Malherbe, FRANÇOIS DE, was born at Caen, July 13, 1555. After studying at the university of Caen he attached himself to Henri d'Angoulême, a natural son of Henri II., and was afterwards pensioned by the Duc de Bellegarde. He joined the court of Henri IV., and received a pension of 1500 livres from the queen. He was an industrious writer, producing odes, songs, paraphrases, epigrams, epistles, translations, criticisms, &c. He founded a literary school, and by his influence brought about a revolution in poetic style. He gave lessons in composition to a class of disciples, who met in the hotel of the Duc de Bellegarde, and death, so the story goes, struck him while he was engaged in rounding a period. Though he had a considerable fortune, he incessantly bewailed the rigours of his lot in his addresses to the court, and successfully importuned Louis XIII. for an addition to his income. He died at Paris, October 16, 1628. His poetry is of little merit, being cold, colourless, and insipid. He is best remembered by the truly touching stanzas which he addressed to his friend Du Perrier, and which contain the most famous line: 'Et, rose, elle a vécu ce q'on vivent les roses.' He was exceedingly vainglorious, and asserted that what he had written would endure eternally. His interest lies in this—that by example and teaching he altered the complexion of French verse. He led his countrymen to look with disdain on the richly-coloured and full-sounding verses of Ronsard, and to adopt a style clear and finished, it is true, but cold and prosaic, and confined to the limits of a narrow vocabulary. He delighted to be termed the tyrant of words and syllables. He introduced, so to speak, the principle of caste into diction. Certain words were adapted for poetic purposes, while others were to be rigidly excluded from literature. The result was that when Malherbe's teachings were developed by Boileau, and enforced by his high authority, French verse was deprived of nearly all that marks off poetry from prose. The select literary words lost their original edge and colour, and became incapable of rendering other than conventional ideas. On the other hand, Malherbe did good service in inculcating the virtues of reticence, refinement, and correctness in style.
See Sainte-Beuve's Causeries du Lundi, vol. viii.; Flippeau's Écrivains Normands (1858); and works by Gournay (1852), Laur (Heidelberg 1869), Johanneson (Halle, 1881), Basset (3d ed. 1890), Allais (1892), and the Duc de Broglie (1896).