He was the first to comprehend the dignity which befits grand subjects, and which earned him in his day the title of Prince of poets.

He lived in stormy times, not much adapted for poetry, and steeped in the most cruel tragedies; he felt deeply the misfortunes of his country rent by civil war, when he wrote,-- "A cry of dread, a din, a thundering sound Of men and clashing harness roars around; Peoples 'gainst peoples furiously rage; Cities with cities deadly battle wage; Temples and towns--one heap of ashes lie; Justice and equity fade out and die Unchecked the soldier's wicked will is done With human blood the outraged churches run; Bedridden Age, disbedded, perisheth, And over all grins the pale face of Death." There was something pregnant, noble, and brilliant about Ronsard, in spite of his exaggerations of style and faults of taste; his friends and disciples imitated and carried to an extreme his defects, without possessing his talent; the unruliness was such as to call for reform.
Peace revived with Henry IV., and the court, henceforth in accord with the nation, resumed that empire over taste, manners, and ideas, which it was destined to exercise so long and so supremely under Louis XIV.
Malherbe became the poet of the court, whose business it was to please it, to adopt for it that literature which had but lately been reserved for the feasts of the learned.

"He used often to say, and chiefly when he was reproached with not following the meaning of the authors he translated or paraphrased, that he did not dress his meat for cooks, as if he had meant to infer that he cared very little to be praised by the literary folks who understood the books he had translated, provided that he was understood by the court-folks." A complete revolution in the opposite direction to that which Ronsard attempted appeared to have taken place, but the human mind never loses all the ground it has once won; in the verses of Malherbe, often bearing the imprint of beauties borrowed from the ancients, the language preserved, in consequence of the character given to it by Ronsard, a dignity, a richness of style, of which the times of Marot showed no conception; and it was falling, moreover, under the chastening influence of an elegant correctness.

It was for the court that Malherbe made verses,"striving, as he said, to degasconnize it," seeking there his public and the source of honor as well as profit.

As passionate an admirer of Richelieu as of Henry IV., naturally devoted to the service of the order established in the state as well as in poetry, he, under the regency of Mary de' Medici, favored the taste which was beginning to show itself for intellectual things, for refined pleasures, and elegant occupations.