." A century after Marot's time, in 1649, a pious and learned Catholic, Godeau, Bishop of Grasse and member of the nascent French Academy, was in his turn translating the Psalms, and rendered full justice to the labors of the poet, his predecessor, and to the piety of the Reformers, in the following terms "Those whose separation from the church we deplore have rendered the version they make use of famous by the pleasing airs that learned musicians set them to when they were composed.

To know them by heart is, amongst them, a sign of the communion to which they belong, and in the towns in which they are most numerous the airs may be heard coming from the mouths of artisans, and in the country from those of tillers." In 1555, eight years after the death of Francis I., Estienne Pasquier wrote to Ronsard, "In good faith, there was never seen in France such a glut of poets.

I fear that in the long run people will weary of them.
But it is a vice peculiar to us that as soon as we see anything succeeding prosperously for any one, everybody wants to join in." Estienne Pasquier's fear was much better grounded after the death of Francis I., and when Ronsard had become the head of the poet-world, than it would have been in the first half of the sixteenth century.

During the reign of Francis I.and after the date of Clement Marot, there is no poet of any celebrity to speak of, unless we except Francis I.himself and his sister Marguerite; and it is only in compliment to royalty's name that they need be spoken of.

They, both of them, had evidently a mania for versifying, even in their most confidential communications, for many of their letters to one another, those during the captivity of Francis I.
at Madrid amongst the rest, are written in verse; but their verses are devoid of poesy; they are prose, often long-winded and frigid, and sometimes painfully labored.