JAN ANTOINE DE BAÏF.

BOTH those, of whom I have last spoken, Bellay and Belleau, belonged to that cluster of poets, to which was given the name of the French Pleiad. Iodelle, Thyard, Dorat, and Ronsard, were four others in this constellation; and Jan Antoine de Baïf made the seventh, whose lustre, if it were proportioned to the number of verses he has left, would outshine most of them. But as it is rather by the virtue than the bulk of such luminaries that we appreciate their excellence, he must be satisfied with an inferior place. The chief thing that can be said of him, I think, is that there is much ease in his But this is not enough to carry us through so many books as I have to record the titles of under his name. It is said that no one has had the courage to read them all since his death.

manner.

Les Amours de Jan Antoine de Baïf. Paris. Pour Lucas Breyer, 1572. 2 vols. 8vo.

There is what appears to be the same edition with his Passetems added.

In the prefaratory address to the Duke of Anjou, afterwards Henry III. he speaks of the French poets who have sung of love. They are Bellay, Thyard, Ronsard, Belleau, to whom he says,

Belleau gentil, qui d'esquise peinture
Soigneusement imites la nature,
Tu consacras de tes vers la plus part
De Cytheree au petit fils mignard.

'Gentle Belleau, who dost diligently copy nature with exquisite painting, thou hast consecrated the greater part of thy verses to the darling child of Venus.' To these he adds Desportes.

Of the four books of his Francine (the name of his mistress), and of his three other books, Des Diverses Amours, there is very little by which I could hope to please my readers. They will, I doubt not, think the following sonnet enough.

Un jour quand de l'yver l'ennuieuse froidure
S'attedist, faisant place au printemps gracieux,
Lors que tout rit aux champs, et que les prez joyeux,
Peignent de belles fleurs leur riante verdure:

Pres du Clain tortueux sous une roche obscure
Un doux somme ferma d'un doux lien mes yeux,
Voyci en mon dormant une clairté des cieux
Venir l'ombre emflamer d'une lumiere pure.
Voyci venir des cieux sous l'escorte d'Amour,
Neuf nymphes qu'on eust dist estre toutes jumelles :
En rond aupres de moy elles firent un tour.
Quand l'une, me tendant de myrte un verd chapeau,
Medit: chante d'amour d'autres chansons nouvelles,
Et tu pourras monter à nostre saint coupeau.

On a day, as the winter, relaxing his spleen,

Grew warm and gave way to the frolick some spring, When all laughs in the fields, and the gay meadows fling

A shower of sweet buds o'er their mantle of green, 'Twas then in a cave by the wild crankling Clain

I lay, and sleep shadow'd me o'er with his wing, When a lustre shone round, as some angel did bring A torch that its light from the sun-beams had ta’en ; And lo! floating downwards, escorted by Love,

Nine maids, who methought from one birth might have sprung;

And they circled around me and hover'd above, When one held forth a wreath of green myrtle inwove; See, she cried, that of love some new ditty be sung, And with us thou shalt dwell in our heavenly grove. He has formed some of these pieces on the model of the Italian canzone, with an envoi at the end.

Besides these are nine books which he calls simply his poems. In the concluding address to his book, he has given a portrait of himself.

Another of his publications is, Les Jeux de Jan Antoine de Baïf. Paris. Pour Lucas Breyer. 1573. 8vo. It contains nineteen Eclogues; Antigone, translated from Sophocles; two comedies, le Brave and l'Eunuque, the latter from Terence; and Neuf Devis de Dieux pris de Lucian, nine Dialogues of the Gods, from Lucian. The Eclogues are, for the most part, taken from Theocritus or Virgil. They seem

to me among the most pleasing of his poems; but are sometimes less decorous than one could wish. 'Etre'nes de Poe'zie Fransoeze an vers mezure's, &c. &c. par Jan Antoine de Baïf. Denys du Val. 1574. 8vo. This is a whimsical attempt to imitate the heroic and lyrical measures of the ancients, and at the same time to introduce a new mode of orthography, accommodated to the real pronunciation. The book contains, besides a few odes, translations of the works and days of Hesiod, the golden verses of Pythagoras, the admonitory poem that goes under the name of Phocylides, and the Nuptial Advice of Naumachius.

Of what he calls iambikes trimetres nōkadāses, the following compliment to Belleau may be taken as a sample :

A toe, ki 8vrier peins le vre,, jantil Bélea,
Nature çerçant contrefer ân son naïf,
Ki restes des miens companon plus ansien.

"To thee, gentle Belleau, artist that dost paint the truth, seeking to counterfeit nature to the life, who remainest the oldest associate among my friends, &c."

Some years before, Claudio Tolommei had endeavoured to naturalize the ancient metres in the Italian tongue, but with no better success.

Jan Antoine de Baïf, the natural son of Lazare de Baïf, Abbot of Grenetière, was born in 1532, at

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Venice, where his father was ambassador. He was much addicted to music; and his concerts were attended by the kings Charles IX. and Henry III. I learn from a passage in Burney's History of Music (vol. iii. p. 263), referred to by Mr. Walker in his memoir on Italian Tragedy, Appendix, p. xix. that Baïf usually set his own verses to music. The friendship which Ronsard entertained, for both him and Belleau, will appear in the account that will be given of that poet. He died in 1592. Cardinal du Perron said of him, that he was a very good man, and a very bad poet. We shall have occasion to estimate the Cardinal's own pretensions in this way.

JAN DE LA PERUSE.

THE works of Jan de la Peruse, one of those contemporary writers whom we shall see distinguished by Ronsard, were edited by Claude Binet, the affectionate friend of both. He has prefixed a preface to them, and added some verses of his own. The title of this book is, "Les Oeuvres de Jan de la Peruse, avec quelques autres diverses Poesies de Claude Binet." A Lyon. Par Benoist Rigaud, 1577. 16mo. The first poem is Medee, a tragedy. It is a mixture of twelve syllable verses; the common verse, ten;