nd published in 1541 the first thirty psalms; three
years afterwards, in 1543, he added twenty others, and dedicated the
collection "to the ladies of France," in an epistle wherein the following
verses occur:

"Happy the man whose favored ear
In golden days to come shall hear
The ploughman, as he tills the ground,
The tarter, as he drives his round,
The shopman, as his task he plies,
With psalms or sacred melodies
Whiling the hours of toil away!
O, happy he who hears the lay
Of shepherd and of shepherdess,
As in the woods they sing and bless,
And make the rocks and pools proclaim
With them their great Creator's name!
O, can ye brook that God invite
Them before you to such delight?
Begin, ladies, begin! . . ."

A century after Marot's time, in 1649, a pious and learned Catholic,
Godeau, Bishop of Grasse and member of the nascent French Academy, was in
his turn translating the Psalms, and rendered full justice to the labors
of the poet, his predecessor, and to the piety of the Reformers, in the
following terms "Those whose separation from the church we deplore have
rendered the version they make use of famous by the pleasing airs that
learned musicians set them to when they were composed. To know them by
heart is, amongst them, a sign of the communion to which they belong, and
in the towns in which they are most numerous the airs may be heard coming
from the mouths of artisans, and in the country from those of tillers."

In 1555, eight years after the death of Francis I., Estienne Pasquier
wrote to Ronsard, "In good faith, there was never seen in France such a
glut of poets. I fear that in the long run people will weary of them.
But it is a vice peculiar to us that as soon as we see anything
succeeding prosperously for any one, everybody wants to join in."
Estienne Pasquier's fear was much better grounded after the death of
Francis I., and when Ronsard had become the head of the poet-world, than
it would have been in the first half of the sixteenth century. During
the reign of Francis I. and after the date of Clement Marot, there is no
poet of any celebrity to speak of, unless we except Francis I. himself
and his sister Marguerite; and it is only in compliment to royalty's name
that they need be spoken of. They, both of them, had evidently a mania
for versifying, even in their most confidential communications, for many
of their letters to one another, those during the captivity of Francis I.
at Madrid