Here lies the body of the little maid Erotion; From her sixth winter's snows her eager shade Hath fleeted on! Whoe'er thou be that after me shalt sway My scanty farm, To her slight shade the yearly offering pay, So--safe from harm-- Shall thou and thine revere the kindly _Lar_, And _this_ alone Be, through thy brief dominion, near or far, A mournful stone! Certainly he had a heart, this foul-mouthed Martial, who claimed for the study of his book no serious hours, but moments of mirth, when men are glad with wine, "in the reign of the Rose:" {9} "_Haec hora est tua, cum furit Lyaeus_, _Cum regnat rosa, cum madent capilli_; _Tunc mevel rigidi legant Catones_." But enough of the poets of old; another day we may turn to Carew and Suckling, Praed and Locker, poets of our own speech, lighter lyrists of our own time. {10} ON VERS DE SOCIETE _To Mr. Gifted Hopkins_. Dear Gifted,--If you will permit me to use your Christian, and prophetic, name--we improved the occasion lately with the writers of light verse in ancient times. We decided that the ancients were not great in verses of society, because they had, properly speaking, no society to write verses for. Women did not live in the Christian freedom and social equality with men, either in Greece or Rome--at least not "modest women," as Mr. Harry Foker calls them in "Pendennis." About the others there is plenty of pretty verse in the Anthology. What you need for verses of society is a period in which the social equality is recognized, and in which people are peaceable enough and comfortable enough to "play with light loves in the portal" of the Temple of Hymen, without any very definite intentions, on either part, of going inside and getting married. Perhaps we should not expect _vers de societe_ from the Crusaders, who were not peaceable, and who were very earnest indeed, in love or war. But as soon as you get a Court, and Court life, in France, even though the times were warlike, then ladies are lauded in artful strains, and the lyre is struck _leviore plectro_. Charles d'Orleans, that captive and captivating prince, wrote thousands of _rondeaux_; even before his time a gallant company of gentlemen composed the _Livre des Cent Ballades_, one hundred _ballades_, practically unreadable by modern men. Then came Clement Marot, with his gay and rather empty fluency, and Ronsard, with his mythological compliments, his sonnets, decked with roses, and led like lambs to the altar of Helen or Cassandra. A few, here and there, of his pieces are lighter, more pleasant, and, in a quiet way, immortal, such as the verses to his "fair flower of Anjou," a beauty of fifteen. So they ran on, in France, till Voiture's time, and Sarrazin's with his merry _ballade_ of an elopement, and Corneille's proud and graceful stanzas to Marquise de Gorla.