All that was wanting to make Du Bartas a poet of the first rank was some faculty of self-criticism; of natural _verve_ and imagination as well as of erudition he had no lack, but in critical faculty he seems to have been totally deficient. His beauties, rare in kind and not small in amount, are alloyed with vast quantities of dull absurdity. [Sidenote: D'Aubigne.] [Sidenote: Desportes.] Agrippa d'Aubigne[201] was a few years Du Bartas' junior, and long outlived him. He was an important prose-writer as well as poet, and his long life was as full of interesting events as of literary occupations. At six years old he read Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; a year or two later his father made him swear, in presence of the gibbeted corpses of the unsuccessful conspirators of Amboise, to revenge their death. Shortly afterwards he narrowly escaped the stake. For a time he dwelt with Henry of Navarre at the court of Charles IX., and there thoroughly imbued himself with the Ronsardising tradition. But he soon escaped with his master, and for years was a Calvinist irreconcileable, always for war to the knife, and as rude and bold in the council chamber as in the field. The death of his master was unfortunate for D'Aubigne; but, though he at first opposed the regency of Marie de Medicis, he made terms for himself. The publication, however, of his 'History' brought enemies on him, and he fled to Geneva, finishing his days there. His prose works are too numerous to mention separately: the chief besides his histories are the _Confession de Sancy_ and the _Aventures du Baron de Faeneste_, both satirical in character and full of vigour. He began as a poet by poems in the lighter Pleiade style, but his masterpiece is the strange work called _Les Tragiques_. This consists of seven books, amounting to not much less than ten thousand lines, and entitled _Miseres_, _Princes_, _La Chambre Doree_, _Les Feux_, _Les Fers_, _Vengeance_, _Jugement_. The poem is half historical and half satirical, dealing with the religious wars, the persecution of the Huguenots, the abuses of the administration, and of contemporary manners, etc. Nothing equal to the best verses of this singular book had yet been seen in France, and not much equal to them has been produced since. The tone of sombre and impressive declamation had been to some extent anticipated by Du Bartas, but chiefly for purposes of description. D'Aubigne turned it to its natural use in invective, and the effect is often extraordinarily fine. Very copious citation would be necessary to show its excellence: but before Victor Hugo there is nothing in French equal to D'Aubigne at his best in point of clangour of sound and impetuosity of rhythm. It is noteworthy that Du Bartas' _Semaine_, with the _Tragiques_ and the tragedies of Garnier, finally established the Alexandrine as the indispensable metre for serious and impassioned poetry in France. Hitherto the decasyllable and the dodecasyllable had been used