Avril Part 13

RONSARD.

DIALOGUE WITH THE NINE SISTERS.

Stanza 1, line 3. _Chef grison_=gray head. When he says "trente ans,"

that is all rubbish, he was getting on for forty-three: it was written in 1567.

Stanza 2, line 1. _Nocher_=pilot; rare but hardly archaic.

Stanza 3, line 3. _Cependant_=meanwhile. The word is now seldom used in prose, save in the sense of "notwithstanding", "nevertheless".

Stanza 5, line 1. _Loyer_=Condition of tenure.

Line 2. _Ores_=Now that. Should be "_ore_" (horam). The parasitic "s"

probably crept in by false a.n.a.logy with the adverbs in "s."

Stanza 6, line 1. _Lame_=tombstone. The word is no longer used.

Line 4. See how, even in his lighter or prosaic manner, he cannot avoid great lines.

Stanza 8, line 1. _Vela_=Voila. Then follows that fine ending which I have put on the t.i.tle-page of this book.

"MIGNONNE ALLONS VOIR SI LA ROSE."

Line 1. _Mignonne_ is, of course, his Ca.s.sandre: her personality was always known through his own verse. She was fifteen when he met her and her brown eyes: it was in 1546 at Blois, her birthplace, whither he had gone to visit the Court, during his scholar's life in Paris. He met her thus young when he himself was but in his twenty-third year, and all that early, violent, not over-tilled beginning of his poetry was illumined by her face. But as to who she was, by name I mean, remained long a matter of doubt. Binet would have it that her true name was Ca.s.sandre, and that its singularity inspired Ronsard. Brantome called it "a false name to cover a true." Ronsard himself has written, "false or true, time conquering all things cannot efface it from the marble."

There need have been no doubt. D'Aubigne's testimony is sufficient. She was a Mlle de Pie, and such was the vagary of Ronsard's life, that it was her niece, Diane Salviati de Taley whom in later life he espoused and nearly wed.

Line 3. Note _Pourpre_, and in line 5 _Pourpree_ so in line 9 _Beautez_, and in the last line _Beaute_: so little did he fear repet.i.tion and so heartily could his power carry it.

Line 4. _A point_: the language was still in flux. The phrase would require a negative _n'_ in modern French.

Line 10, 11. _Marastre... puisqu'une..._ There is here an elliptical construction never found in later French. Harsh stepmother nature (whom I call harsh) since... etc.

SONNETS FOR HeLeNE.

Sonnet XLII, line 1. _Ocieuse_="otiosa," langorous.

Line 5. _Ennuy_, in the sixteenth century meant something fuller than, and somewhat different from the word "ennui" to-day. It was a weariness which had in it some permanent chagrin.

Line 8. _Pipe_, "cajoles": a word which (now that it is unusual) mars the effect of its meaning by its insignificant sound.

Lines 8 and 9. Note _ioye_, _vraye_, a feminine "e" following another vowel is, since Malherbe, forbidden in the interior of a verse, unless elided.

Line 11. _Ton mort_, "your ghost."

Sonnet XLIII, line 6. _Desia_=deja.

Line 7. _De mon nom._ I have printed the line thus because Ronsard himself wished it so, and so corrected it with his own hand. But the original form is far finer "_Au bruit de Ronsard._"

DU BELLAY.

THE SONNET "HEUREUX QUI COMME ULYSSE."

Line 3. _Usage._ A most powerful word in this slightly archaic sense: the experience of long travel: familiar knowledge of things seen.

Line 12. _Loire._ This word has puzzled more than one editor. There are two rivers: the great river Loire, which is feminine, and the little Loir, which is masculine. Here Du Bellay spells the name of the great river, but puts it in the masculine gender. It has been imagined that he was talking of the smaller river. But he was not. The Loire alone has any connection with Lire or with his life, and as for the gender, strained as the interpretation may seem, I believe that Du Bellay deliberately used it in the parallel with the Tiber and the idea of the "Fleuve Paternel," to which he alludes so often elsewhere.

Line 13. _Lyre._ The modern Lire, his birthplace, on the left bank of the Loire, just opposite Ancenis. As you go along the Poitiers road to the bridge it stands up on your right, just before the river.

THE DOG.

Line 1. _Motte_=a turf.

Line 40. _Damoiselet._ Still used more or less in its old sense of a young man _armed_: not merely a young page or a cadet of the gentry,="like a little sentry."

Line 43. _Anvie_=(of course) "envie."

THE CAT.

Line 22. _Rouet_=spinning-wheel.

Line 26. _Panne_=the Italian _Panno_--cloth.

Line 27. _Troigne_=the mouth and face of an animal, the muzzle.

Line 32. _Chere_=(originally) "head" and one of the few old French words derived from Greek, but the first signification has long been lost. Here the phrase is equivalent to "faire bonne chere" which has for centuries been used proverbially for what we call "a good time." _V. supra_ in "The Farewell" of Charles of Orleans.

MALHERBE.

EXTRACTS FROM THE "ODE TO LOUIS XIII."

Stanza 3, line 1. _Centieme._ He dates the Huguenot trouble from a century. It may be said to have originated in the placards threatening the defilement of the Sacrament, placards which appeared in the streets of Paris in 1525.

Stanza 2, line 3. _Le nom de Juste._ Louis XIII had no particular affectation of that t.i.tle: it is rather a reminiscence of his distant collatoral and namesake who closed the fifteenth century.

Last stanza, line 1. _Toutes les autres morts._ He has just been speaking of death in battle against the factions.

SONNET ON HIS SON'S DEATH.

Line 1. _Mon fils._ The only survivor of his many children, a young man, just called to the bar at Aix and pa.s.sionately loved by his father, he bore the curious name of Marc-Anthony. A M. de Piles killed him in a duel, having for second his brother-in-law. The whole was an honourable bit of business, and the death such as men of honour must be prepared to risk: but Malherbe would see no reason and defamed the adversary.

Line 9. _La Raison._ The idea runs all through Malherbe's work. It is his distinguishing note, and is the spirit which differentiates him so powerfully from the sixteenth century, that this stoical balance or regulator which he calls "La Raison," and which governed France for two hundred years, is his rule and text for verse and prose as well as for practical life. Even the grandeur to which it gave rise seemed to him accidental. He demanded "la raison" only, and felt the necessity of it in art as acutely as though its absence were something immoral.

EXTRACTS FROM THE "CONSOLATION OF DU PERRIER."