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Courier, in the preface to his translation of Herodotus, tells us that Malherbe, the courtier, used to say, "I learn all my French at the Place Maubert," and that Plato, who was a poet and did not like the lower orders, nevertheless called them his "masters of language."
To him France owes the first attempt at the ode and the heroic epic; in the former, he is regarded as the precursor of Malherbe, who is still looked on as a model in this style, But Ronsard, and the numerous school which he formed, not only imitated the spirit and form of the ancients, but aimed to subject his own language to combinations and inversions like those of the Greek and Latin, and foreign roots and phrases began to overpower the reviving flexibility of the French idiom.
The disparity of age seemed to make the royal passion ridiculous. To Henry the situation seemed poetical and pathetic. After this first interview he never missed a single rehearsal. In the intervals he called perpetually for the services of the court poet Malherbe, who certainly contrived to perpetrate in his behalf some of the most detestable verses that even he had ever composed.
The dramatic symphony that he created flourished in its German form under Liszt; the most eminent German composer of to-day, Richard Strauss, came under his influence; and Felix Weingartner, who with Charles Malherbe edited Berlioz's complete works, was bold enough to write, "In spite of Wagner and Liszt, we should not be where we are if Berlioz had not lived."
The poetry of Malherbe came, with its sustained style and weighty sentiment, but with nothing that set people singing; and the lovers of such poetry saw in the poetry of the Pleiad only the latest trumpery of the middle age.
While Malherbe and I were peering from behind our hurriedly erected entrenchment, and occasionally firing a few shots, I discovered four or five brave khakies busy dragging along an ammunition waggon, or a gun; from such a distance we could not distinguish which.
Ah, that ragged, rugged highway which he had traversed: dry crusts of life, buffets, bramble, curses and mockery. And here was realized one of his idle dreams. He took a dozen long strokes, which sent the craft up stream in the direction of Sillery, and let the oars drift. "You were to read a book?" he asked. "It would burn your godly ears," said madame: "Malherbe." "I have read him," quietly.
But the time came also when the school of Malherbe had had its day; and the Romanticists, who in their eagerness for excitement, for strange music and imagery, went back to the works of the middle age, accepted the Pleiad too with the rest; and in that new middle age which their genius has evoked, the poetry of the Pleiad has found its place.
A man of powerful though narrow intelligence, a passionate theorist, and an ardent specialist in grammar and the use of words, Malherbe reacted violently both against the misplaced and artificial erudition of the Pléiade and their unforced outbursts of lyric song.
It is a strange kind of poetry: not that of imaginative vision, of plastic beauty, of subtle feeling; but that of intellectual excitement and spiritual strength. It is the poetry of Malherbe multiplied a thousandfold in vigour and in genius, and expressed in the form most appropriate to it the dramatic Alexandrine verse.
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