Nor brick nor marble was the wall to view,
But shining crystal, which from top to base
Out of her womb a thousand rayons threw,

One hundred steps of Afric gold's enchase:
Gold was the parget; and the ceiling bright
Did shine all scaly, with great plates of gold;
The floor of jasp and emerald was dight.

O! world's vainness! whiles thus I did behold,
An earthquake shook the hill from lowest seat,
And overthrew this frame with ruine great.

(The Visions of Bellay, 2.)

Joachim du Bellay, descended from one of the noblest families in Anjou, was born at Liré, a village eight miles from Angers, in the year 1524. The facility and sweetness with which he wrote, gained him the appellation of the French Ovid. He was highly esteemed by Margaret of Valois, Queen of Navarre, and by Henry the Second, who granted him a considerable pension. He passed some years in Italy, whither he went in the suite of his kinsman, Cardinal du Bellay. We have seen how ill he was pleased with that country, and yet how much he learned from it. Another of his family, Eustache du Bellay, Bishop of Paris, obtained for him in 1555, a canonry in his church. He was carried off at an early age by a fit of apoplexy, in January, 1560; and was buried in the church of Notre Dame.

Many epitaphs were made for him, in which he

F

was

called Pater Elegantiarum; Pater Omnium Leporum.

He wrote Latin Poems that are not so much esteemed as his French.

REMY BELLEAU.

THE Painter of Nature was the appellation which distinguished Remy Belleau among the poets of his time; and it is enough to obtain for him no ordinary share of regard from those who know how much is implied in that title, and how rare that merit is of which it may be considered as a pledge. I have not yet had the good fortune to meet with an edition containing the whole of his works. That which I have seen was printed during his life-time, with the following title: Les Amours et nouveaux Eschanges des Pierres precieuses; Vertus et Proprietez d'icelles. Discours de la Vanité, Pris de l'Ecclesiaste. Eclogues Sacrees, Prises du Cantique des Cantiques. Par Remy Belleau. A Paris par Mamert Patisson, au logis de Rob. Estienne, 1576, avec privilege du Roy. "The Loves and new Transformations of the Precious Stones; their Virtues and Properties. Discourse on Vanity, taken from Ecclesiastes. Sacred Eclogues, taken from the Song of Songs, &c." There is

in these sufficient to prove that Belleau was not in the habit of looking at nature through the eyes of other men; that he did not content himself with making copies of copies; but that he drew from the life, whenever he had such objects to describe as the visible world could supply him with. Nor is this the whole of his praise; for he has also some fancy, and a flow of numbers unusually melodious.

In the above collection, the first poem, on the Loves and Transformations of the Precious Stones, dedicated to Henry III., is on a plan not much more happy than that of Darwin's Loves of the Plants. Several of them are supposed to have been youths or maidens, who, in consequence of adventures similar to those invented by the poet of the Metamorphoses, were changed into their present shape. Thus, in the first of these tales, the nymph Amethyste, of whom Bacchus is enamoured, prays to Diana for succour, and by her is transformed into a stone, which the god dyes purple with the juice of the grape. A description, which he has here introduced of the jolly god with the Bacchantes in different attitudes about his chariot, is executed with a luxuriance of pencil that reminds one of Rubens.

D'un pié prompt et legier, ces folles Bassarides
Environnent le char, l'une se pend aux brides
Des onces mouchettez d'estoiles sur le dos,
Onces à l'oeil subtil, au pié souple et dispos,

Au muffle herissé de deux longues moustaches :
L'autre met dextrement les tigres aux attaches
Tizonnez sur la peau, les couple deux-à-deux,
Ils ronflent de colere, et vont rouillant les yeux :
D'un fin drap d'or frisé semé de perles fines
Les couvre jusqu'au flanc, les houpes à crepines
Flottent sur le genou; plus humbles devenus
On agence leur queue en tortillons menus. (F. 4.)

A train of Mænads wanton'd round the car
With light and frolic step: one on the reins
Hung of the ounces speckled o'er with stars,
Of eye quick-glancing, and free supple foot,
The long mustaches bristling from their maws:
Another with quick hand the traces flung
Across the tygers of the streaky skin:
They yoked in pairs went snorting, and with ire
Their restless eye-balls roll'd. Fine cloth of gold,
Sown o'er with pearls, hung mantling to their side,
And at the knee the tassel'd fringes danced.
Then, as their pride abated, in quaint curls
They braid their wavy tails.

As a companion to this, I would place the fine picture of Cybele's chariot drawn by lions, as Keats has painted it.

Forth from a rugged arch, in the dusk below,
Came mother Cybele; alone, alone,

In sombre chariot; dark foldings thrown
About her majesty, and front death-pale,

With turrets crown'd. Four maned lions hale

The sluggish wheels; solemn their toothed maws,
Their surly eyes brow-hidden, heavy paws
Uplifted drowsily, and nervy tails

Cowering their tawny brushes. (Endymion, p. 83.)

In this pictorial manner, there is an anonymous poem of extraordinary merit, which, I believe, appeared first in the New Monthly Magazine. It is called the Indian Circian. The writer of it, whoever well aspire to the title of the Painter

he

may be, may

of Nature.

To return to Belleau. Another of these little stories is built on the fable of Hyacinthus, whose blood, when he is killed by Apollo, forms the jacinth, at the same time that the nymph Chrysolithe, who had requited his offered love with scorn, poisons herself, and is changed into the stone bearing her name. The spot in which the boy meets his fate, when he is playing at quoits with Phoebus, is a piece of landscape-painting, sweetly touched.

Iris being sent on one of her mistress's errands, stays to refresh herself by the river Indus, where she sees and becomes enamoured of Opalle;

Opalle, grand Berger des troupeaux de Neptune.

(F. 27.)

"Great Shepherd that on Neptune's flocks did

tend."

He is dazzled and overpowered by the advances of