Then follow the two stanzas cited by your correspondent, and the closing
verse is:--

"De murmurer contre-elle et perdre patience,
Il est mal-à-propos:
Vouloir ce que Dieu veut, est la seule science
Qui nous met en repos."

The stanza beginning "Le pauvre en sa cabane," is an admirable imitation
of the "Pallida mors æquo pulsat pede," &c. of Horace, which a
countryman of the poet is said to have less happily rendered "La pâle
mort avec son pied de cheval," &c.

Malherbe has been duly appreciated in France: his works, in one edition,
are accompanied by an elaborate comment by Menage and Chevreau: Racan
wrote his life, and Godeau, Bishop of Vence, a panegyrical preface. He
was a man of wit, and ready at an impromptu; yet it is said, that in
writing a consolotary poem to the President de Verdun, on the death of
his wife, he was so long {105} in bringing his verses to that degree of
perfection which satisfied his own fastidious taste, that the president
was happily remarried, and the consolation not at all required.

Bishop Hurd, in a note on the _Epistle to Augustus_, p. 72., says:

"Malherbe was to the French pretty much what Horace had been to
Latin poetry. These great writers had, each of them, rescued the
lyric muse of their country out of the rude ungracious hands of
their old poets. And, as their talents of a _good ear_, _elegant
judgment_, and _correct expression_, were the same, they
presented her to the public in all the air and grace, and yet