Bellay

Bellay, JOACHIM DU, a distinguished French poet and prose-writer, the exact date of whose birth is unknown, though an attempt has been made to prove that it happened in 1525, 'as a compensation from nature to France for the battle of Pavia.' He was, next to Ronsard, the most important member of the famous group of writers known as the Pléiade, through whom the enthusiasm and culture of the Renaissance were turned into the channel of French poetry. His Défence et Illustration de la Langue Française (1549), in which the aims of the Pléiade were explained and vindicated, marks an epoch in French literature. In this work Du Bellay maintained that French prose should be modelled as closely as might be on the Greek and Latin masterpieces; that the earlier French poetry should be set aside as trivial and shapeless; that French verse-writers should thenceforth seek to reproduce the classic stateliness of rhythm and diction in new metrical forms, such as the ode and the sonnet, adopted from their Latin and Italian predecessors. The book contributed greatly to the success of the literary revolution which was effected by the Pléiade (see the article PLÉIADE). In 1549 Du Bellay published a collection of sonnets which led to a brief quarrel with Ronsard on the question of priority in a new field of poetry. He went to Rome as secretary to his relative, the Cardinal du Bellay; but a diplomatic career proved to be uncongenial to him, and he had lost the cardinal's favour and fallen into difficulties before his death in 1560. His poems include a series of sonnets addressed to one Mademoiselle de Viole: Regrets, Jeux Rustiques, and Les Antiquités de Rome, translated by Spenser under the title of the Ruins of Rome. His verses give singularly graceful expression to the mood, at once pensive and pleasure-loving, which is a characteristic of most writers of the French Renaissance. A few of his poems—among them his best-known piece, the charming Vanneur—have been admirably translated by Mr A. Lang in Ballads and Lyrics of Old France (1872). The best edition of Du Bellay is that of Marty-Laveaux (1866-67). See also Pater's Studies in the Renaissance.