Ronsard became deaf at sixteen; and it was this circumstance which
finally determined him to be a man of letters instead of a diplomatist,
significantly, one might fancy; of a certain premature agedness, and of
the tranquil, temperate sweetness appropriate to that, in the school of
poetry which he founded. Its charm is that of a thing not vigorous or
original, but full of the grace that comes of long study and reiterated
refinements, and many steps repeated, and many angles worn down, with an
exquisite faintness, une fadeur exquise, a certain tenuity and caducity,
as for those who can bear nothing vehement or strong; for princes weary
of love, like Francis the First, or of pleasure, like Henry the Third,
or of action, like Henry the Fourth. Its merits are those of the
old,--grace and finish, perfect in minute detail. For these people are a
little jaded, and have a constant desire for a subdued and delicate
excitement, to warm their creeping fancy a little. They love a constant
change of rhyme in poetry, and in their houses that strange, fantastic
interweaving of thin, reed-like lines, which are a kind of rhetoric in
architecture.
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