affected, he made an unfortunate and negligible revision of his work, published in 1584. [SN: _His place in poetry._] It is perhaps some excuse for the sweeping condemnation of Ronsard by Malherbe that even the Romantic reaction of this century has not succeeded in regaining favour for the part of the poetry of the chief of the Pléiade for which he was most admired by his contemporaries, and of which he was most proud. In the vigorous sonnet beginning “Ils ont menty, d’Aurat,” written against Du Bartas--or at least against his admirers--Ronsard appealed to his own Francus, and “Les neuf belles sœurs Qui trempèrent mes vers dans leurs graves douceurs,” as witnesses that he was not less than the author of the _Semaine_. Now it is precisely this part of his poetry, that in which he would be an epic poet, or wear the Pindaric robe, which is dead, and can by no effort be brought to life again. When Malherbe condemned it he passed a sentence which no later admirer of the poetry of the sixteenth century has been able to reverse. The gross error of the later school was that it did not make allowance for the passing and temporary fashion of imitation of the classic models, and did shut its eyes to the fact that, besides Ronsard le Pindarique, there was Ronsard the author of “Mignonne allons voir si la Rose,” and the beautiful sonnet to Hélène, “Quand tu seras bien vieille.” This Ronsard was a very genuine, and elegant, if not very great, poet. That he would not himself have been pleased to know that he was to be admired for these themes, and not for his _Franciade_ and his Pindaric ode to Michel de L’Hospital, is possible. Yet his erroneous estimate of the relative values of different parts of his work does not affect his real glory, which is that he raised French verse from the condition of prose tagged with rhyme, into which it had fallen, gave it a new melody, and breathed into it a new poetic spirit. He did for France what Surrey and Wyatt began, and Spenser and Sidney completed for us, what the Spanish poets of the school of Boscan and Garcilaso attempted for Castilian. He set up a model of sweeter and statelier measures, and he brought the ancient classic inspiration out of pure scholarship into literature. If he had far less power than his English contemporaries, he was infinitely more original than the Spaniards. There is no mere slavish repetition of foreign models in him, but the constant and successful effort to give a genuine French equivalent, which is quite another thing. [SN: _Joachim du Bellay._]