Acquaintance with the ancients and the attendant great movement of ideas of the Renaissance reopened the true springs of lyric poetry. The old moulds of thought and feeling were broken. The human individual had a new, more direct and more personal view of nature and of life. That note of direct personal experience, almost of individual sensation, that was possible to a VILLON only by virtue of a very strong temperament and of a very exceptional social position, became the privilege of a whole generation by reason of the new aspect in which the world appeared. The Renaissance transformed indeed the whole of French literature, but the first branch to blossom at its breath was the lyric. Of the famous seven, RONSARD, DU BELLAY, BAÏF, BELLEAU, PONTUS DE THYARD, JODELLE, and DAURAT, self-styled the _Pléiade_, who were the champions of classical letters, all except JODELLE were principally lyric poets, and RONSARD and DU BELLAY have a real claim to greatness. This new lyric strove consciously to be different from the older one. Instead of _ballades_ and _rondeaux_, it produced odes, elegies, sonnets, and satires. It condemned the common language and familiar style of VILLON and MAROT as vulgar, and sought nobility, elevation, and distinction. To this end it renewed its vocabulary by wholesale borrowing and adaptation from the Latin, much enriching the language, though giving color to the charge of Boileau that RONSARD'S muse "_en français parlait grec et latin_". Of this constellation of poets RONSARD was the bright particular star. The others hailed him as master, and he enjoyed for the time an almost unexampled fame. To him were addressed the well known lines attributed to Charles IX.: Tous deux également nous portons des couronnes: Mais, roi, je la reçus: poète, tu la donnes. His example must be reckoned high for his younger contemporaries beside the ancient writers to whom he pointed them.