Note 161 — Chapter IV · THE CRITICISM OF THE PLÉIADE.

Rhétorique Métrifiée, Paris, 1539. Between Fabri and Gratien du Pont appeared in 1529 Geoffrey Tory’s Champfleury, a more grammatical than critical miscellany, which is elsewhere glanced at; and the very noteworthy critical remarks prefixed by Marot to his edition of Villon in 1533. M. Gaston Paris is assuredly right when he calls this (in his charming little book on the author of the Ballade des Pendus, Paris, 1901) “un des plus anciens morceaux de critique littéraire que l’on ait écrits en français,” and its appreciative sympathy, if not co-extensive with the merits of the work, leaves little to desire in the points which it touches. In fact, the mere selection of Villon and of the Roman de la Rose, as the subjects of his editorial care, shows in Master Clement the presence of a deep instinctive critical faculty, which has only partially and incidentally developed itself. In this, as in not a few other points, Marot himself seems to me to have had for the most part inadequate justice from critics; though here as elsewhere it may be allowed that time and circumstance prevented him from doing himself justice. His intense affection for literature and poetry, the light glancing quality of his wit and intellect, the absence of all pomposity, pedantry, and parade, and the shrewd sense which (in judgment if not quite in conduct) distinguished him, go very far to constitute the equipment of the accomplished critic. But his short life, perhaps a certain instability of character, and the immature condition of the special state of literature in his time, with the ever-deplorable distractions of the religious upheaval, gave him little chance.