. In these points indeed he has, with the ex ception of La Fontaine, no rival, and the lighter verse-writers ever since have taken one or the other or both as model. In his third period he lost a little of this flowing grace and ease, but ac quired something in stateliness, while he lost nothing in wit.

The most important early editions of Marot's

Oeuvres are those pub lished at Lyons in 5538 and 1544. In the second of these the arrange ment of his poems which has been accepted in later issues was first adopted. In 1596 an enlarged edition was edited by Francois Miziere. Among modern editions are those of P. Jannet (1868-72 ; new ed., 1873-76) ; and of G. Guiffrey, only vols. ii. and iii. (1875-81) of which were issued. For information about Marot himself see the section con cerning him in G. Saintsbury's The Early Renaissance (i90I) ; A. Tilley, Literature of the French Renaissance, vol. i., ch. iv. (19o4) ; P. Villey, Recherches sur la Chronologie des oeuvres de Marot (1920 ; P. A. Becker, Clement Marot, Sein Leben and Seine Dichtung (1926).