The piece has for its title La Deffense et
Illustration de la langue Francoyse; and its problem is how to
illustrate or ennoble the French language, to give it lustre. We are
accustomed to speak of the varied critical and creative movement of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as the Renaissance, and because we
have a single name for it we may sometimes fancy that there was more
unity in the thing itself than there really was. Even the Reformation,
that other great movement of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, had
far less unity, far less of combined action, than is at first sight
supposed; and the Renaissance was infinitely less united, less conscious
of combined action, than the Reformation. But if anywhere the
Renaissance became conscious, as a German philosopher might say, if ever
it was understood as a systematic movement by those who took part in it,
it is in this little book of Joachim du Bellay's, which it is impossible
to read without feeling the excitement, the animation, of change, of
discovery.
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