He felt them all over
again. One imagines him reading the classics--the Iliad in three days,
or his beloved companion 'sous le bois amoureux,' Tibullus--with an
unfailing delight in all the concatenations of phrase which are foisted
on to unripe youth nowadays in the pages of a Gradus. One might almost
say that he saw his loves at second-hand, through alien eyes, were it
not that he faced them with some directness as physical beings, and that
the artificiality implied in the criticism is incongruous with the
honesty of such a natural man. But apart from a few particulars that
would find a place in a census paper one would be hard put to it to
distinguish Cassandre from Helene. What charming things Ronsard has to
say of either might be said of any charming woman--'le mignard
embonpoint de ce sein,'--
'Petit nombril, que mon penser adore,
Non pas mon oeil, qui n'eut oncques ce bien ...'
And though he assures Helene that she has turned him from his grave
early style, 'qui pour chanter si bas n'est point ordonne,' the
difference is too hard to detect; one is forced to conclude that it is
precisely the difference between a court lady and an inn-keeper's
daughter.
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