century, however, two well-defined fashions of poetry, with some minor ones, distinguished themselves. There was, in the first place, the school of the _coterie_ poets, who devoted themselves to producing _vers de societe_, either for the ladies, or for the great men of the period. The chief of this school was beyond all question Voiture[227]. This admirable writer of prose and verse published absolutely nothing during his lifetime, though his work was in private the delight of the salons. That it should be, under the circumstances, somewhat frivolous is almost unavoidable. But, especially after the cessation of the great flow of inspiration which had characterised the sixteenth century, it was of no small importance that the art of perfect expression should be cultivated in French. Voiture was one of those who contributed most to the cultivation of this art. His letters are as correct as those of Balzac, and much less stilted; and of his poetry it is sufficient to say that nothing more charming of the kind has ever been written than the sonnet to Uranie, which stirred up a literary war, or the rondeau 'Ma foi c'est fait de moi.' This last put once more in fashion a beautiful and thoroughly French form, which it had been one of the worst deeds of the Pleiade to make unfashionable. The chief rival of Voiture was Benserade, a much younger man, whose sonnet on Job was held to excel, though it certainly does not, that to Uranie. Benserade was of higher birth and larger fortune than Voiture, and long outlived him. He was a great writer of ballets or masques, and not unfrequently, like Voiture, showed that a true poet underlay the fantastic disguises he put on. Around these two are grouped numerous minor poets of different merit. Boisrobert, the favourite of Richelieu and the companion of Rotrou and Corneille in that minister's band of 'five poets;' Maleville, who in one of the sonnet-tournaments of the time, that of the _Belle Matineuse_, was supposed to have excelled even Voiture; Colletet, whose poems make him less important in literature than his Lives of the French poets, which unfortunately perished during the Commune before they had been fully printed; Gomberville, more famous as a novelist; Sarrasin, an admirable prose writer, and a clever composer of ballades and other light verse; Godeau, a bishop and a very clever versifier; Blot, who was rather a political than a social rhymer; Marigny, who was also famous for his Mazarinades, but whose satirical power was by no means the only side of his poetical talent; Charleval, whose personal popularity was greater than his literary ability; Maucroix, the friend of La Fontaine; Segrais, an eclogue writer of no small merit; Chapelle, an idle epicurean, who derives most of his fame from the fact of his having been intimate with all the foremost literary men of the time, and from his having composed, in company with Bachaumont, a _Voyage_ in mixed prose