In pieces which may be called hortatory, the pulpit eloquence, as it were, of a poet addressing his contemporaries on public matters, the utterances of a patriot and a citizen moved by pity for his fellows, such poetry as the _Discours des Miseres de ce Temps_ and the _Institution pour l'Adolescence du Roi, Charles IX._, Ronsard is original and impressive, a forerunner of the orator poets of the seventeenth century. His eclogues show a true feeling for external nature, touched at times by a tender sadness. When he escapes from the curiosities and the strain of his less happy Petrarchism, he is an admirable poet of love in song and sonnet; no more beautiful variation on the theme of "gather the rosebuds while ye may" exists than his sonnet _Quand vous serez bien vieille_, unless it be his dainty ode _Mignonne, allons voir si la Rose_. Passionate in the deepest and largest sense Ronsard is not; but it was much to be sincere and tender, to observe just measure, to render a subtle phase of emotion. In the fine melancholy of his elegiac poetry he is almost modern. Before all else he is a master of his instrument, an inventor of new effects and movements of the lyre; in his hands the entire rhythmical system was renewed or was purified. His dexterity in various metres was that of a great virtuoso, and it was not the mere dexterity which conquers difficulties, it was a skill inspired and sustained by the sentiment of metre. Of the other members of the Pleiade, one--Jodelle--is remembered chiefly in connection with the history of the drama. Baif (1532-89), son of the French ambassador at Venice, translated from Sophocles and Terence, imitated Plautus, Petrarchised in sonnets, took from Virgil's Georgics the inspiration of his _Meteores_, was guided by the Anacreontic poems in his _Passe-Temps_, and would fain rival Theognis in his most original work _Les Mimes_, where a moral or satiric meaning masks behind an allegory or a fable. He desired to connect poetry more closely with music, and with this end in view thought to reform the spelling of words and to revive the quantitative metrical system of classical verse.[2] REMI BELLEAU (1528-77) practised the Horatian ode and the sonnet; translated Anacreon; followed the Neapolitan Sannazaro in his _Bergerie_ of connected prose and verse, where the shepherds are persons of distinction arrayed in a pastoral disguise; and adapted the mediaeval _lapidary_ (with imitations of the pseudo-Orpheus) to the taste of the Renaissance in his _Amours et Nouveaux Eschanges des Pierres Precieuses_. These little myths and metamorphoses of gems are ingenious and graceful. The delicate feeling for nature which Belleau possessed is seen at its best in the charming song _Avril_, included in his somewhat incoherent _Bergerie_. Among his papers was found, after his death, a comedy, _La Reconnue_, which, if it has little dramatic power, shows a certain instinct for satire.