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were as fruitless as his efforts, in his Epic poem, his Odes and his Sonnets, to rival Homer, Horace, and Petrarch. Ronsard enjoyed in his time, a surprisingly great reputation, which has since gradually declined; and while few are now willing to bestow on his compositions the labour necessary in order to understand the obsolete and affected language in which he expresses himself, most remember with pleasure the natural and graceful compositions of Marot.

To Marot and Ronsard succeeded Malherbe, the contemporary of Henri IV, and who is considered as having given to the French language the strength and the flexibility it wanted. Marot was only successful in the lighter kind of poetry; Malherbe was the first French poet who attempted a nobler flight, and to him is due the introduction into France of lyrical poetry.

Of the progress which the French language made under Malherbe, and of his superiority over Marot as a poet, in the higher sense of the word, some idea may be formed by the two following stanzas, where, in imitatation of the Psalmist, he speaks of the littleness of the kings of the earth.

En vain pour satisfaire à nos lâches envies,

Nous passons près des rois, tout le temps de nos vies,

A souffrir des mépris et ployer les genoux,

Ce qu'ils peuvent n'est rien; ils sont, comme nous sommes,
Véritablement hommes,

Et meurent comme nous.

Ont-ils rendu l'esprit? ce n'est plus que poussièro

Que cette majesté si pompeuse et si fière,

Dont l'éclat orgueilleux étonnait l'univers;
Et dans ces grand tombeaux où leurs âmes hautaines
Font encores les vaines,

Ils sont rongés des vers.

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We have hitherto noticed only the French poets of the sixteenth century, but we have now to speak of two authors whose prose has obtained them as great a degree of celebrity as ever was enjoyed by the greatest poets, an assertion, the truth of which, the reader will readily allow, when we mention the names of Rabelais and Montaigne. The former writer is one whom it is perhaps as easy to praise as to censure. His work, which has no compeer, offers, under the most grotesque ap pearance, the newest and the boldest thoughts; but the obsolete language in which Rabelais wrote, has now caused his book to be more celebrated than read. Montaigne was a man infinitely superior to Rabelais as to the extent and variety of his powers. Rabelais was a wit, and little more than a wit: Montaigne was a man of genius as well as wit, and of learning as

well as genius. Montaigne certainly had faults, but they were the faults of his time, rather than his own; while Rabelais added to the immorality and infidelity of his age a spirit of ribaldry peculiar to himself. The work of Rabelais exposing but one species of folly, and being written in one particular style, suits but one particular class of readers; Montaigne, who had in view a nobler end, takes in his Essays a wider range, and his style varies with his subjest,

"From grave to gay, from lively to severe," finally, the purpose of Rabelais was confessedly to excite laughter, that of Montaigne to obtain and impart knowledge, and no writers ever more surely obtained the end they had in view.

Having thus seen during the sixteenth century, the language of France enriched and improved by the Muse of Marot and Malherbe, while the writings of Rabelais and Montaigne gave the first example of a bolder and a deeper spirit of enquiry than had hitherto been known in Europe, we will now glance at the state of Literature during the seventeeth century.

It has been justly remarked that nations are generally in a state of successive decline and amelioration, so that the rise of one is generally attended with the downfall of another. Of the

truth of this assertion, in a literary, as well as in a political point of view, we find a proof at the period of which we are now speaking, for while England and France were rapidly rising to literary eminence, Italy and Spain as rapidly declined. In Italy, however, the progress made in the sciences by Gallileo, Toricelli, and Cassini made some amends for the want of eminent writers; for with the exception of Davila, the distinguished author of the Civil Wars of France, and Bentivoglio, who wrote an esteemed work on those of Flanders, we do not find in the country of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccacio, a name worthy of being mentioned. Spain which had never risen to the same height, fell much lower, and the absence (with one or two trifling exceptions) of any thing like a great literary name in that country, during the seventeenth century, proves how dreadfully mistaken was that policy which by banishing from Spain both the Moors and the Jews, unpeopled, as it were, whole provinces, and almost reduced that beautiful country to a state of moral as well as phy-sical inanity. To be completely convinced of the fact that while Literature declined in the

South of Europe, it made a rapid progress in England, during the seventeenth century, we need only remember that at that period lived

Waller, Cowley, Dryden, Butler, the illustrious Bacon, and above all the sublime Milton, who had in himself genius enough to immortalize thé country and the age in which he lived, and who, having had the good fortune of finding a subject worthy of his Muse, proved by the composition of his Paradise Lost, that his genius was not unworthy of his subject.

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At this period, France, like England, was fast approaching the zenith of her literary glory. Her Literature continued, during the minority of Louis XIII, to resemble that of Italy, until Richelieu, who was desirous to establish literary as well as political despotism, founded the celebrated French Academy. Much has been said for and against such institutions, and we cannot now stop to consider the arguments advanced on each side; but it may be sufficient to observe that the establishment of a society whose especial business it is to watch over the nature and character of the literary productions of a country, while it is calculated to improve the language and keep it free from corruptions and innovations, is likely also, by setting up a fancied standard of perfection, to cramp the genius of a people whose progressive minds ill brook the shackles laid on them by the standing orders of an Academy. That this was the case in

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