The poet replies, that the ingratitude and cruelty of Chloris had made him resolute to persevere in the course he had taken. On this, Love seems to allow the justice of his plea; but argues that he is not to give over the chase, because the prey has once escaped him; that the mariner, who has suffered shipwreck, again puts to sea; and the labourer, whose hopes of a harvest have failed, still continues to commit his seed to the earth: and, when Bertaut persists in his contumacy, ends by unfolding the paper: this presents him with a portrait of a new mistress, which, as might be expected, he finds irresistible. Here there is no want of sprightliness either in the invention or the style; but his materials are spun out somewhat too diffusely.

Jean Bertaut was born in 1552, at Caen in Normandy, a province where the poetry of France may be said to have originated under the auspices of its English sovereigns, or, to speak more properly, the Norman sovereigns of England; and which has since continued to support the honours it had so early acquired. He was the First Almoner to Queen Catherine de Medici. By Henry III. he was made Private Secretary, Reader, and Councillor of State. Henry IV. who was induced partly by his arguments or persuasion to conform to the church establishment of France, gave him the Abbey of Aunay in 1594; and in 1606 appointed him Bishop of Sees in Nor

mandy. Besides the poems already mentioned, he made a translation of the Second Book of the Æneid, inserted in the collection of his poems, and a translation or paraphrase of the Psalms into French verse, which is not among them, and which was perhaps not made till after he became a bishop. He died in 1611, at the age of fifty-nine.

MAURICE SCEVE.

PASQUIER, in his Researches on France, (Recherches de la France, 1. 6. ch. 7.) speaks of Maurice Sceve as the leader of that poetic troop, in the reign of Henry the Second, who, deserting the vulgar and beaten track, struck out into a more retired and lofty path. "In his younger days," says Pasquier, "he had trod in the steps of the rest; but, when advanced in life, chose to enter on another course, proposing to himself for his object, in imitation of the Italians, a mistress whom he celebrated under the name of Delia, not in sonnets (for that form of composition had not yet been introduced), but in continued stanzas of ten (dixains), yet with such darkness of meaning, that in reading him I owned myself satisfied

M

not to understand him, since he was not willing to be understood. Du Bellay, acknowledging his priority in his own style of writing, has addressed to him a sonnet, in which he says,

Gentil esprit, ornement de la France,
Qui, d'Apollon sainctement inspiré,
T'es le premier du peuple retiré,
Loin du chemin tracé par l'ignorance.

O gentle spirit, ornament of France,
Who, by Apollo sacredly inspired,

Hast from the people, first of all, retired,
Far from the path mark'd out by ignorance.

And in the fiftieth sonnet of his Olive, the same poet calls him, 6 new swan;' implying, that by a new method he had banished ignorance from our poetry. The consequence has been, that his book has perished with him." Thus far Pasquier. It can scarcely be hoped, that a modern reader should pierce through

That double night of darkness and of shade

with which Maurice has invested his Delia, since one who was so much nearer to her orb professed himself unable to penetrate it. Yet sometimes methinks

she

Stoops her pale visage through an amber cloud,
And disinherits Chaos;

and it is during a few of these occasional gleams that

I could wish to exhibit her.

Amour perdit les traits qu'il me tira,

Et de douleur se print fort a complaindre ;
Venus en eut pitié, et soupira,

Tant que par pleurs son brandon feit esteindre:
Dont aigrement furent contrainctz de plaindre,
Car l'Arcier fut sans traict, Cypris sans flamme.
Ne pleure pas Venus: mais bien enflamme
Ta torche en moy, mon cœur l'allumera:

Et toy, enfant, cesse, va vers ma dame,

Qui de ses yeux tes flesches refera.—(lxxxix. p. 44.)

Love lost the weapons that he aim'd at me,
And wail'd for woe that had his soul unmann'd;
Venus with pity did that sadness see,

And sigh'd and wept till she put out her brand;
So did they both in grievous sorrow stand,
Her torch extinct, his arrows spent in air.

Cease, goddess, cease thy mourning; and repair
Thy torch in me, whose heart the flame supplies;
And thou, child, cease; unto my lady fare,
And make again thy weapons at her eyes.

A l'embrunir des heures tenebreuses,
Que Somnus lent pacifie la terre,
Ensevely soubz cortines umbreuses,
Songe à moy vient, qui mon esprit desserre,
Et tout aupres de celle là le serre,

Qu'il reveroit pour son royal maintien.

Mais par son doulx, et prive' entretien

L'attrait tant sien, que puis sans craincte aulcune
Il m'est advis, certes, que je la tien,

Mais ainsi, comme Endimion la Lune.

(cxxxv. p. 60.)

When darksome hours the welkin have embrown'd,
And sluggish Somnus lulls the world to peace,
Buried in curtains shadowing around,
Cometh a dream that doth my spirit release,
And in her presence bids its wandering cease,
Whom it hath reverenced for her royal guise.
But with so soft and intimate surprise
Hers draws it on, that I, unfearing soon,
Methinks am folding her; yet in such wise
As once the Latmian shepherd did the Moon.

In another of these dixains, he refers to the death of Sir Thomas More, whose fate had then recently filled Europe with consternation.

Le doulx sommeil de ses tacites eaux
D'oblivion m'arousa tellement,

Que de la mere et du filz les flambeaux
Je me sentois estaintz totallement,
Ou le croyois et specialement,
Que la nuict est a repos inclinée.

Mais le jour vint, et l'heure destinée,
Ou, revirant, mille foys je mouruz,
Lors que vertu en son zele obstinée

Perdit au monde Angleterre, et Morus. (clvi. p. 70.)