recurrence, against the Catholics and their leaders. Others of very
different temperament displayed yet more than the poets of the sixteenth
century that liberty, that fantasy, that disorder which were
characteristic of the times of Ronsard. So far as poets were concerned,
that generation must be regarded as entering on a first romanticism.
Theophilus de Vian, a fine but over-prodigal poet, without ballast, did
not live long enough to grow wise and acquire self-mastery: Cyrano
de Bergerac was a brilliant madman, sometimes sparkling with wit and
imagination, but often dirty and ridiculous. Saint-Amant possessed plenty
of imagination and capacity for exquisite poetical feeling, but he lacked
taste and too often was puerile. Wiser than they, yet themselves verbose,
long-winded, slow, and spun out, Desportes translated into French verse
Italian poetry of the sixteenth century, often with very happy turns of
expression, and Bertaut, melancholy and graceful, lacked brilliance even
if he possessed poetic emotion.

REGNIER.--Regnier the satirist, pupil of Horace and Juvenal, also assumed
the mental attitude of the sixteenth century owing to his viridity, his
crudity, his lack of avoidance of obscenity, even though he was a true
poet, vigorous, powerful, oratorical, and epigrammatical, as well as a
witty and mordant caricaturist.

PRECIEUX AND BURLESQUES.--Then succeeded the _precieux_ and the
_burlesques_, who resembled each other, the _precieux_ seeking
wit and believing that all literary art consisted in saying it did not
matter what in a dainty and unexpected fashion; the _burlesques_
also sought wit but on a lower plane, desiring to be "droll," buffoons,
prone to cock-and-bull stories or crude pranks in thought, style, and
parody. Voiture is the most brilliant representative of the
_preieux_ and Scarron the most prominent of the _burlesques_.