Sichel, Edith Helen: Women and men of the French Renaissance (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1901)

THE RISE OF THE PLEIADE

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harm, and the Pleiade was strong enough to withstand it.
They had quick sap in their veins and real life cannot be
destroyed. For good or bad, the Movement was launched;
it could safely be left to itself. And here, at the outset
of its journey, we must stop. Its history, and the further
history of its chiefs, goes beyond our limits. Of Ronsard’s
friendship with Mary Queen of Scots; of Catherine de
Medicis’ favours; of his brilliant existence at Court, far from
the greenswards of Gastine; of his death in the midst of
prosperity—it is not our place to speak. Nor is it for us
to dwell on the end of Joachim du Bellay, who could never
have lived at Court, and died in poverty and suffering, at
thirty-five years of age. The record of their maturer days
belongs, like those of de POrme and Lescot, to the times
of the later Valois monarchs. We must leave them on the
threshold of fame—in the early dawn of their prime. But
the birds sing most sweetly in the dawn, and these had
but just awakened.