A number of artificial lyrical forms, originating in the ingenuity of the mediæval Provençal poets, were adopted by the Middle English imitators of the Romance lyrists, and were revived with no little vigor in the Victorian period. Chief among the influential models for these forms, in early times, were the poems of Machault (1284-1377), Deschamps (1328-1415), Froissart (1337-1410), and Villon (1431-1485). Again in the seventeenth century such forms as the rondeau were revived in France by Voiture (1598-1648), but with little effect in England. Finally, in the nineteenth century, the forms were reintroduced by M. Théodore de Banville, and later into England by Mr. Lang, Mr. Austin Dobson, Mr. Gosse, and others. For the history of these fashions in outline, see the admirable introduction to Mr. Gleeson White's _Ballades and Rondeaus_ (1893); also Mr. Andrew Lang's _Lays and Lyrics of Old France_ (1872); Mr. Austin Dobson's "Note on some Foreign Forms of Verse," in the collection of _Latter Day Lyrics_ (1878); and an article by Mr. Edmund Gosse in the _Cornhill Magazine_, July, 1877. Says Mr. Dobson: "It may be conceded that the majority of the forms now in question are not at present suited for ... the treatment of grave or elevated themes. What is modestly advanced for some of them ... is that they may add a new charm of buoyancy,--a lyric freshness,--to amatory and familiar verse, already too much condemned to faded measures and out-worn cadences. Further, ... that they are admirable vehicles for the expression of trifles or _jeux d'esprit_. They have also a humbler and obscurer use. If, to quote the once-hackneyed, but now too-much-forgotten maxim of Pope-- 'Those move easiest that have learned to dance,' what better discipline, among others, could possibly be devised for 'those about to versify' than a course of Rondeaux, Triolets, and Ballades?" Mr. Dobson refers to the article by Mr. Gosse already cited, and "to the _Odes Funambulesques_, the _Petit Traité de Poésie Française_, and other works of M. Théodore de Banville. To M. de Banville in particular and to the second French Romantic School in general, the happy modernization in France of the old measures of Marot, Villon, and Charles of Orleans is mainly to be ascribed." (_Latter Day Lyrics_, ed. W. D. Adams, pp. 334 ff.)[47]