lone is right." Through his works, however, he serves virtue best, not
by directly praising it, but by his eagerly earnest account of the
madness of the seven deadly sins, as well as of the seventy-seven deadly
irritations. He has not the originality of fancy or imagination to paint
virtue well. His genius was the genius of frank and destructive
criticism. His work is a jumble of ideas and an autobiography of raw
nerves rather than a revelation of the emotions of men and women. His
great claim on our attention, however, is that his autobiography is true
as far as the power of truth was in him. His pilgrim's progress through
madness to salvation is neither a pretty nor a sensational lie. It is a
genuine document. That is why, badly constructed though his plays and
novels are, some of them have a fair chance of being read a hundred
years hence. As a writer of personal literature, he was one of the bold
and original men of his time.

XIV

"THE PRINCE OF FRENCH POETS"

It is difficult nowadays to conceive that, within half a century of his
death, Ronsard's fame suffered so dark an eclipse that no new edition of
his works was called for between 1629 and 1857. When he died, he was, as
M. Jusserand reminds us, the most illustrious man of letters in Europe.
He seemed, too, to have all those gifts of charm--charm of mood and
music--which make immortality certain. And yet, in the rule-of-thumb
ages that were to follow, he sank into such disesteem in his own country
that Boileau had not a good word for him, and Voltaire roundly said of
him that he "spoiled the language." Later, we have Arnauld asserting
that France had only done herself dishonour by her enthusiasm for "the
wretched poetry of Ronsard." Fenelon, as M. Jusserand tells us,
discusses Ronsard as a linguist, and ignores him as a poet.

It was the romantic; revival of the nineteenth century that placed
Ronsard on a throne again. Even to-day, however, there are pessimistic
Frenchmen who doubt whether their country has ever produced a great
poet. Mr. Bennet has told us of one who, on being asked who was the
greatest of French poets, replied: "Victor Hugo, helas!" And in the days
when Hugo was still but a youth the doubt must have been still more
painful. So keenly was the want of a national poet felt that, if one
could not have been discovered, the French would have had to invent him.
It was necessary for the enthusiastic young romanticists to possess a
great in