which begins, in effect, what may be called the distinctively _modern_
literature of France, differs in two striking respects from that of the
Middle Ages. Both in their attitude towards art and in their attitude
towards thought, the great writers of the Renaissance inaugurated a new
era in French literature.

The new artistic views of the age first appeared, as was natural, in the
domain of poetry. The change was one towards consciousness and
deliberate, self-critical effort. The medieval poets had sung with
beauty; but that was not enough for the poets of the Renaissance: they
determined to sing not only with beauty, but with care. The movement
began in the verse of MAROT, whose clear, civilized, worldly poetry
shows for the first time that tendency to select and to refine, that
love of ease and sincerity, and that endeavour to say nothing that is
not said well, which were to become the fundamental characteristics of
all that was best in French poetry for the next three hundred years. In
such an exquisite little work of art as his epistle in three-syllabled
verse--'À une Damoyselle Malade', beginning--

Ma mignonne,
Je vous donne
Le bonjour,

we already have, in all its completeness, that tone of mingled
distinction, gaiety and grace which is one of the unique products of the
mature poetical genius of France. But Marot's gift was not wide enough
for the voluminous energies of the age; and it was not until a
generation later, in the work of the _Pléiade_--a group of writers of
whom RONSARD was the chief, and who flourished about the middle of the
sixteenth century--that the poetical spirit of the French Renaissance