Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance

CCCXXII

Malcolm Smith

RENAISSANCE STUDIES

ARTICLES 1966-1994

Introduced by M.A. SCREECH and MICHAEL HEATH

Edited by RUTH CALDER

LIBRAIRIE DROZ S.A.

11, rue Massot

GENÈVE

1999

[Frontispice]

Malcolm Smith

November 15

th

1941 — October 26

th

1994

Mentions légales

Résumé

Collection des articles du regretté Malcolm Smith sur la littérature française de la Renaissance, études qui n’en ont jamais négligé les dimensions polémiques et religieuses.

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Abstract

Collection of essays by the eminent specialist of French Literature of the Renaissance.

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www.droz.org

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Références papier

ISBN-10 : 2-600-00281-2

EAN : 9782600002813

ISSN : 0082-6081

Copyright (1999) by Librairie Droz S.A., 11, rue Massot, Genève.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or translated in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, microfiche or any other means without written permission.

Distribué en France par de Boccard :

www.deboccard.com

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Références numériques

EAN ePUB : 9782600302814

EAN PDF : 9782600102810

ISSN : 0082-6081

Copyright (2021) by Librairie Droz S.A., 11, rue Massot, Genève.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or translated in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, microfiche or any other means without written permission.

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CONTENTS

Malcolm Smith : Foreword by M.A. Screech

IX

Malcolm Smith’s Writings : by Michael Heath

XIII

Tabula gratulatoria

XVII

ARTICLES BY MALCOLM SMITH :

An early edition of a

Discours

by Ronsard

Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance

, 28 (1966), 682-690

1

Ronsard and Queen Elizabeth I

Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance

, 29 (1967), 93-119

10

Aspects de la bibliographie des éditions anciennes de Ronsard

Cahiers de l’Association Internationale des Etudes Françaises

, 22 (1970), 73-82

37

Ronsard and the word

puritan Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance

, 34 (1972), 483-487

47

The first edition of Ronsard’s

Recueil des nouvelles poësies Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance

, 36 (1974), 613-620

52

The hidden meaning of Ronsard’s

Hymne de l’Hyver

In

French Renaissance Studies in honor of Isidore Silver

, F.S. Brown, ed.,

Kentucky Romance Quarterly

, 1975, 85-97

60

A ‘lost’ Protestant pamphlet against Ronsard

Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance

, 37 (1975), 73-86

73

The first edition of Ronsard’s

Estreines au Roy Henry III Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance

, 37 (1975), 213-224

87

An early edition of Joachim Du Bellay’s

Veronis in fontem sui nominis Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance

, 39 (1977), 295-305

99

Looking for Rome in Rome : Janus Vitalis and his disciples

Revue de Littérature Comparée

, 51 (1977), 510-527

110

Joachim Du Bellay’s renown as a Latin poet In P. Tuynman, G.C. Kuiper and E. Kessler, eds.,

Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Amstelodamensis

, Munich, W. Fink, 1979, 928-942

128

Reflections on the

fortuna

of Thomas More

Moreana

, 17 (1980), 23-31

143

Two unknown poems by Ronsard

Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance

, 47 (1985), 609-611

152

A Reformer’s reply to Ronsard’s

Discours à la Royne Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance

, 48 (1986), 421-430

156

Lost Works by Ronsard

The Library

, 6th Series, 8 (1986), 109-126

166

Montaigne and the Christian Foes of Tacitus In I.D. McFarlane, ed.,

Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Sanctandreani

, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, Binghamton, 1986, 379-390

184

Lost writings by Montaigne

Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance

, 49 (1987), 309-318

196

A source of Montaigne’s uncertainty

Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance

, 50 (1988), 95-100

206

Latin Translations of Ronsard In S.P. Revard, ; F. Rädle and M. Di Cesare, eds.,

Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Guelpherbytani

, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, Binghamton, 1988, 331-337

212

Ronsard et ses critiques contemporains In

Ronsard en son IV

e

centenaire, Actes du Colloque international Pierre de Ronsard

, Y. Bellenger, J. Céard, D. Ménager, M. Simonin, eds., Genève, Droz, 1988, 83-90

219

Janus Vitalis revisited

Revue de Littérature Comparée

, 63 (1989), 69-75

227

Opium of the people : Numa Pompilius in the French Renaissance

Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance

, 52 (1990), 7-21

234

Théodore de Bèze and « Philænus »

Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance

, 52.(1990), 345-353

249

Latin Epigrams on Étienne Dolet In A. Dalzell, C. Fantazzi and R.J. Schoeck, eds.,

Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Torontonensis

, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, Binghamton, 1991, 729-737

258

A sixteenth-century anti-theist (on the

Cymbalum mundi

)

Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance

, 53 (1991), 593-618

267

Paul de Foix and freedom of conscience

Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance

, 55 (1993), 301-315

293

Early French Advocates of Religious Freedom

The Sixteenth Century Journal

, 25 (1994), 29-51

308

Citizen of the World : Montaigne’s travels An Inaugural Lecture delivered at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College (University of London), 24th November 1988 (published Egham, Runnymede Books, 1989)

331

Bibliography

362

Index

363

FOREWORD

The death of a scholar in the flower of his age is more than a personal sadness. How much more would he have written if he had lived ; and how many more young people would he have led into the intricate ways of scholarship.

A scholar is remembered for two things : for his direct influence on his students (and on his colleagues) ; and for his writings. There was no doubt in Malcolm Smith’s mind which came first. He was a born teacher. He loved teaching. He was seldom happier than when he had a group sitting round a table with a

Ronsard

, a

Du Bellay

or a

Montaigne

open before them. He had a flair for awakening dormant curiosity wherever he saw it. He could make Ronsard come alive as few others can. He was a profoundly poetic man, with a love for the rhythms of Ronsard and a passion for the roots and achievements of Humanist poetry, in French first, but in Latin and English too. Seeing how much he wrote, it is a surprise to realise that for him, scholarship came second. First came a determination to awaken in his students an interest in the text and an appreciation of it. Only then did he fan the flames of scholarly curiosity in the young, bringing them to see it as a means of deepening a truer appreciation of the beauty and significance of what they read. He delighted in Ronsard’s love poetry ; it was often through those sonnets that he led his students on to other things : he never doubted though that the greatness of the

Prince des poëtes

was especially to be appreciated in the more doctrinal and combative verse, in the

Hymnes

and in the

Discours.

That Ronsard was a committed Roman Catholic was an added attraction, for Malcolm Smith was a firm and serene believer in that faith. Was that partly an offshoot of his Irish roots ? He was at once a very English Londoner and a man gently aware of the Irish origins of his family. It was typical that, when he wanted to find out at first hand what life was like in Ulster, he got on his bike and cycled all over the north of the island, criss-crossing the frontier and, even more important, criss-crossing the multiple and complex cultural divides. He stayed in boarding-house after boarding-house, listening, joking and questioning, delighting in being a Londoner called Smith whom nobody could ‘place’. He came back with a degree of optimism.

Montaigne appealed to him also partly for the allegiance shown in the

Essais

, and in real life, to the

Eglise catholique, apostolique, et Romaine.

Like many a Renaissance scholar he was intrigued that the questioning by so many influential writers and thinkers in the first half of the sixteenth century did not lead to an even wider rejection of the Church of Rome. French intellectuals did not all leave it in droves. He attributed that in part to the influence of Ronsard and Montaigne, who showed that the old religion could be intellectually respectable and satisfying.

Malcolm Smith wrote to Cardinals and to the Vatican Library in the hope of unearthing documents touching on the religion of Montaigne, and especially on

the process by which Montaigne made his way into the

Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

He found it hard to believe that a few bundles of papers were not to be found sculling about somewhere, misplaced and unrecognised.

That did not mean that Malcolm Smith lived and studied with blinkers on his eyes and mind. He had a special weakness for the Protestant epic poets, especially for Du Bartas ; and he studied everything which, in the Renaissance, savoured of œcumenical understanding, of concord, of tolerance, or of political realism in matters of religion.

Everyone who knew him will have his own treasured memories. I remember first the gangling young man with the mischievous grin who first came to me in the early sixties after studying Renaissance literature for his B.A. at U.C.L. with D.P. Walker. (He got a first-class degree.) Walker’s rejection of even the remotest possibility of there being any truth whatsoever in any form of Christianity never stopped that scholar from attaching a central importance to the role of theology and religious controversy in the history of ideas and of literature. That was enough for Malcolm.

Malcolm would tumble into my room in U.C.L., papers spewing out of what I remember as an old army gas-mask case ; a bunch of British Museum slips was often in his hand. We would discuss the books he was reading and ways of finding others to read. At that time I discovered his passion for cycling — something very much rarer in England than in France. I had suggested that there was something to look up in Lucca. I brought up the subject again a few weeks later : he had already cycled there from London, looked up the material and, if my memory is right, found it disappointing. Later, as his interest grew wider and deeper, he cycled to countless libraries at home and abroad. I like to think of the surprise many librarians must have experienced when that learned young man, dressed for the bicycle, came smiling into their holy of holies to pore over the rarest of their books and to make new discoveries.

In those early days he had already studied a rare

Ronsard

in Manchester. (He had cycled there of course from Leeds or London.) He realised that no less an authority than Isidore Silver did not know of its existence. He wrote to him, so starting off a warm and friendly correspondence. Isidore Silver, with the perspicacity of the generous older scholar, recognised Malcolm as his natural successor.

Malcolm found, he said, a warm welcome everywhere. Certainly his enthusiasm was infectious. The wife of a great and learned book collector once told me that she suspected her husband wanted to be like him. Certainly I have met students who consciously modelled themselves on him, throwing themselves into their studies with something of his energy and delight. He had little time for pomposity, and no time whatsoever for jargon and for wilful or pretentious obscurity.

His doctoral thesis on Ronsard won the admiration of his examiners. Frances Yates was especially impressed and judged Malcolm to be a Warburg man by nature. And indeed Malcolm shared in her conception of cultural history, which owed so much to Ernst Gombrich and his team — a team unique in being led by learned exiles from Nazi and Fascist oppression, yet already flourishing in London and extending its roots. Out of that thesis was born our standard edition of the

Discours des misères de ce temps.

Malcolm’s first post was in Leeds, in the department led by Professor Philip Thody, who appreciated him as a scholar and a man, affording him every encouragement and sharing in a valued friendship. From Leeds Malcolm went to Bedford College in London — cycling down from Leeds for the interview — where once again the head of his department, Professor Felix Leakey, gave him encouragement, friendship, and the means of establishing himself in London as a scholar to be taken notice of. When Malcolm died I received many letters from those who knew him : none was more appreciative and warmer than that of Felix Leakey : under his ægis Malcolm had really found his wings.

Amongst many invitations he was able to take up were visiting professorships to Western Ontario and Cornell. Malcolm was sought after for numerous colloquies, not least by neo-Latinists. When Bedford College made a shot-gun marriage with Royal Holloway, forming what was then known as Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, he was the man elected to become the head of its French Department. His colleagues found it an inspired election, ensuring for the combined department the distinction that it deserved.

Then Malcolm’s whole life suddenly changed. He was sawing off a limb of a tree in his garden when he slipped. His foot caught in a branch. The fall was awkward, and serious in its effects. From then on he walked with a slight limp. And his serious cycling days were over. For a while he was depressed. Even his scholarship suffered, though not his teaching nor his effective leading of his department. For a few months even his infectious smile became rarer. But not for long. He remained as keen as ever on cycling, fighting for cycle-paths in the country and cycle-routes in London. But those legendary trips were over. Yet his scholarly fire, his enthusiasm, and his grin soon returned.

It was at this period too that he launched himself into what were then the new mysteries of word-processing. He became a computer wizard, playing a major role in building up his college’s very successful desk-top publishers, Runnymede Books.

As article followed article, as book followed book, his colleagues confidently awaited that special bloom that great scholars break into in their fifties. And then the blow fell. Stomach pains were wrongly diagnosed as something minor. Too late he was found to have cancer. He knew that there was no cure and that he had a year or so to live. Not more. He went on working, keeping to the time on his contracts and seeing one book come out within days of his death.

In his illness he was nursed by all the members of his close-knit family, especially by his brother Gavin and his French sister-in-law Marie-Neige. He bore his painful illness with little outward change of character. He was serene, witty, and jokingly resigned. He continued to jest even about his cancer. Malcolm was no prude. He had more than an affinity with Rabelais, another of his special authors. His sense of fun remained with him to the end, in the intervals between pain. There is no doubt that his faith remained his sheet anchor. He was truly supported by his family and by the Roman Catholic chaplain of his College, Robert Hamilton. No one could have done more.

It was always a pleasure to spend time with Malcolm. To spend some hours with him in those last days was a privilege. So too was to talk to him on the telephone.

He arranged his funeral service — finding something to grin about even in that. He chose his hymns and arranged for friends to read not only from Scripture but from his favourite Renaissance authors, and, at their gentle insistence, from his own works. He sent for his Latin dictionary to check the inscription on his tombstone. (‘Only Latin will do !’) And all that without rancour or gloom. He died on the twenty-sixth of October, 1994. He was nearly fifty-three.

Malcolm’s achievements as a scholar are witnessed to by this collection of some of his articles, and by the bibliography of his works given in the appendix. They need no puffing. Malcolm worked in the best tradition of humanist scholarship. Shoddy work puzzled him. Pretentious obscurity and jargon both irritated and amused him. His Socratic questioning of a participant in a colloquy who was devoted to such things became a legend amongst those who witnessed it or heard of it. (Such tales lose nothing in the telling.)

As editor, exegete, and historian of ideas he has left his very personal mark on Renaissance scholarship — not least on Ronsard studies ; on Montaigne studies ; on our understanding of Joachim Du Bellay ; on Renaissance religious controversy, and on Renaissance attempts at tolerance and concord.

As a man, he was lovable.

M.A. Screech

The feast of

William Law

, mystic and non-juror,

1997

Wolfson College, Oxford

MALCOLM SMITH’S WRITINGS

[This survey is designed, in part, to put the articles into context ; figures in

bold

refer to the numbering of the articles in this volume.]

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Qui veut guerir de l’ignorance, il faut la confesser

Montaigne found inspiration in quoting his cherished Latin poets ; Malcolm Smith found inspiration in quoting Montaigne. This Socratic confession opens Malcolm’s essay on Montaigne’s lost writings (17), which are characteristically arranged ‘in the ascending order in which they arouse my curiosity’. The wellspring of Malcolm’s scholarship was indeed curiosity, and from it flowed the stream of books, editions and articles listed in the bibliography. They record his ceaseless dialogue with some of the subtlest minds of the French Renaissance, and his eagerness to explore the results through a further dialogue with his modern audience.

Malcolm tried to satisfy his and our curiosity in three particular fields : bibliography, allegory, and biography. Many of his articles stemmed from a polite reluctance to accept unquestioningly the word of bibliographers or commentators ; how often he found that a careless or incomplete reference concealed some unsuspected gem which would enrich the history of a text, the context of an allusion, or the by-ways of a life. In editing and annotating he insisted on testing all assumptions for himself, applying a rigorous, almost forensic, standard of proof. He acknowledged that the unveiling of allegory is a chancy business, but reduced the risks by immersing himself in the essential detail, developing an instinctive sensitivity to the proclivities of an author, to the intellectual, political and theological climate, and to the contemporary theory and practice of allegory (see 6). Though aware of the modern fashion for downgrading the author, he persisted resolutely in discerning the presence of a vibrant and approachable human personality behind every work he studied.

Malcolm’s doctoral thesis, completed in 1967 and on deposit in the London University Library at Senate House, is entitled ‘Political and religious controversy in the work of Ronsard, with special reference to the

Discours des miseres

’. Something of its textual and historical richness may be glimpsed in articles

2

and

4

. The political and theological implications of literary texts preoccupied him throughout his career and, with poignant symmetry, he returned to many of the issues raised by his thesis in the posthumously-published

Ronsard and Du Bellay versus Bèze : Allusiveness in Renaissance Literary Texts.

The findings of his thesis led eventually to the definitive edition of Ronsard’s

Discours des misères

published in 1979. It is an archetypal Smith performance, as he disentangles the complicated history of these originally ephemeral texts (cf.

1

and

3

), elucidates their veiled allusions and, above all, illuminates the context of Ronsard’s declamations by adopting the style of a Renaissance commentator — his model, explicitly, was Marc-Antoine Muret’s delicious commentary on Ronsard’s

Amours.

Significantly, this was the first edition of the

Discours

to supply the essential references to Calvin, Bèze and other opponents of Ronsard (cf.

20

), as Malcolm strove to emulate the poet’s own doomed attempt to be impartial. The edition underlines Malcolm’s knack of locating and analysing ‘lost’ or previously unknown editions of Ronsard’s works (

5

,

7

,

8

,

13

,

14

and

19

), though in a wryly despairing public lecture (

15

) he confessed that there was still much to do. His finds were often located in out-of-the-way municipal archives and ecclesiastical libraries, from Lichfield to Lucca, though he turned up many a

trouvaille

even in the British Library and the Bibliothèque Nationale. His extraordinary bibliographical expertise was, however, a treasure to be shared rather than jealously hoarded. Send him an offprint and in a few days back would come the note of thanks together with a few diffident but devastatingly pertinent suggestions for further reading !

Even before the

Discours

, Malcolm had published his edition of the

Sonnets pour Helene

(1970). Applying the same principles, he provided the ‘Muret edition’ of this collection, using dense footnotes to establish the historical, cultural and poetic context of this most complex of sonnet cycles. With characteristic intertextual expertise, he also identified, more distinctly than his predecessors, the factitious nature of this cycle, as Ronsard, the consummate professional poet, is shown judiciously recycling old material to produce a supremely literary but scarcely autobiographical

roman d’amour

.

Similarly, Malcolm’s study of Joachim Du Bellay’s

Regrets

, published in 1974, shows parts of the collection in a new light, with closer affinities to the Juvenalian style than had previously been supposed. Malcolm reasserted the important role of topicality in much Renaissance poetry by identifying the specific targets of certain sonnets. Even if, as he admitted, all such unmasking of ‘veiled victims’ risks being conjectural, his study cogently portrays the relations between Du Bellay and his patrons, and argues eloquently that social and literary history are kindred disciplines which can and should be mutually enriching. Not least, it broaches the neglected question of Du Bellay’s religious outlook. Malcolm returned to this theme with an ingenious reading of Du Bellay’s enigmatic

Songe

in the last edition he published, a parallel text of the

Antiquitez de Rome

and

Songe

, with translations by Edmund Spenser. Typically, Malcolm commented on the textual discrepancies not to expose Spenser’s deficiencies as a linguist, but to illuminate his qualities as a poet. The brief introduction evokes Joachim’s appeal, to which Malcolm had increasingly succumbed : his inimitable subtlety, inspired allusiveness, nimble wit, and above all his timeless humanity.

The essay of 1974 was accompanied by editions of Du Bellay’s little-known

Xenia

and of a Latin elegy, with translation, addressed to the principal ‘victim’ of the

Regrets

, the cardinal of Lorraine. The editions reflected Malcolm’s growing interest in neo-Latin literature, fired by his bibliographical (and topographical)

investigations of Du Bellay’s disregarded Latin poetry (

9

and

10

). His enthusiasm is conveyed in a series of sparkling contributions (

11

,

19

and

24

) to the triennial congresses of the International Association for Neo-Latin Studies.

Malcolm’s two books on Montaigne also reflect a developing empathy with a writer whom he had at first approached with some awe.

Montaigne and the Roman Censors

(1981) is probably his most revealing excursion into intellectual biography, combining erudition and judicious speculation to illuminate an almost unexplored episode. Montaigne’s encounter with the Inquisition (which itself appears in an unexpected light) had fascinating repercussions upon the text of the

Essais

, as Montaigne reacted, far from obsequiously, to the reservations of Rome. An intriguing study of the interplay between the

Journal de voyage

and the

Essais

leads to a reassessment of Montaigne’s theological competence and of his relations with the Church. This was, incidentally, the first book in which Malcolm, with no visible reluctance, conceded that his readers’ grasp of languages might not match his own. A codicil was added to its discussion of Fortune in the article on Montaigne’s (veiled) attack on Machiavelli (

18

).

Montaigne and Religious Freedom

(1991), whose closing passage was read at Malcolm’s memorial service, is the most wide-ranging and personal of his books, as its subtitle,

The Dawn of Pluralism

, may suggest. It covers not only a lengthy period, from the embryonic toleration policy of 1560 to the Edict of Nantes, but also a timeless and universal theme (see 16 on Montaigne and Tacitus). By studying the moral struggles of Montaigne and his predecessors, Malcolm was able to highlight the unchanging intellectual foundations on which religious freedom and indeed all freedoms rest. The fundamental questions concerning political action, characterised by Montaigne as the conflict between the

utile

and the

honneste

, are posed — with a gentle reminder that none was inapplicable to the Britain in which the book was being written. But alongside the great themes Malcolm pursued his characteristic decipherment of fleeting allusion ; from his study of Montaigne’s relations with the contemporary Establishment, the essayist emerges, as he does from the

Roman Censors

, as a man of stronger convictions than is sometimes allowed.

In its broad sweep this book takes in such lesser-known but attractive figures as Michel de l’Hospital, Paul de Foix (

26, 27

) and above all Montaigne’s mentor, and another of Malcolm’s belated discoveries, Estienne de La Boëtie. Malcolm undertook to fill the gap left by one of Montaigne’s ‘lost writings’, the complete edition of La Boëtie’s

Œuvres

that was apparently published at about the time of Montaigne’s death. Two of La Boëtie’s works had not appeared in Montaigne’s extant 1571 edition, nor in the

Essais

in 1580, presumably because Montaigne feared that their publication would be exploited by opponents of reconciliation. Malcolm repaired the omission by editing the

Memoire sur la pacification des troubles

(1983) and

De la Servitude volontaire

(1987) ; a typically quirky yet helpful English translation of the latter appeared the following year from Malcolm’s own imprint, Runnymede Books. The

Memoire

, maltreated by its only previous editor, and virtually ignored since, benefits from Malcolm’s theological expertise as well as from his unmatched study of its political context. The

Servitude volontaire

, a work both more familiar and more often traduced, is rescued from the insobriety of previous commentators and editors. Textual and contextual scholarship is accompanied once more by

plausible speculation, here on potentially subversive allusions to the contemporary French monarchy ; Malcolm had sketched the theme in a public lecture (

22

) and was to expand upon it in the English edition of the

Servitude volontaire

. Above all, he threw into relief the intellectual kinship, so often underrated, between La Boëtie and Montaigne. At the time of writing, we await the consummation of a long-cherished project : Malcolm’s work on an edition of the complete works of Estienne de La Boëtie is shortly to appear, fittingly embedded in the Pléiade edition of Montaigne.

It will be noticed that Malcolm never produced the ‘big book’, the would-be definitive study of some author or movement. Humility, perhaps, an admission of Socratic ignorance. Or, more likely, a sense that there can be no definitive studies. Malcolm’s method was frequently accumulative (see for example

10

and

21

), as unsatisfied curiosity led him further and deeper into a topic. At his death, one vast project was left incomplete and perhaps literally interminable. He gave the loose title ‘The World of Estienne Dolet’ to a huge assemblage of dossiers, notes and files packed with information on all those — very numerous and some very obscure — who were in some way connected with Dolet. A few glimpses of the material have appeared (

23

and

24

), but a mass of rare and fascinating information awaits some resourceful scholar.

*
**

One of Malcolm’s favourite chapters of Montaigne was

De l’art de conférer

. Malcolm’s was a life filled with

conférence

 : dialogue with family and friends, with colleagues and students, with the past and the present, with his readers and with his chosen writers. Towards the end Malcolm invited friends to choose a gift from among his books. I have before me his teaching copy of

Les Regrets

and a reprint of Cotgrave’s

Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues

 — which he had snatched from under my nose in a book sale years before. They are a sorry sight, dog-eared, disbound, the pages blackened by scribbled annotation. Yet more than anything they represent the man and the scholar who, like Montaigne, would have gone on, talking, arguing, laughing with his books, for as long as there were paper and ink in the world…

Michael Heath

King’s College London

16 April 1997

TABULA GRATULATORIA

Professor Dominic

Baker-Smith

, University of Amsterdam

M. Jean Paul

Barbier

, Musée Barbier-Mueller, Genève

Dr Jean

Barron

, Royal Holloway, University of London

Dr Jennifer

Britnell

, University of Durham

Dr Sally

Burch

, University College London

Dr Andrew

Calder

, University College London

Dr Ruth

Calder

, University College London

Professor Terence

Cave,

St John’s College, Oxford

Mr Harry

Cockerham

, Royal Holloway, University of London

Professor Richard

Cooper

, Brasenose College, Oxford

Ms Jacqueline

Doyle

, Bedford College, University of London

Mr Clive

Frankish

, University of Manchester

Professor Michael

Freeman

, University of Bristol

The Revd Robert

Hamilton

, Roman Catholic Chaplain, Royal Holloway, University of London

Professor Michael

Heath

, King’s College London

Dr Edward

Hughes

, Royal Holloway, University of London

Professor Felix

Leakey

, Emeritus Professor of French, Bedford College, University of London

Mr Paul Leakey, Ely

Dr John

Lewis

, The Queen’s University of Belfast

Monica

McCann

, Ely (Malcolm Smith’s sister)

Abbé Germain

Marc’hadour

, Amicale Thomas More, Angers

Dr Wendy

Mercer

, University College London

Dr Letizia

Panizza

, Royal Holloway, University of London

Professor Malcolm

Quainton

, University of Lancaster

Miss Anne

Reeve

, University College London

The Revd Professor M.A. 

Screech

, Wolfson College, Oxford

Mr Douglas

Smith

, London (Malcolm Smith’s father)

Mr Graham

Smith

, Crowborough, E. Sussex (Malcolm Smith’s brother)

Mrs Irene

Smith

, Crowborough, E. Sussex

Mr Gavin

Smith

, Hailsham, E. Sussex (Malcolm Smith’s brother)

Mrs Marie-Neige

Smith

, Hailsham, E. Sussex

Mr Lionel

Swain

, Royal Holloway, University of London

Professor Isamu

Takata

, President de la Société des Amis de Ronsard du Japon

Professor J.B. 

Trapp

, The Warburg Institute

Dr Ruth

Webb

, Bristol

Dr Gwyneth

Wilkie

, University College London

St 

Christopher’s Catholic Cycling Club

Vanguard Cycling Club

La

Société des Amis de Ronsard du Japon

The Department of French,

Royal Holloway

, University of London

The Department of French,

University College London

The Department of French,

University of Leeds

The

Warburg Institute

, University of London

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

All publications in which Malcolm Smith’s articles first appeared have been informed of our project to republish the articles which form this collection. We are most grateful to the following, who have specifically replied, for permission to reproduce material :

The Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation, Heldref Publications, Washington DC (for article 6)

W. Fink Verlag (for article 11)

Moreana

(for article 12)

Revue de Littérature Comparée

(for articles 10 and 21)

The Sixteenth Century Journal

(for article 27)

Should any copyright be inadvertently infringed, we duly apologise.

AN EARLY EDITION OF A

DISCOURS

BY RONSARD

The purpose of this article is to determine the circumstances of composition and publication of Ronsard’s

Prière à Dieu pour la victoire

and to republish for the first time the original text of this important

Discours.

1

Ronsard is known to have published in 1569 two important poems dealing with events of the third civil war. To celebrate the victory of the royal army at Jarnac (13 March 1569) he published the

Chant triomphal pour jouer sur la lyre. Sur l’insigne victoire qu’il a pleu à Dieu donner à Monseigneur, Frere du Roy

(XV, 61-66).

2

This poem appeared in the

Sixiesme livre des Poëmes

in 1569, and subsequently in the third (1571) and fourth (1573) editions of Ronsard’s

Œuvres

. In the fifth edition of the

Œuvres

, it appeared under a different title :

Hymne sur la victoire obtenue à Moncontour par Monseigneur d’Anjou, à present Roy de France.

It was never included in the

Discours

, doubtless because, unlike the

Discours

, it was written

“pour jouer sur la lyre.”

We shall refer to it henceforth by its opening line,

“Tel qu’un petit aigle sort.”

The second poem known to have been published in 1569 is

L’Hydre deffaict ou la Louange de Monseigneur le duc d’Anjou, frere du Roy

(XV, 377-387). This poem was written after the royal victory at Montcontour (3 October 1569) and appeared in a collection of Latin, Greek and French poetry dealing with the war.

3

...