He will never let himself down, or give
himself away, one feels, until the admiration of an apparent sure
restraint passes into the conviction that there is nothing to restrain.
All Ronsard the poet is in his poetry, and indeed on the surface of it.
Poetry was not therefore, as one is tempted to think sometimes, for
Ronsard a game. There was plenty of game in it; _l'art de bien
petrarquiser_ was all he claimed for himself. But the game would have
wearied any one who was not aware that he could be completely satisfied
and expressed by it. Ronsard was never weary. However much one may tire
of him, the fatigue never is infected by the nausea which is produced by
some of the mechanical sonnet sequences of his contemporaries. No one
reading Ronsard ever felt the tedium of mere nullity. It would be hard
to find in the whole of M. van Bever's exhaustive edition of 'Les
Amours'[9] a single piece which has not its sufficient charge of gusto.
When you are tired, it is because you have had enough of that particular
kind of man and mind; you know him too well, and can reckon too closely
the chances of a shock of surprise.
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