Explore "Ronsard" by Hilaire Belloc on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
If it be true that words create for themselves a special atmosphere, and / that their mere sound calls up vague outer things beyond their strict / meaning, so it is true that the names of the great poets by their mere / sound, by something more than the recollection of their work, produce an / atmosphere corresponding to the quality of each; and the name of Ronsard / throws about itself like an aureole the characters of fecundity, of / leadership, and of fame.
A group of men to which allusion will be made in connection with Du / Bellay set out with a programme, developed a determined school, and / fixed the literary renaissance of France at its highest point. They / steeped themselves in antiquity, and they put to the greatest value it / has ever received the name of poet; they demanded that the poet should / be a kind of king, or seer. Half seriously, half as a product of mere / scholarship, the pagan conception of the muse and of inspiration filled / them.