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It is in Du Bellay's Olive, a collection of sonnets in praise of a half-imaginary lady, Sonnetz a la louange d'Olive, that these characteristics are most abundant. Here is a perfectly crystallised specimen:
Du Bellay's object is to adjust the existing French culture to the rediscovered classical culture; and in discussing this problem, and developing the theories of the Pleiad, he has lighted upon many principles of permanent truth and applicability.
He reached home at last, but only to die there, quite suddenly, one wintry day, at the early age of thirty-five. Much of Du Bellay's poetry illustrates rather the age and school to which he belonged than his own temper and genius.
Some of this man's strictures on Grandier were reported to the latter, especially some calumnies to which Duthibaut had given vent at the Marquis de Bellay's; and one day, Grandier, arrayed in priestly garments, was about to enter the church of Sainte-Croix to assist in the service, he encountered Duthibaut at the entrance, and with his usual haughty disdain accused him of slander.
But Robert grew impatient, and hurried on his guest to other things to the shelves of French rarities, ranging from Du Bellay's 'Visions, with his autograph, down to the copy of 'Les Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe' presented by Chateaubriand to Madame Récamier, or to a dainty manuscript volume in the fine writing of Lamartine.
The same profound sense of the transiency of things, which meets us in the studied pages of his confessional the Latin treatise De Contemptu Mundi pervades these exquisite poems. Du Bellay's Antiquities, which Spenser's translation under the title of The Ruines of Rome has made familiar, were written after a visit to Rome in attendance upon the Cardinal du Bellay, and first published in 1558.
Du Bellay's brother, the author of the memoirs, says that the king, at the bishop's entreaty, promised that if the pope would delay sentence, and send "judges to hear the matter, he would himself forbear to do what he proposed to do," that is, separate wholly from the See of Rome.
The sweetness of it is by no means to be got at by crushing, as you crush wild herbs to get at their perfume. One seems to hear the measured falling of the fans, with a child's pleasure on coming across the incident for the first time, in one of those great barns of Du Bellay's own country, La Beauce, the granary of France.
Some of this man's strictures on Grandier were reported to the latter, especially some calumnies to which Duthibaut had given vent at the Marquis de Bellay's; and one day, Grandier, arrayed in priestly garments, was about to enter the church of Sainte-Croix to assist in the service, he encountered Duthibaut at the entrance, and with his usual haughty disdain accused him of slander.
That generation had other instances of this intimacy of sentiment: Montaigne's Essays are full of it, the carvings of the church of Brou are full of it. M. Sainte-Beuve has perhaps exaggerated the influence of this quality in Du Bellay's Regrets; but the very name of the book has a touch of Rousseau about it, and reminds one of a whole generation of self-pitying poets in modern times.
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