enjoyed great favour at Court, earned not only by admiration of his poetry, but by his singularly amiable personal character. On the death of Charles IX., himself a fair verse-writer, Ronsard retired to the Abbey of Croix Val, of which he was lay abbot, and died in 1584. Remi Belleau (1528-1577) passed a peaceful life in the service of the house of Lorraine, and was carried to his grave by brother poets. Joachim du Bellay (1525?-1560), member of a very distinguished family of soldiers and statesmen, some of whom made their mark in French memoir literature, accompanied his kinsman the Cardinal du Bellay to Rome, but fell out of favour and returned to France. He was of weak health, and appears to have suffered from family troubles. He died suddenly of apoplexy at the age of thirty-six. Jean Antoine de Baïf (1532-1589) had a busy life in public affairs, and suffered changes of fortune. Characteristically enough he founded an early French Academy, for which he received a patent from Charles IX. in 1570.[89] It lasted for several years. [SN: _The_ Défense et Illustration de la Langue Française.] The _Défense et Illustration de la Langue Française_, which is the manifesto of the school, was written by Joachim du Bellay. It was published in February 1550, according to the modern calendar, but 1549 in the old, which made the year begin on Lady Day. If Boileau, before dismissing Ronsard and his friends so contemptuously, had taken the trouble to read this treatise, he would have learnt that it was not their intention to speak Latin and Greek in French, or to make a new art after their own fashion. Their purpose was very different. It was their aim to write good French, but to use all the resources of the language in order to reproduce the forms of the great classic literatures--the Epic, the Drama, the Satire, the Ode, and the Italian models--the Canzone and the Sonnet. They held, and not unjustly, that the French verse of Marot’s school was poor in rhythm, and “frivolous.” It had come to be satisfied with turning out nine insignificant verses, if it can put “le petit mot pour rire” into the tenth. A sham Middle Age was lingering on--the mere remnants and echo of the _Roman de la Rose_ allegory. Du Bellay speaks of the _Roman_ and of its authors--Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung--with respect. He was sufficiently an admirer of French mediæval literature to quote the stories of Lancelot as fit to be used for epic. But he insists that the prosaic language used by the school of Marot was not adequate for poetry, and that a new poetic tongue must be formed, which could only be done by the ardent study of Greek and Latin. What the student learnt he was to assimilate and make French. There was nothing in this which was not at once inevitable when the immense influence of the classic literatures in that generation is allowed for, and was not also in itself sound. It was a misfortune that the Pléiade cut itself off