Ronsard had by this time acquired a reputation which eclipsed that of all his contemporaries. He was caressed and patronised by Charles the Ninth (of hateful memory), who, like Nero, exhibited the revolting combination of a taste for poetry and the fine arts, with the most sanguinary and depraved dispositions. Ronsard, having lost his Marie, was commanded by Catherine de' Medicis to select a mistress from among the ladies of her court, to be the future object of his tuneful homage. He politely left her Majesty to choose for him, prepared to fall in love duly at the royal behest; and Catherine pointed out Helène de Surgeres, one of her maids of honour, as worthy to be the second Laura of a second Petrarch. The docile poet, with zealous obedience, warbled the praises of Helène for the rest of his life. He also consecrated to her a fountain near his château in the Vendomois, which has popularly preserved her name and fame. It is still known as the "Fontaine d'Helène." Helène was more witty than beautiful, and, though vain of the celebrity she had acquired in the verses of Ronsard, she either disliked him in the character of a lover, or was one of those lofty ladies Who hate to have their dignity profaned With any relish of an earthly thought.[118] She desired the Cardinal du Perron would request Ronsard (in her name) to prefix an epistle to the odes and sonnets addressed to her, assuring the world that this poetical love had been purely Platonic. "Madam," said the Cardinal, "you had better give him leave to prefix your picture."[119] I presume my fair and gentle readers (I shall have none, I am sure, who are not one or the other, or both,) are as tired as myself of all this affectation, and glad to turn from it to the interest of passion and reality. "There is not," says Cowley, "so great a lie to be found in any poet, as the vulgar conceit of men, that lying is essential to good poetry." On the contrary, where there is not truth, there is nothing-- Rien n' est beau que le vrai,--le vrai seul est aimable! While the Italian school of amatory verse was flourishing in France, Spain, and England, almost to the extinction of originality in this style, the brightest light of Italian poesy had arisen, and was shining with a troubled splendour over that land of song. How swiftly at the thought does imagination shoot, "like a glancing star," over the wide expanse of sea and land, and through a long interval of sad and varied years! I am again standing within the porch of the church of San Onofrio, looking down upon the little slab in its dark corner, which covers the bones of TASSO. FOOTNOTES: [109] Died 1631 [110] Died in 1619. [111] Died 1649. [112] Leicester's influence over Elizabeth appeared so unaccountable, that it was ascribed to magic, and to her evil stars. [113] Spenser's Daphnaida. [114] Bélier, mon ami! Commencez par le commencement! COUNT HAMILTON.