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Early French Poets-Clement Marot.

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 many beauties that will meet us in the search we are about to engage in.

We will begin with Marot; not because his works are of very rare occurrence, (for there have been many editions of them,) but because, though frequently spoken of, and even recommended as a model of elegant "badinage" by Boileau, he is but little known amongst us; which indeed is not much to be wondered at, when his own countrymen seem to have almost lost sight of him. "Marot is much talked of, but seldom read," says one of their critics.* "We do not read with pleasure that which has need of a dictionary to explain it. Almost all his expressions are antiquated.""Villon and Marot, and some others, are satirical poets; and their epigrams may be said to be the only titles they have to celebrity in the present day," says another. All this may show the little taste the French now have for their elder poets. How otherwise could they have overlooked those exquisite sketches, the Temple of Cupid, and the Eclogue of Pan and Robin, by Marot; the latter of which is worthy the author of the Faerie Queene, as the former is of Chaucer?

We might almost suppose our selves to be reading an imitation of the proem to the Canterbury Tales, in the following verses with which the Temple of Cupid opens: Sur le printemps que la belle Flora Les champs couverts de diverse fleur a, E son amy Zephyrus les esvente, Quand doucement en l'air souspire e vente.

[Dec.

The whole poem is indeed so fanciful, and so replete with a peculiar kind of sprightly humour, that I am not without hopes of amusing my readers by an abstract of it.

In this merry spring-tide, the God commands that his eyes may be unbandaged, and looking round his celestial throne, sees all nations bending under his sway, like a scion under the wind; and the other deities themselves, submitting to his power. But observing that Marot continued still refractory, he resolves to tame the rebel; and taking an arrow out of his quiver, executes his purpose so effectually, as to render the unhappy poet an object of commiseration to all who have a heart capable of pity. In order to assuage his sufferings, Marot resolves on a far-off journey in search of the goddess Ferme-amour, a pure and chaste dame, whom Jupiter had sent upon earth, committing the government of loyal spirits to her care. A long time did the Poet compass land and sea, like a knight-errant, on this quest. Of all to whom he came he inquired whether she dwelt in their land; but of none did he gain any tidings of her. At length he determines to go to the Temple Cupidique, in the hopes of finding her there; and setting out early in the morning, has no difficulty in discovering his way; for many a passing pilgrim had sprinkled it with roses and branches of rosemary; and as he advanced, he fell in with other pilgrims who journeyed on, sighing and relating their sad haps. Joining their company, he arrives with them at the royal temple; where, in the enclosure that surrounded it, the sweet breath of the west-wind, and Tityrus, and the god Pan with his flocks and herds, and the sound of pipes and flageolets, and of birds answering to them, soon refreshed his wearied spirits.

M. Dussault, in a review of a Selection of Marot's Works, inserted in his Annales Littéraires, t. i. p. 198.

+ M. Avenel, one of the writers in the Lycée Français, t. ii. p. 106, an entertaining miscellany that lasted but a short time after the deccase of Charles Loyson, a young poet of considerable promise, who was a chief contributor to it. He died in the course of last year.

Indeed he has closely copied it in the Shepheard's Kalendar, Ecl. 12.

4

Tous arbres sont en ce licu verdoyans;
Petits ruisseaux y furent ondoyans,
Toujours faisans, au tour des prez herbus
Un doux murmure: et quand le cler Phebus
Avoit droit là ses beaux rayons espars,
Telle splendeur rendoit de toutes pars

Ce lieu divin, qu'aux humains bien sembloit
Que terre au ciel de beauté ressembloit.

His heart assured him that this was the residence of Ferme-amour; and Hope led him onward to the delightful place. It seemed as if Jove had come from heaven on purpose to frame it; and there was wanting nothing but Adam and Eve to make one believe that it was the terrestrial paradise itself.

Over the portal he observes a scutcheon with the arms of Love engraved on it; and higher up the figure of Cupid himself, with his naked bow out-stretched and ready to discharge an arrow at the first comer. He now enters; and is welcomed by Bel-accueil, who takes him by his right hand, and leads him through a narrow path into the beautiful enclosure of which he was the first porter.

Le premier huis de toutes fleurs vermeilles
Estoit construiste, et de boutons yssans,
Signifiant que joyes non pareilles
Sont a jamais en ce lieu fleurissans:

The door was built up of all flowers red
And buds, that from their buttons issued,
Denoting well that joys without compare
For ever in that place y-blooming were.

This was the barrier kept by Bel-accueil in his green robe; who day and night opens to true lovers and gracious; and willingly enlists them under his banners; whilst he excludes (as reason is) all those who are such as the perfidious and disloyal Jason.

We now come to the great altar, which is a rock of that virtue, that every lover who would flee from it is drawn nearer, like steel to the magnet. The canopy is a cedar, which stretches so wide as to cover the altar, on which body, and heart, and goods, must be given up as an offering to Venus.

De Cupido le diademe

Est de roses un chapelet,
Que Venus cuellit elle meme
Dedans son jardin verdelet ;
Et sur le printemps nouvelet
Le transmit à son cher enfant
Qui de bon cœur le va coiffant;
Puis donna pour ces roses belles
A sa mere un char triomphant
Conduit par douze colombelles.
Devant l'autel deux cypres singuliers
Je vey fleurir sons odeur embasmée :
Et me dit-on que c'etoient les pilliers
Du grand autel de haulte renommée.
Lors mille oiseaux d'une longue ramée,
Vindrent voler sur ces vertes courtines,
Prestz de chanter chansonettes divines.
Si demanday pourquoi là sont venus:
Mais on me dit, amy, ce sont matines,
Qu'ilz viennent dire en l'honneur de Venus.

On Cupid's brow for crown was set
Of roses a fair chapelet,

The which within her garden green
Were gather'd by Love's gracious queen,
And by her to her infant dear
Sent in the spring-time of the year.
These he with right good-will did don;
And to his mother thereupon

A chariot gave, in triumph led
By turtles twelve all harnessed.

Before the altar saw I, blooming fair,
Two cypresses, embalm'd with odours rare.
And these, quoth they, are pillars that do bide
To stay this altar famed far and wide.
And then a thousand birds upon the wing
Amid those curtains green came fluttering,
Ready to sing their little songs divine.

And so I ask'd, why came they to that shrine?

And these, they said, are matins, friend; which they

In honour of Love's queen are come to say.

Before the image of Cupid burned the brand of Distress, "le brandon de Destresse," with which Dido, Biblis, and Helen of Greece, were inflamed. Now, however, it served as a lamp to the temple.

The saints of either sex, who are invoked here, are Beau-parler, Bienceler, Bon-rapport, Grace, Marcy, Bien-servir, Bien-aymer, and others, without whose aid no pilgrim can succeed in overtaking the prey which he pursues in the Forest of Loves.

Chandelles flambans, ou esteintes,

Que tous amoureux pelerins

Portent devant tels saincts et sainctes,
Ce sont bouquets de romarins.

Les chantres, linotz, et serins,
Et rossignolz au gay courage,
Qui sur buissons de verd bocage
Ou branches, en lieu de pulpitres,
Chantent le joly chant ramage,
Pour versets, respons, et epistres.

Les vitres sont de clair et fin crystal,
Ou peintes sont les gestes authentiques
De ceux qui ont jadis de cœur loyal
Bien observé d'Amour les loix antiques.

Torches quench'd or flaming high,
That all loving pilgrims bear

Before the saints that list their prayer,
Are posies made of rosemary.
Many a linnet and canary,
And many a gay nightingale,
Amid the green-wood's leafy shroud,
Instead of desks on branches smale,*
For verse, response, and 'pistle loud,
Sit shrilling of their merry song.

The windows were of crystal clear,
On which old gestes depeinten are,
Of such as with true hearts did hold
The laws by Love ordain'd of old.

* This reminds one of a line in Shakspeare's sonnets:

"Bare ruin'd choirs where late the sweet birds sang."

In secret tabernacles and little shrines are deposited necklaces, rings, crowns (coins), ducats, and chains of gold; by which greater miracles are wrought in love than even by the mighty saint Beau-parler (Fine-talk) himself.

The vaults and arches are marvellously interlaced with trellis-work of vines, from which the young buds and grapes are seen depending.

The bells are tabours, dulcimers, harps, lutes, hoboes, flageolets, trumpets, and clarions; from which, whensoever they are sounded, there issues a chime so melodious, that there is no soldier, however fond of war, who would not quit lance and sabre to become a monk in this temple.

On the sick and infirm, who are recommended for charity, the ladies bestow smiles, and kind looks, and kisses, for alms. The preachers are elderly matrons, who exhort their younger sisters not to lose the flower of their age; and many are the converts that are won over by this doctrine. The cemetery is a green wood; the walls, hedges and brakes; the crosses are fruit-trees; and the De Profundis, merry songs. Ovid, Master Alain Chartier, Petrarch, and the Romant of the Rose, serve for Massbook, Breviary, and Psalter; and the lessons chaunted are rondeaux, ballads, and virelays. Other manner of chaunts there are, that consist only of cries, wailings, and complaints. The little chapels, or oratories, are leafy chambers and branching cabinets; labyrinths in woods and gardens, where one loses oneself while the green lasts; the wickets are low bushes, and the pavement all of green sward.

The eau-benite (or holy-water) stood in a lake, called the lake of tears, made from the weeping of lovers. Nothing can grow near it; but every thing there is withered throughout the year. The watersprinkle was a faded rose. the incense that was burned within As for the temple, it was composed of daisies, pinks, amaranths, roses, rosemary, red buttons, lavender, and every flower that casts a comfortable smell; but the marigold too (the flower of care," de la soucie") was amongst them:

Voila qui mi trouble le sens.

ready to administer the vows to all Genius, the arch-priest, stands who are desirous of professing. The altars, whereon they are sworn, are couches covered with sumptuous ornaments: no candles are used day or fession are so clear, that novices night; and the terms of their proknow more than the most learned clerks.

nadings; and the solemn words reThe masses for requiem are serepeated for the deceased, as paternosters and avemaryes, are the gossiping and prattle of women. sacred processions are the morrisThe dancing, and mumming, and antic feats of amorous champions; their consolings are to talk pair by pair, or and their holy relics are the lips of to read the Ars Amandi for gospels; their ladies. On all sides, says Marot, I look round me and contemplate; and in my life I think I never saw a temple so well fitted at all points, excepting one-and that was, that there was altar. Joy there is, and mourning full no pix (paix) on the of wrath; for one rest, ten travails; and in brief, it would be hard to say whether it were more like Hell or Paradise: I know not what to compare it to better than a rose encompassed with thorns; short pleasures and long complainings.

temple, he at last finds Ferme-amour After some other adventures in the and an excellent lady, who were in the choir between a great prince invested with the royal fleur-de-lys and ducal ermines. Bel-accueil opens for him the entrance into the choir, and he gladly enlists himself under the standard of Ferme-amour; but and cœur, on which the conclusion the play on the words, choeur turns, cannot be preserved in English.

It may be seen from this view of one of his poems how strong a resemblance Marot bears to Chaucer. the same rapidity and distinctness of He has the same liveliness of fancy; pencil; the same archness; the same disposition to satire: but he has all these generally in a less degree. His language does not approach much nearer to the modern than old Geoffrey's; though his age is so much less remote from ours. Marot was contemporary with our writers in the

time of Henry VIII.; and had they left any thing equal to this piece, or to the Epistle of Maguelonne à son Amy 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 show how superior such compositions

were to the nugæ canore 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, 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."

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

*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.

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