V. PIERRE RONSARD, 1524–1585. Ronsard’s early years gave little sign of his vocation. He was for some time a page of the court, was in the service of James V. of Scotland, and had his share of shipwrecks, battles, and amorous adventures. An illness which produced total deafness made him a scholar and poet, as in another age and country it might have made him a saint and an ascetic. With all his industry, and almost religious zeal for art, he is one of the poets who make themselves, rather than are born singers. His epic, the Franciade, is as tedious as other artificial epics, and his odes are almost unreadable. We are never allowed to forget that he is the poet who read the Iliad through in three days. He is, as has been said of Le Brun, more mythological than Pindar. His constant allusion to his grey hair, an affectation which may be noticed in Shelley, is borrowed from Anacreon. Many of the sonnets in which he ‘petrarquizes,’ retain the faded odour of the roses he loved; and his songs have fire and melancholy and a sense as of perfume from ‘a closet long to quiet vowed, with mothed and dropping arras hung.’ Ronsard’s great fame declined when is Malherbe came to ‘bind the sweet influences of the Pleiad,’ but he has been duly honoured by the newest school of French poetry. VI. JACQUES TAHUREAU, 1527–1555. The amorous poetry of Jacques Tahureau has the merit, rare in his, or in any age, of being the real expression of passion. His brief life burned itself away before he had exhausted the lyric effusion of his youth. ‘Le plus beau gentilhomme de son siècle, et le plus dextre à toutes sortes de gentillesses,’ died at the age of twenty-eight, fulfilling the presentiment which tinges, but scarcely saddens his poetry. VII. JEAN PASSERAT, 1534–1602. Better known as a political satirist than as a poet. POETS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. VICTOR HUGO. ALFRED DE MUSSET, 1810–1857. GÉRARD DE NERVAL, 1801–1855. HENRI MURGER, 1822–1861. BALLADS. The originals of the French folk-songs here translated are to be found in the collections of MM. De Puymaigre and Gerard de Nerval, and in the report of M. Ampère. The verses called a ‘Lady of High Degree’ are imitated from a very early _chanson_ in Bartsch’s collection. The Greek ballads have been translated with the aid of the French versions by M. Fauriel. SPRING. CHARLES D’ORLEANS, 1391–1465. The new-liveried year.—_Sir Henry Wotton_. * * * * * THE year has changed his mantle cold Of wind, of rain, of bitter air; And he goes clad in cloth of gold, Of laughing suns and season fair; No bird or beast of wood or wold But doth with cry or song declare The year lays down his mantle cold. All founts, all rivers, seaward rolled, The pleasant summer livery wear, With silver studs on broidered vair; The world puts off its raiment old, The year lays down his mantle cold. RONDEL.