Ronsard and his followers had encumbered their poems, but he could not have failed to observe that the language had been enriched by a vast number of words from these very sources, which naturally accorded with its spirit, and which he was himself in the constant habit of using.

In the construction of verses, the following were his principal rules.

First, he forbad the meeting of vowels in a line, at the end of one word and beginning of another. This rule again is too extensive, and should have been limited to what are called cacophonies. The best poets since the time of Malherbe have not rigidly observed it.

Secondly, as I have before observed, he forbad enjambements, the running of one line into another, and completing the sense in the second.

Thirdly, he would have the cæsura always fully marked, and went so far as not to allow the governing verb to end the first half of a line, and the verb governed to begin the last half.

Fourthly, he would not allow a simple word to rhyme with its compound, or proper names with each other, or even words that have a kindred signification.

Many other rules, and even less interesting to an English reader, are to be found in the expounders of Malherbe's theory, for he left no formal code of his

own. The above, however, are all that Boileau particularizes in the following extravagant encomium of this "tyrant of words and syllables," as he was aptly called.

Enfin Malherbe vint, et le premier en France,
Fit sentir dans les vers une juste cadence,
D'un mot mis à sa place enseigna le pouvoir,
Et réduisit la Muse aux règles du devoir.
Par ce sage écrivain la langue réparée
N'offrit plus rien de rude à l'oreille épurée
Les stances avec grâce apprirent à tomber,
Et les vers sur les vers n'osa plus enjamber.
Tout reconnut ses lois, et ce guide fidèle
Aux auteurs de ce temps sert encore de modèle
Marchez donc sur ses pas; aimez sa pureté,
Et de son tour heureux imitez la clarté.

The effect of this rigid system was very much to increase the difficulty of writing verses; a difficulty which none felt more than Malherbe himself. For whether it was owing to his care to observe his own rules, or to a natural slowness of conception, certain it is, the time he is reported to have spent in composing and finishing to his mind a poem of even but a few lines, far exceeds the ordinary period of gestation. In proof of this, a pleasant story is told of his having been commissioned to write a poem on the death of the wife of the First President of Verdun;

it took him three years to complete his task, and when he delivered his work to the President, a second wife was already consoling the poor widower for his loss. Malherbe with great gravity asks, if he would like to have his wife back again. The poem consists only of nine stanzas, of six lines each.

Malherbe died in the year 1628.

THE EARLY FRENCH POETS.

CLEMENT MAROT.

In the course of this last summer, I happened to reside for some weeks in a place where I had free access to a large collection of books,* which formerly belonged to the kings of France; but, like other royal property, having been confiscated at the Revolution, still continues unreclaimed, and is now open to the use of the public. Of this occasion I gladly availed myself, to extend my acquaintance with some of their earlier writers, whose works are not commonly to be met with in our own country; and amongst these, fixed my attention principally on such of their poets as were of most note at the restoration, or more properly speaking, the general diffusion of polite learning in Europe. What the result of this inquiry has been, I invite my readers to judge.

The French of the present day, I know, set but little store on these revivers of the poetical art.

* At Versailles, where the Author spent the summer of 1821.-ED.

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Their extreme solicitude for what they call the purity of their language, makes them easily offended by phrases, the irregularities of which we should be ready to pardon, in consideration of higher excellence, or even to welcome, as so many means of aiding us in that escape from the tameness of common every-day life, which it is one great end of poetry to effect. do not know of any other people who have set up an exclusive standard of this sort. What would the Greeks of the age of Pericles have said to a literary censor, that should have endeavoured to persuade them to throw aside the works of Homer and Hesiod, because he could have pointed out to them in every page, modes of expression that would not have passed muster in a coterie at Aspasia's? What reply should we make to a critic, that would fain put us out of conceit with some of the finest things in Spenser and Shakspeare, because they were cast in a mould utterly differing from that impressed on the language of our politer circles, though similar enough to the stamp of our countryfolks' talk? Let any one take up Voltaire's commentary on the tragedies of Corneille, and he will see to what a pitch this fastidiousness has been carried in the instance of a writer comparatively modern. I am not much afraid lest the generality of my readers should be subject to any such disgust. Our ignorance is a happy security from this danger; though I trust it will not prevent us from being alive to the