Pierre de Provence, or to the Hero and Leander of this writer, many a lover of antique simplicity would have risen up amongst us to shew how superior such compositions were to the nugæ canora of later times.

A passage in the last mentioned of these poems, descriptive of the reception Hero gives her lover, after his first swimming across the Hellespont, appears to me to be a model of ease and sweetness.

Elle embrassa d'amour et d'aise pleine
Son cher espoux quasi tout hors d'aleine,
Ayant encor ses blancs cheveux mouillez
Tous degouttans, et d'escume souillez.
Lors le mena dedans son cabinet;

Et quand son corps eut essuyé bien net,
D'huile rosat bien odorant l'oignit,

Et de la mer la senteur estainguit.*

Du Bellay, a poet who lived in Marot's time, considered his Eclogue on the Birth of the Dauphin as one of his best productions. It is little more than a translation of the Pollio of Virgil.

His tale of the Lion and Rat opened the way for La Fontaine's excellence in that species of writing. The epigrams, for which he is so much applauded,

* It will be found on a comparison with the Greek poem of Musæus, that Marot has followed it very closely. I have not Marlow and Chapman's poem, lately re-edited with a pleasant preface, nor Mr. Elton's translation, to compare with this.

are often gross and licentious. I have selected one that is not open to this objection.

Plus ne suis ce que j'ay esté,
Et ne le sçaurois jamais estre.
Mon beau printemps et mon esté
Ont fait le sault par la fenestre.
Amour tu as esté mon maistre,
Je t'ay servi sur tous les Dieux.
O si je pouvois deux fois naistre,
Comme je te servirois mieux.

The merit of this so much depends on the delicacy and happy turn of the expression that I am loth to venture it in English.

CLEMENT MAROT, whom I have thus endeavoured to introduce to the notice of my readers, was born at Cahors, in Quercy, in 1484. His father Jean,* a Norman, was also a poet of some celebrity; as appears from an epigram addressed by his son to Hugues Salel, another writer of whom it is intended to give some account in a future paper.

De Jan de Meun s'enfle le cours de Loire.

En maistre Alain Normandie prent gloire :

Et plaint encore mon arbre paternel.

"The Loire swells with pride at the name of Jean de Meun. Normandy glories in Master Alain (Alain Chartier), and still mourns for my paternal tree."

*Jean Marot's poems were published at Paris, 1723, in two volumes; together with those of Michel, who was, I think, the son of Clement.

During the captivity of Francis I. in Spain, Clement was apprehended on a suspicion of heresy, and confined in the Châtelet at Paris, from whence he was transferred to Chartres. Having been delivered through the intercession of his friends, but still fearing a second imprisonment, he took refuge, first with Margaret of Navarre, the King's sister, and afterwards at Ferrara, with Renée, Duchess of that city, and daughter of Louis XII. To these events in his life he refers in some verses addressed to those through whose kindness he had obtained his freedom.

J'euz à Paris prison fort inhumaine:

A Chartres fuz doucement encloué :
Maintenant vois, ou mon plaisir me maine;
C'est bien et mal. Dieu soit de tout loué.

"At Paris my prison was a cruel one; in my confinement at Chartres I had milder usage. Now I go where my pleasure leads me. It is good and evil. God be praised for all."

At Ferrara, he contracted a friendship with Calvin, and is said to have embraced the opinions of that reformer. But at the solicitation of Paul III. the Duke of Ferrara determined on banishing all the wits and learned men, who were suspected of heresy, out of his territories; and the Duchess prevailed on the King of France to allow Marot to return to his court, and to restore him to favour, on condition of his again

becoming a dutiful son to the Church. Against the

charge of dissension he thus defends himself:

Point ne suis Lutheriste,

Ne Zuinglien, et moins Anabaptiste :
Je suis de Dieu par son Filz Jesus Christ.
Je suis celuy qui ay fait maint escrit,
Dont un seul vers on n'en sauroit extraire,
Qui a la loi divine soit contraire.

Je suis celuy, qui prens plaisir, et peine
A louer Christ et la mere tant pleine
De grace infuse; et pour bien l'eprouver,
On le pourra par mes escrits trouver.

A Monsieur Bouchart, Docteur en Theologie.

"I am neither Lutheran nor Zuinglian; and still less an Anabaptist: I am of God by his Son Jesus Christ. I am one that have written many a poem; from none of which a single line can be adduced contrary to the divine law. I am one whose delight and whose labour it is to exalt my Saviour and his all-gracious Mother. The best proof of this may be found in my writings."

From his verses to the King, written during his residence at Ferrara, it appears that he thought himself in danger of being put to the stake as a heretic. The argument which he uses to defend himself on account of having prohibited books in his possession, are much the same as Milton has since urged on a similar subject in his Areopagitica,

On his return to France in 1536, he employed himself in translating some of the Psalms into French

metre, from the version of Vatable, the royal professor of Hebrew, which gave so much scandal to the doctors of the Sorbonne, that they induced the King to prevent him from continuing his work.

Still however he persisted in delivering his sentiments on religion with such freedom as to keep alive the resentment of his enemies; and he at last found it necessary to remove to Geneva. Here he was accused of having committed some gross irregularities of conduct, of which I am willing to believe him innocent. He then retired to Turin, and died in poverty at the age of sixty.

*

THIBAUT, KING OF NAVARRE.

WHETHER THIBAUT, King of Navarre, was or was not the favoured lover of Blanch, Queen Regent of France, and mother of Louis the Ninth, is a question that has been much debated. Those, who maintain the affirmative, rely chiefly on the hearsay evidence of

*This notice of Thibaut, as it carries us back to an earlier period than any of the after pages, so was it written and published prior to all the rest. It is, however, placed second in this volume, because the account of Clement Marot purports to introduce us to the series.-ED.