*
*The purely artistic aspects of this subject have been interpreted, in a
work of great taste and learning, by Mrs. Mark Pattison:--The
Renaissance of Art in France.
And Villon's songs and Clouet's paintings are like these. It is the
higher touch making itself felt here and there, betraying itself, like
nobler blood in a lower stock, by a fine line or gesture or expression,
the turn of a wrist, the tapering of a finger. In Ronsard's time that
rougher element seemed likely to predominate. No one can turn over the
pages of Rabelais without feeling how much need there was of softening,
of castigation. To effect this softening is the object of the revolution
in poetry which is connected with Ronsard's name. Casting about for the
means of thus refining upon and saving the character of French
literature, he accepted that influx of Renaissance taste, which, leaving
the buildings, the language, the art, the poetry of France, at bottom,
what they were, old French Gothic still, gilds their surfaces with a
strange, delightful, foreign aspect passing over all that Northern land,
in itself neither deeper nor more permanent than a chance effect of
light.
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