624 FRENCH EPIC POETRY. 



successful attempts in epic poetry have been made in France/ 

 between the Middle Ages and the advent of that unique epic in 

 French literature that I would confidently put in the scales against 

 the Iliad, nay, against any of the eight great epics of the 

 world : Victor Hugo's Leg end e des Siecles. 



Joachim du Bellay, in his Defence et Illustration de la Langue 

 frangaise, a book which is more or less the manifesto of the 16th- 

 century literary reformers in France, at the head of whom was 

 Pierre Ronsard, makes an enthusiastic appeal in favour of the 

 epic to the poets of his age. " You pick me," he says, " one of 

 those fine old French romances, a Lancelot or a Tristan or any 

 other, and give to the world a new and admirable Iliad and a well- 

 wrought Aineid." Ronsard, the brightest star in the Plciade 

 poetique, and the then recognised rival of Pindarus, Horace, and 

 Petrarch, took the hint. Ever since the days of his youth, it had 

 been his ambition to become the Virgil, nay, the Homer, of 

 France. Here, then, was his opportunity for what was to be his 

 magnum opusn. In the Illustrations des Gaules et Singularites 

 de Troie," by Jehan Lemaire de Beiges, he had been captivated by 

 the history of the Trojan Francus. After no end of hairbreadth 

 escapes, this fantastical Phrygian prince was said to have landed 

 in ancient Gaul, where he settled and became king of the land. 

 This was cut and dried material for a new sequel to the Iliad; 

 material, moreover, with which he could compose a national epic 

 without losing touch with classical antiquity. He was enraptured, 

 and wrote: "Seeing that the French people firmlv believe that- 

 Francis, Hector's son, followed by a company of picked Trojans, 

 landed after the Sack of Troy, in the Pahis Moeotides, and 

 thence pushed on into Hungary, I have boldly stretched the 

 canvas and made him enter Franconia, to whi'^h he gave his name, 

 and march into Gaul, where he founded Paris, in honour of 

 his uncle Paris." In 1572 the first four books of the Franciade were 

 published, the result of 20 years of strenuous and surely noble 

 effort on a purely imaginary theme. As a national epic, it was 

 bound to be a failure, as it contained nothing that was capable of 

 captivating the masses. A nation will naturally grow enthusiastic 

 over an Iliad which reminds them of their glorious origins. The 

 people will applaud, when the Joneleur, to the strains of vielle or 

 cifoine, declaims a Chanson de Roland with its warlike pageantry 

 of knights and paladins. But what was this Francus to them ; 

 and what were they to this Francus? The Franciade fell flat; 

 it could not have done otherwise. Ronsard was unequal to the 

 task of composition in the higher genres. His dream of Homeric 

 fame vanished into smoke. The poet became the victim of his 

 erudition. He admired the great masters of antiauity, and he 

 was quite right in doing so. He wanted to follow their example 

 in everything, without takinp- into account the huge differences 

 of civilisation and time, and there he was quite wrong. Beside 

 failing to strike the vein of national interest in his epic, he did 

 not succeed either in rousing the literary interest even with a 



