Voiture (1598-1648), the leading spirit at the Hôtel de Rambouillet, produced both rondeaus and ballades. The English version of this poem of his on the construction of the rondeau, was given earlier in these pages.

Ma foi, c'est fait de moi, car Isabeau
M'a conjuré de lui faire un rondeau.
Cela me met en peine extrême

Quoi! treize vers, huit en eau, cinq en ème!

Je lui ferais aussitôt un bateau.

En voilà cinq pourtant en un monceau.
Faisons-en huit en invoquant Brodeau,
Et puis mettons, par quelque stratagème:
Ma foi, c'est fait.

Si je pouvais encor de mon cerveau
Tirer cinq vers, l'ouvrage serait beau;
Mais cependant je suis dedans l'onzième:
Et si je crois que je fais le douzième,
En voilà treize ajustés au niveau.
Ma foi, c'est fait.

A ballade written upon his death repeats the refrain: “Voiture est mort, adieu la muse antique." After the seventeenth century the forms are purely incidental till the days of Banville.

The chief of the forms, the ballade, went through many phases in the almost three hundred years from Machault to Molière, who compared it to a faded flower. As time went on, not only did it become diversified, but there accumulated gradually a fund of ballade ideas, which was steadily drawn on from the days of Lescurel and Deschamps down to the time of the Pléiade. Ballades were occasionally grouped in sequences, and, more commonly still, became a favorite ornament of the early religious and secular drama. The ballade, likewise, continued to be favored by poets in the puys, and also in the more or less informal poetical

concourses like those held at Blois, under the auspices of Charles d'Orléans. On one such occasion at Blois, for instance, as has been mentioned in connection with Villon, the paradox, "Je meurs de soif auprès de la fontaine," was announced as the refrain for ballades to be written in competition. Charles and his eleven poet guests tried their hand on ballades based on this idea. Then eleven of his friends took up the idea and developed it.

In the fifteenth century, when a number of very different ideas were finding expression in ballades, there was also great variety within the form itself. Many things could be done with a type of poetry the only fixed features of which were three stanzas, a refrain, the same rhyme scheme in every stanza, and, under some circumstances, an envoy. By actual count, however, the most frequent stanzas were either that of eight lines, made up of octosyllabics and rhyming a b a bbc bc,* or that of ten lines composed of decasyllabics, rhyming a babbccdc d.

One ballade has been discovered in a late fifteenthcentury manuscript in which every single word in the thirty-two lines begins with a "p." At an early date French poets taxed their ingenuity in turning out what may well be called freak ballades. Deschamps and Christine de Pisan were both guilty of trying to see to what strange contortions they might subject this poetic form. A Middle English rendering of one of Christine's ballades illustrates the device of beginning every line with the same word.

Alone am y and wille to be alone
Alone withouten plesere or gladnes
Alone in care to sighe and grone

* "a" represents the first rhyme of the first stanza; "b," the second, thus in Christine's poem one = "a"; nes = "b"; ure = "c."

Alone to wayle the deth of my maystres
Alone which sorow will me neuyr cesse
Alone y curse the lyf y do endure
Alone this fayntith me my gret distres
Alone y lyue an ofcast creature

Alone am y most wofullest bigoon
Alone forlost in paynfule wildirnes
Alone withouten whom to make my mone
Alone my wrecchid case forto redresse
Alone thus wandir y in heuynes
Alone so wo worth myn aventure
Alone to rage this thynkith me swetnes
Alone y lyue an ofcast creature

Alone deth com take me here anoon
Alone that dost me dure so moche distres
Alone y lyue my frendis alle ad foon
Alone to die thus in my lustynes
Alone most welcome deth to thi rudenes
Alone that worst kan pete lo mesure
Alone come on, y bide but thee dowtles
Alone y lyue an ofcast creature

Alone of woo y haue take such excesse
Alone that phisik nys ther me to cure
Alone y lyue that willith it were lesse
Alone y lyue an ofcast creature

A

Deschamps wrote at least two ballades that he claimed in the title might be read in eight different ways. mere tour de force of a different variety is that ballade of Deschamps' on the Bible. Proper names have certainly at times contributed to the effect of great poetry, but a succession of stanzas composed almost exclusively of the titles of the books of the Bible proves to be both dull and discordant.

Jehan Meschinot's four ballades on love must have been very difficult to put together. The four deal severally with "amour sodale," "amour vertueuse," "amour folle," and "amour viceuse." Each is composed of three

dealogue

stanzas of ten-syllable lines and an envoy of six lines.
After the fourth syllable of every line there is an abrupt
break. The first half of every line in all four ballades
associates some action or quality with love, as, for ex-
ample, "Amour loue," "Amour blâme," and in all four
ballades the portions of lines preceding the break are
identical. The second part of the line, however, changes
in every ballade according to the special character of the
love that is being described. Thus the first half of the
first line of all four ballades reads "Amour commande,"
"Love enjoins"; in the poem dedicated to the love which
is friendship, the line concludes with the words
gens estre loyaux," "friends to be loyal to one another";
whereas in the ballade dealing with honest love between
man and woman, the first line ends with the simple
command, “aux gens estre parfaits," in other words,
"both man and wife to be perfect." Acrostic ballades
were not uncommon. The envoy of Villon's prayer on
behalf of his mother which spells out his name reads

thus:

Vous portastes, Vierge, digne princesse,
Iesus regnant qui n'a ne fin ne cesse.
Le Tout Puissant prenant, nostre foiblesse,
Laissa les cieulx et nous vint secourir;
Offrist à mort sa très clère jeunese;
Nostre Seigneur tel est, tel le confesse,
En ceste foy je vueil vivre et mourir.

The ballade in dialogue was a popular diversion with the French poets of three centuries. It owes some of its features to the débat of earlier French poetry, which arose, doubtless, from a very simple principle of social intercourse. Some such early literary tradition should account for the frequent use of dialogue give-and-take by ballade writers. At any rate the practice was common. Sometimes the speakers divide the line. Sometimes each speaker is given a complete line, and they

aux

alternate. In the Cent Ballades, a whole ballade is more frequently assigned to a single disputant. Christine, again, in Le Livre du Duc des Vrais Amans, an English version of which has recently appeared, has a ballade in which the characters, a lady and her lover, speak in alternating stanzas. An amusing débat situation is found in two seventeenth-century ballades by Mme. Deshoulières and M. le Duc de Saint Aignan. The subject under discussion is, as habitually in the salons of the time, love. The lady's refrain is "On n'aime plus comme on aimoit jadis," or "Men love no longer as they loved of yore," and she wishes that she had lived when Amadis was young, but the Duke comes back with "Tante j'aime encore comme on aimoit jadis,” or “Men love yet as they loved in days of yore." A certain type of dialogue popular in the Middle Ages has its analogues in ballade literature. The older conversations between body and soul appear in modified form. Deschamps has a ballade consisting of a conversation between the head and the body. Villon has a ballade which is a Debate between the Heart and the Body, the first stanza of which in Payne's translation reads:

What is't I hear?-'Tis I, thy heart, 'tis I
That hold but by a thread for frailty,

I have nor force nor substance, all drained dry,
Since thee thus lonely and forlorn I see,
Like a poor cur, curled up all shiveringly.
How comes it thus?-Of thine unwise liesse.-
What irks it thee? I suffer the distress.

Leave me in peace.-Why?—I will cast about.-
When will that be?—When I'm past childishness.-
I say no more. And I can do without.

Thus the form of the ballade became more and more diversified. Nevertheless, whatever external features were added to its structure, the original three stanzas, identical rhymes, and refrain remained unaltered. The