To unite together these
two kinds of music in a new school of French poetry, to make verse which
should scan and rhyme as well, to search out and harmonise the measure
of every syllable, and unite it to the swift, flitting, swallow-like
motion of rhyme, to penetrate their poetry with a double music--this was
the ambition of the Pleiad. They are insatiable of music, they cannot
have enough of it; they desire a music of greater compass perhaps than
words can possibly yield, to drain out the last drops of sweetness which
a certain note or accent contains.
This eagerness for music is almost the only serious thing in the poetry
of the Pleiad; and it was Goudimel, the severe and protestant Goudimel,
who set Ronsard's songs to music. But except in this matter these poets
seem never quite in earnest. The old Greek and Roman mythology, which
for the great Italians had been a motive so weighty and severe, becomes
with them a mere toy. That "Lord of terrible aspect," Amor, has become
Love, the boy or the babe.
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