NATIONAL POETRY. 4S , 



this time the Italian influence was everywhere apparent, and it was Joachim 

 du Bellay who gave the signal for the literary revolution, by advising his 

 youthful rivals to imitate the Greeks and the Romans, while declaring 

 himself a devoted partisan of the French language, which was being 

 sacrificed to the Italian. The poets who responded to his appeal overshot 

 the mark without hitting it, and were only inaccurate translators of the 

 ancient classics, instead of imitating it with intelligence and fidelity. 



It was in a small Paris college that Joachim du Bellay formed, under the 



Fig. 348. Portrait of Marguerite do Valois, Queen of Navarre, after a Pencil- Drawing of the 

 Time. In the Museum of (he Louvre, Paris. 



eyes of his professor of humanities, Jean Daurat, the poetical association, 

 consisting of seven members, which was called the Pleiad. These seven 

 poets were Baif, Du Bellay, Remy Belleau, J. Daurat, Jodelle, Ponthus de 

 Thyard, and Ronsard (Figs. 349 to 355), who was proclaimed unanimously 

 their supreme chief. For half a century Pierre Ronsard remained the master 

 of French poetry. While still a youth he had formed the project of writing 

 a national epic poem, to be called the " Franciade," upon the model of 

 Virgil's .ZEneid, but he only published four cantos of this epode, which 



