Pierre De 1524-1585 Ronsard

RONSARD, PIERRE DE (1524-1585), French poet and "prince of poets" (as his own generation in France called him), was born at the Château de la Poissonniere, near the village of Couture in the province of Vendomois (department of Loir-et Cher), on Sept. II, 1524. His family is said to have come from the Slav provinces to the south of the Danube (provinces with which the crusades had given France much intercourse) in the first half of the 14th century. Pierre was the youngest son of Loys de Ronsard, maitre d'hôtel du roi to Francis I. Pierre was sent to the College de Navarre at Paris when he was nine years old. It is said that the rough life of a mediaeval school did not suit him. He was quickly appointed page, first to the king's eldest son Francois, and then to his brother the duke of Orleans. When Madeleine of France was married to James V. of Scotland, Ron sard was attached to the king's service, and he spent three years in Great Britain. The latter part of this time seems to have been passed in England, though he had, strictly speaking, no business there. On returning to France in 154o he was again taken into the service of the duke of Orleans, and travelled to Flanders and again to Scotland. After a time he was attached as secretary to the suite of Lazare de Bail, the father of his future colleague in the Pleiade and his companion on this occasion, Antoine de Baff, at the diet of Spires. Afterwards he was attached in the same way to the suite of the cardinal du Bellay-Langey. His diplomatic career was cut short by an attack of deafness which no physician could cure, and he devoted himself to study at the College Co queret, the principal of which was Daurat—afterwards the "dark star" (as from his silence he has been called in France) of the Pleiade, and already an acquaintance of Ronsard's from his hav ing held the office of tutor in the Balf household. Antoine de Daurat's pupil, accompanied Ronsard ; Belleau shortly fol lowed; Joachim du Bellay, the second of the seven, joined not much later. Muretus (Jean Antoine de Muret), a great scholar

and by means of his Latin plays a great influence in the creation of French tragedy, was also a student here.

The Pleiade.

Ronsard's period of study occupied seven years, and the first manifesto of the new literary movement, which was to apply to the vernacular the principles of criticism and scholarship learnt from the classics, came not from him but from Du Bellay (q.v.). The Defense et illustration de la langue francaise of the latter appeared in 1549, and the Pleiade (or Brigade, as it was first called) may be said to have been then launched. The orthodox canon is beyond doubt composed of Ronsard, Du Bellay, Baif, Belleau, Pontus de Tyard, Jodelle the dramatist, and Daurat. Some single and minor pieces, an epithala mium on Antoine de Bourbon and Jeanne de Navarre (155o), a "Hymne de la France" an "Ode a la Paix," preceded the publication in 1550 of the first four books of the Odes of Ronsard. This was followed in 1552 by his Amours de Cassandre with the fifth book of Odes. These books excited a violent literary quarrel. Marot was dead, but he left a numerous school, some of whom saw in the stricter literary critique of the Pleiade, in its outspoken contempt of merely vernacular and mediaeval forms, in its strenuous advice to French poetry to "follow the ancients," and so forth, an insult to Marot and his followers. An acute rivalry ensued between the followers of Clement Marot, the "Ecole Marotique," and the new school. The Pleiade found a powerful supporter at court in Marguerite de Valois. Ronsard published his Hymns, dedicated to Marguerite de Savoie, in ; the conclusion of the Amours, addressed to another heroine, in 1556; and then a collection of Oeuvres completes, said to be due to the invitation of Mary Stuart, queen of Francis II., in 1560; with Elegies, mascarades et bergeries in 1565. To this same year belongs his most important and interesting Abrege de Part poetiqzte francais.