PIERRE RONSARD



PIERRE RONSARD

There is no triter theme than that of the uncertainty
of fame. A man is the delight and admiration of
his contemporaries, graced with every mark of royal
favour, honoured alike by the applause of the many
and by the sober judgment of the few ; and in the
next age he is a shadow or a jest Another dies and
only a few friends have any sense of serious loss :
but let twenty or fifty years go by, and the * perfect
witness of all-judging ' Time grants to Hobbema or
Corot honours of which they had never dared to
dream, and admits Collins and Ch^nier to that high
company in which no place is found for Gay or for
the Abb^ Delille. There is a third class, not very
numerous, who have experienced another stage of
these vicissitudes, and whose fame has known not
only life and death but resurrection as well. Of
these none has been, in turn, more universally famous,
more entirely foi^otten, and, at last, more honourably
restored to a just measure of his ancient glory, than
Pierre Ronsard, Captain of the Pl^iade and Prince of
Poets at the courts of the Valois kings. Bom in
1525, and dying in 1585, he enjoyed the favour of
Francis I., Henry II., Francis II., Charles IX., and
Henry III., especially of Charles ix., who delighted
in his society and loaded him with pensions and
preferments. But the mention of five French sove-

F



82 THE CLAIMS OF FRENCH POETRY

reigns by no means exhausts the list of honours and
distinctions he received from the great. Catharine
de M^dicis defended him from the jealousy of rivals,
Margaret of Savoy was his unfailing friend, Elizabeth
of England gave him a diamond, Mary of Scotland,
even from her prison, found means to send him a
magnificent sideboard, Tasso sought his judgment of
the Jerusalem Delivered^ Chastelard, on the scaffold,
preferred his Hymn of Death to the consolations of
Church or confessor. And the poet himself accepted
the universal verdict, and proclaimed his acceptance
again and again with serene self-assurance. 