Avril

A free download from www.dertz.in

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Avril, by H. Belloc
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Avril
Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance
Author: H. Belloc
Release Date: July 16, 2006 [EBook #18839]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
0. START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AVRIL ***
Produced by Ted Garvin, Rénald Lévesque and the Online

Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
AVRIL
BEING
ESSAYS ON THE POETRY OF THE
FRENCH RENAISSANCE

B Y

H. BELLOC
"... _Ceux dont la Fantaisie
Sera religieuse et dévote envers Dieu
Tousjours achèveront quelque grant
Poésie,

E t dessus leur renom la Parque n'aura
lieu._"
LONDON
DUCKWORTH AND CO.
3 , HENRIETTA STREET, COVE NT GARDEN,
W.C.

1904
CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM
AND CO
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE,
LONDON.
Part of this book originally appeared
in "The Pilot," and is here
reprinted
by kind permission of the Editor.
CONTENTS
CHARLES OF ORLEANS
VILLON
MAROT
RONSARD

Du BELLAY
MALHERBE
DEDICATION
T O
F.Y. ECCLES
MY DEAR ECCLES,
You will, I know, permit me to address you these essays which are
more the product of your erudition than of my enthusiasm.
With the motives of their appearance you are familiar.
We have wondered together that a society so avid of experience and
enlargement as is ours, should ignore the chief expression of its closest
neighbour, its highest rival and its coheir in Europe: should ignore, I
mean, the literature of the French.
We have laughed together, not without despair, to see the mind of
England, for all its majesty and breadth, informed at the most critical
moments in the policy of France by such residents of Paris as were at

the best fanatical, at the worst (and most ordinary) corrupt.
Seeing around us here a philosophy and method drawn from northern
Germany, a true and subtle sympathy with the Italians, and a perpetual,
just and accurate comment upon the minor nationalities of Europe, a
mass of recorded travel superior by far to that of