Explore "Joachim Du Bellay" by Hilaire Belloc on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In Du Bellay the literary Renaissance, French but transfigured by Italy, / middle-north of the plains but looking southward to the Mediterranean, / came to one soul and concentrated upon it, as the plastic expression of / the same influence concentrated in Goujon. Very central in time, half / soldier, half priest, all student; traveller and almost adventurer, a / pilgrim throughout of the Idea, everything about him is symbolic of the / generation he adorned.
In its vigour, at least, the Renaissance was a glorious youth -- he, Du / Bellay, died at thirty-five. Its leap and soaring were taken from the / firm platform of strong scholarship -- he was a scholar beyond the rest. / It fixed special forms -- he the French sonnet. It felt the lives of all / things running through it as a young man feels them in the spring / woods -- he gathered in the cup of his verse, and retains for us, the / nerve of all that life which is still exultant in the forest beyond his / river. His breeding, his high name, his leisured poverty, his passionate / friendship, his looking forward always to a new thing, a creation -- all / this, was the Renaissance in person.