_To Mr. Gifted Hopkins_.

Dear Gifted,--If you will permit me to use your Christian, and prophetic,
name--we improved the occasion lately with the writers of light verse in
ancient times. We decided that the ancients were not great in verses of
society, because they had, properly speaking, no society to write verses
for. Women did not live in the Christian freedom and social equality
with men, either in Greece or Rome--at least not "modest women," as Mr.
Harry Foker calls them in "Pendennis." About the others there is plenty
of pretty verse in the Anthology. What you need for verses of society is
a period in which the social equality is recognized, and in which people
are peaceable enough and comfortable enough to "play with light loves in
the portal" of the Temple of Hymen, without any very definite intentions,
on either part, of going inside and getting married.

Perhaps we should not expect _vers de societe_ from the Crusaders, who
were not peaceable, and who were very earnest indeed, in love or war. But
as soon as you get a Court, and Court life, in France, even though the
times were warlike, then ladies are lauded in artful strains, and the
lyre is struck _leviore plectro_. Charles d'Orleans, that captive and
captivating prince, wrote thousands of _rondeaux_; even before his time a
gallant company of gentlemen composed the _Livre des Cent Ballades_, one
hundred _ballades_, practically unreadable by modern men. Then came
Clement Marot, with his gay and rather empty fluency, and Ronsard, with
his mythological compliments, his sonnets, decked with roses, and led
like lambs to the altar of Helen or Cassandra. A few, here and there, of
his pieces are lighter, more pleasant, and, in a quiet way, immortal,
such as the verses to his "fair flower of Anjou," a beauty of fifteen. So
they ran on, in France, till Voiture's time, and Sarrazin's with his
merry _ballade_ of an elopement, and Corneille's proud and graceful