¹ References unaccompanied by any letters (e.g., xvi, 354) are to Pierre de Ronsard: Œuvres complètes, the critical edition by Paul Laumonier (Paris: Société des Textes Français Modernes, 1914-); those preceded by LL. are to the Laumonier edition (Paris: Lemerre, 1914–19), of the text of 1584.—In Ronsard's time the connotation of the word “philosophy” was far wider than in our own; see viii, 86, n. 2.

² Philosophie personified.

³ On this passage there are some interesting observations in L'Hymne de la Philosophie de P. de Ronsard, Commenté par Pantaleon Thevenin de Commercy en Lorraine … A Paris, Pour Jean Feburier, pres le college de Rheims, M. D. LXXXII. Avec Privilege du Roy, p. 49: “Il entend les trois divers mouvemens, que les Astrologues & Philosophes, ont remarqué és deux: Le premier est du dixiesme & premier ciel, qui se meult, de l'Orient vers l'Occident. … Le second mouvement est des autres spheres, qui se meuvent à l'opposite de la premiere, de l'Occident en Orient, non plus ne moins que le Pilote porté dans son navire de Corbeil ou de Chalenton à Paris, peut nonobstant dans son batteau marcher contremont droit vers Corbeil. … Les deux mouvemens du ciel par nous ja mentionnez sont dits & appelez droits, mais il appelle de travers un mouvement des sept pianettes, par lequel elles se meuvent inegalement, tantost plus vers le Septentrion, tantost plus vers le midy, & appelle-on ce tiers mouvement du ciel, Trépidation.” (Bibl. Nat., Rés. Ye 510.)

⁴ For the Hymne du Ciel and the Hymne de l'Eternité Ronsard was also heavily indebted to the corresponding hymns of Marullus (c. 1440-c. 1500): II, ii, Coelo and I, v, Aeternitati (ed. A. Perosa, Michaelis Marulli Carmina, Zürich, 1951, pp. 120 and 113–114). Laumonier's notes for the hymns to Heaven and Eternity are particularly full and include many of the relevant quotations from Marullus, but he was more than justified in saying of the Hymne du Ciel, “Cet hymne est seulement en germe dans celui de Marulle” (viii, 141, n. 6).

⁵ “Seul Anaximandre [c. 611–c. 547 B.C.] paraît avoir donné à ces images [les choses célestes] toute leur importance dans sa belle et féconde conception des anneaux orbitaires: réalisation de la sphère armillaire rudimentaire et du polos que connaissaient sans doute depuis assez longtemps les Babyloniens.” A. Rey, La Science dans l'antiquité, ii, La Jeunesse de la science grecque (Paris, 1933), p. 405.—Cf. in Ronsard, xii, 79, vv. 247–262 and the notes.

⁶ See the preface to the translation by E. S. Forster (Oxford, 1914), in The Works of Aristotle Translated into English published under the editorship of W. D. Ross (Oxford, 1931).

⁷ Sir Thomas Heath, Aristarchus of Samos, The Ancient Copernicus (Oxford, 1913), pp. 299 ff.—“The first published edition of Aristarchus' treatise was a Latin translation by George Valla, included in a volume which appeared first in 1488 (‘per Anton. de Strata′) and again in 1498 (‘per Simonem Papiensem dictum Bevilaquam′).” Ibid., p. 321.

⁸ J. Plattard, “Le Système de Copernic dans la littérature française au XVI^e siècle,” RSS, i (1913), 236–237, notes the almost total lack of influence of the Copernican theory (announced in 1543) in France during the sixteenth century. Neither J.-A. de Baïf nor Remy Belleau shows any conception of it (ibid., p. 229). On the other hand, according to J. C. Lapp, “Pontus de Tyard and the Science of his Age,’ RR, xxxviii (1947), 20, Tyard not only gave a complete analysis of the Copernican system in all three editions of L'Univers (1557, 1578, 1587), but was aware that it had been anticipated by Aristarchus of Samos. See Lapp's The Universe of Pontus de Tyard (Ithaca, N. Y., 1950), p. 104; cf. p. 16: ”Je pourray dire hardiment … que Ptolomée … peut avoir esté deceu.“ This must be set against an allusion by Tyard to his knowledge of the path of the sun, from which one may perhaps infer a belief in the geocentric hypothesis: ”… quo sit Solis semita flexa modo,“ in Ponti Thyardei, Bissiani, ad Petrum Ronsardum, de Coelestibus Asterismis Poematium (Paris, 1586), Bibl. Nat., v 8489 (first ed., 1573). In a recent communication Professor Lapp suggests that Tyard may here be expressing a ”poetic“ rather than an ”actual“ belief: ”After all, we still say the sun rises … It is true that Pontus hedges on this matter, however. He frequently takes the earth as immobile in L'Univers, and even in the Homilies: ‘la terre demeure ferme, au milieu et centre de tout le monde, n'estant soustenue d'aucune chose, que de la volonté divine.’—Homilies sur la I ^ere table du décalogue, 1588, Paris, Cappelet, 30 v⁰.“

⁹ “Tu scais … si c'est … la Terre qui tourne,” iii, 74, vv. 417–419, refers to the motion of the earth about its axis. Why Ronsard preferred the Ptolemaic astronomy as the basis of his cosmological poetry has been well explained by Mlle Germaine Lafeuille, “Cinq Hymnes philosophiques de Ronsard,” Harvard diss., 1952 (unpubl.), p. 45: “… le fait capital, pour un poète qui écrit pour être lu, comme Ronsard, et aussi avide d’être compris et loué, c'est d’émouvoir les imaginations; auprès de cela la ‘vérité’—à supposer que Ronsard en ait eu la notion—est sans importance. Or plus une théorie est ancienne, de l'usage quotidienne de la langue, plus elle est acceptée immédiatement et comme chose établie, plus elle se prête au traitement poétique; la crédulité dont elle est l'objet, l'adhésion instantanée qu'elle obtient, l'hypnose où la longue familiarité nous met, tout cela enchaîne le jugement et libère l'imagination. Que Ronsard, loin de chercher les nouveautés, les ait fuies, qu'il se soit tourné vers la plus vieille représentation … révèle son objet: chanter, non pas informer; composer un hymne et non un traité.”

¹⁰ Foreword, trans. Sonya Bargmann, to Galileo Galilei's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, trans. Stillman Drake (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1953), pp. ix and xi.—On the distinction between the celestial and sublunary spheres, cf. Pierre Duhem, Le Système du monde (Paris, 1913), i, 14, and Henri Busson, Le Rationalisme dans la littérature française de la Renaissance (Paris, 1957²), pp. 364–392.

¹¹ Henri Weber, La Création poétique au XVI^e siècle en France (Paris, 1956), p. 524; note that this is intended as a general criticism, and is not limited to astronomy. For Scève's treatment of astronomical subjects, see Microcosme, iii, vv. 45–320, 649–680, in Bertrand Guégan, Œuvres poétiques complètes de Maurice Scève (Paris, 1927), pp. 248–255, 264–265. Some notion of the “bagage scolastique” in which Scève was entangled may be gained from a glance at the tabular presentation of the content of the third book of the Microcosme by V.-L. Saulnier, Maurice Scève (Paris, 1948), i, 414.

¹² Richelet's introductory note on the Hymne du Ciel (1623 ed. of Les Œuvres de Pierre de Ronsard, p. 1039), deserves particular attention: “Il ne se peut rien dire du Ciel ou du Monde, qui ne soit dans cest Hymne par abregé: de sa figure, de son assiette, de son mouvement, de son ame interieure & infuse, de ses diverses spheres, de son harmonie, de sa matiere ou substance, de son ordre, de son autheur, de son unité, de ses influxions sur la terre & sur la nature; bref cest Hymne est comme un sommaire du Timee de Platon, & des quatre livres du Ciel de l'Aristote, & de tout ce que les autres Philosophes en ont escrit, avec un si grand racourcissement, qu'il y a dequoy s'estonner en ce grand subject, de l'esprit, du style & du jugement de nostre Autheur.”

¹³ iv, 45; see I. Silver, “Ronsard's Ethical Thought,” BHR, xxiv (1962), 115.

¹⁴ “Pour lui [Empedocles], comme pour Parménide … l’être primordial est un ‘Sphairos arrondi, heureux de sa solitude circulaire’ … l'équilibre harmonieux du Sphairos est produit par l'Amour, qui rassemble toutes choses en une Unité parfaite.” P.-M. Schuhl, Essai sur la formation de la pensée grecque (Paris, 1949²), p. 297. See Plato, Tim., 33–34 (cf. Duhem, i, 51), and Aristotle, De Caelo, I, ii, 269a20; II, iv, 286b10–33 (cf. Duhem, i, 173, Heath, p. 227). See also J. Powell, “Perfection as a Cosmological Postulate, Aristotle and Bruno,” Philosophical Rev., xliv (1935), 61. On the French poetry of the sphere in the sixteenth century and later one may consult Georges Poulet, “Poésie du cercle et de la sphère,” Cahiers de l'Association Internationale des Eludes Françaises, No. 10 (1958), pp. 44–57.

¹⁵ Tim., 36E: “The soul, interfused everywhere from the centre to the circumference of heaven, of which also she is the external envelopment, herself turning in herself, began a divine beginning of never-ceasing and rational life enduring throughout all time.” Tr. B. Jowett.—On the notion of perfection associated with the sphere, cf. v, 110, variants; xi, 169, vv. 1047–48; xvii, 212, variants; pp. 334–335 (son. lvi).—The last two verses of the present passage are found at the end of an interesting comment by A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), p. 345, n. 11, on Kepler's adherence “to Platonic and Aristotelian principles in arguing that the universe as a whole must be a sphere.”

¹⁶ Ronsard's meaning becomes clear in the variant of 1567–87: “car il est ton esclave.”

¹⁷ The reason for Ronsard's adoption of nine spheres is well explained in Richelet's comment on the passage quoted by Laumonier.

¹⁸ See A. B. Cook, Zeus: A Study in Ancient Religion (Cambridge, Eng., 1914–40), Vol. ii, Part ii, Sec. (5), “The Cosmic Egg,” pp. 1033–38; cf. A. Chastel, “L”oeuf de Ronsard,“ in Mél. Chamard (Paris, 1951), pp. 109–111.

¹⁹ Cf. viii, 146, v. 82.

²⁰ Cf. viii, 146, vv. 71–75.

²¹ Cf. Aristotle, De Caelo, I, ix, 278b8–279a14, and especially the very strong expression denying the possibility of the existence of a body beyond the utmost circumference of the sky: “… there neither is, nor can come into being, any body outside the heavens” (278b23–24—tr. J. L. Stocks). Aristotle's argument is summarized in Heath, p. 228. See also Plato, Tim., 30D-31A, 32D-33A.

²² But cf. x, 103, vv. 49–56, on the soul's report, after its flight through the universe, on the possible existence of worlds besides our own, and as to whether some of the celestial bodies are inhabited “de gents comme est la terre icy.” For similar reflections see P. de Tyard's Mantice, in his Discours philosophiques (Paris, 1587), p. 148 verso, quoted by F. A. Yates, The French Academies in the Sixteenth Century (London, 1948), p. 97 and n. 7.

²³ Cf. Marullus, Hymni, II, ii, Coelo, vv. 5–6:

²⁴ Pontus de Tyard's paraphrase is more exact: “Ainsi il est finy en soi, mais semblant infini en nous …” Lapp, The Universe, p. 5.—Du Bartas, on the other hand, absurdly intensifies the contradiction: “Infiniment fini …” Premiere Sepmaine, ii, v. 985, in The Works of Du Bartas, ed. U. T. Holmes et al. (Chapel Hill, N. C., 1935–40), ii, 259. —Busson, p. 374, compares the passages of Ronsard and Pliny in parallel columns.

²⁵ This may have been the thought of Richelet when he wrote: “… il a comme une marque d'infinité en ce … que son mouvement est en soy-mesme” (1623 ed., p. 1048); cf. a parallel remark by Richelet, after Aristotle, on the eternity of the Heavens (ed. cit., p. 1047).

²⁶ In La cena delle ceneri (1584) Giordano Bruno was to adopt a more incautious position, in which “… le point capital reste l'affirmation réitérée de l'infinité des espaces célestes,” a point of view that he regarded as less heretical than the assumption of a finite universe, with its implication that the divine power was finite. See P.-H. Michel, “Giordano Bruno et le système de Copernic d'après la Cène des cendres (1584)” in Pensée humaniste et tradition chrétienne au XV^e et XVI^e siècles, volume publié sous la direction de Henri Bédarida (Paris, 1950), pp. 325 and 331. Cf. P. Boyancé, “Lucrèce et le monde” in Lettres d'humanité, iv (1945), 130, and see Lucretius on the plurality of worlds, ii, 1048 ff.—Guy de Brués quotes vv. 91–93 of the Hymne du Ciel in the first of his Dialogues, pp. 65–66 (p. 133 of the critical edition by Panos Paul Morphos [Baltimore, 1953]), and presents through the interlocutor Baïf an epitome of ancient thought in favor of and against belief in a single world or in a plurality or infinity of worlds. For the Aristotelian position (De Caelo, I, vii, 275b5–12; I, viii–ix, 276a18–279b3; Met., XI, viii, 1074a32–39) adopted by Ronsard, which had become the orthodox one of the Middle Ages and of the Renaissance, cf. Duhem, i, 170, 178, 230; Heath, p. 229.

²⁷ Cf. xi, 135, where Moteur (v. 354) is synonymous with Ouvrier (v. 358). The passage is quoted below in the present section. Manouvrier and Ouvrier are no doubt translations of , which originally meant artisan or craftsman, and later came to mean the Creator of the universe. It is used in this sense by Plato in Tim., 29A, in Rep., 530A, and frequently by the Neoplatonists.

²⁸ viii, 61–62, esp. v. 298, p. 64, v. 349.

²⁹ viii, 142; the passage is quoted in the preceding section.

³⁰ If in this verse Ronsard continues the Platonic train of thought initiated in the immediately preceding ones, the meaning is that the movement of the first heaven differs from that of the others in receiving its motion directly from “l'Esprit de l'Eternel.” But a possible influence from Aristotle's Metaphysics, XI, vii, 1072a23–26, cannot be excluded. Ronsard could have been familiar with Aristotle's thought on the Prime Mover independently or, as Busson, pp. 364 f., implies, either through attendance at the lectures of Francisco Vicomercato at the Collège Royal at any time between 1542 and 1567, or by a study of Vicomercato's In earn partem duodecimi libri metaphys. Aristotelis, in qua de Deo & caeteris mentibus divinis disseritur, Commentarii, unà cum eiusdem partis è Graeco in Latinum conversione. Parisiis, Ex typographia Matthaei Davidis … 1551. Following are both the translation and the commentary of the relevant passage in the Metaphysics.—Translation (p. 46): Est igitur & aliquid quod movet. Quoniam ver id, quod movetur, & movet, medium est, aliquid quoque est, quod non motum movet, sempiternum, substantia, & actus.—Commentary (p. 47): Quoniam igitur hoc dictum est, motum sempiternum esse, eôque caelum cieri, colligit, aliquid esse quod illud movet: Ita sempiternitas actus, quod quidem facere instituerat, demonstratur, simúlque ostenditur, primum moventem aliquem esse: quandoquidem caelum, quod ab ilio movetur, primum est, quod motione cieatur.

³¹ An allusion to the apparent eastward motion of the sun, moon, and planets, with respect to the stars. This had been observed in remote antiquity; cf. Heath, pp. 50, 131; Duhem, i, 9. Ronsard may have seen references to it in Tim., 36D, or in De Caelo, II, ii, 285b28–33; II, x, 291b2–3. Richelet's suggestion of Macrobius as the source (see Laumonier's note) is a plausible one; perhaps equally so is a passage in Pliny, Nat. Hist., ii, 6: Omnium autem errantium siderum meatus, interque ea Solis et Lunae, contrarium mundo agere cursum … See above, n. 3.

³² Writing two years later in Le Premier Curieux (1557) Pontus de Tyard rejects this view of the violent action of the primum mobile and of the resistance of the other heavenly spheres: “… ce mouvement procede & se fait, par une vertu de quelque forme spirituelle, ou proprieté naturelle … de la façon possible que l'aymant fait mouvoir le fer … Tellement que ce premier mouvement me semble estre impertinemment surnommé de violence, ou ravissement, veu qu'il procede de certaine agreable sympathie, de laquelle tous les inferieurs recognoissent ce mobile premier, si mieux ne vous semble estre bien raisonnable, que la chose contenue se meuve avec ce qui la contient, & l'accompagne sans resistence la part quelle s'incline.” Lapp, The Universe, p. 13.—See Laumonier's note on the word violence: “Ce mot est pris ici dans le sens atténué de puissance.”

³³ Romans ix.17–23.

³⁴ The expression “c'est la cause qui peult” is possibly a periphrasis for Aristotle's efficient cause, and “sans changement demeure” may contain an allusion to the same philosopher's doctrine of the Unmoved Mover, discussed as follows by Vicomercato in the sequel (p. 47) to the passage quoted in n. 30: Intelligendum est autem, hoc, quod movet, ab ipso caelo diversum esse: siquidem fieri non potest, ut ipsum, quod est corpus & magnitudo, se cieat. Nec enim quidpiam est, quod se movere & agitare concedatur, nisi eius pars sit una, quae moveat, nullo ipsa motu agitata: altera, quae moveatur, nullam per se, aut ex se motionem efficiens.

³⁵ This passage is discussed in Busson, p. 365, where puissance is inadvertently replaced by naissance. In the 1587 ed. the correct reading, absent from the variants of the critical edition, is substance, as noted by Busson. Cf. viii, 252, v. 98.

³⁶ Cf. Aristotle, Met., XI, vii, 1072b14–30 (the intellectual felicity of God); ibid., viii, 1073a14–74b3 (the nature of the eternal moving principles); cf. W. D. Ross, Aristotle's Metaphysics (Oxford, 1924), ii, 378–395 passim, and W. Jaeger, Aristotle, trans. R. Robinson (Oxford, 1955²), pp. 345–346. Cf. below, Sec. iv, the quotations from viii, 146 and the De Mundo, vi, and n. 72.

³⁷ Phaedrus, 245D–E; cf. Laws, 896A.

³⁸ Tim., 30B.

³⁹ Laws, 898C; the foregoing translations are by B. Jowett.

⁴⁰ For the Phaedrus see iii, 143, 147, iv, 25; for the Timaeus, iii, 75, vi, 190, ix, 21.

⁴¹ Aeneid, vi, 724 ff., cited by Laumonier, xv, 39, n. 2, and earlier, viii, 142, n. 6.

⁴² “Ici Platon et peut-être les Stoïciens ont présenté au poète un ensemble de doctrines élaborées d'abord par les Pythagoriciens.” F. Plessis et P. Lejay, Œuvres de Virgile (Paris, 1913), p. 546, n. 5.

⁴³ Note the verbal parallelisms between vv. 6–10 and the passage in Phaedrus 245D–E, especially the phrase “else the whole heavens and all creation would collapse and stand still.” Ronsard returned to this thought in the Franciade, xvi, 284, vv. 874–877; indeed, from v. 869 to v. 892, the poet repeats, with some development, the thought of the introductory verses of Le Chat, which must have been written at the time that the epic was actively in progress.

⁴⁴ For a discussion of Aristotle's assumption of an Unmoved Mover in opposition to the Platonic doctrine of the self-moved world-soul, see W. K. C. Guthrie, Aristotle on the Heavens, with an English translation (London, 1939), Introduction. The difference between the two positions had little meaning for Ronsard's poetry. It is clear from the foregoing account that he inclined more frequently toward the Platonic hypothesis, but did not entirely overlook the Aristotelian.

⁴⁵ Plato, Rep., vii, 529–540; cf. Duhem, i, Sec. xiii, pp. 91–101, “L'objet de l'astronomie selon Platon,” esp. p. 95: “… cette Astronomie véritable [rational, as opposed to observational] ne doit pas être étudiée pour elle-même; elle n'est qu'un moyen de rendre plus aisée à notre âme la contemplation de l'Idée du Bien.”

⁴⁶ On this verse Laumonier quotes Richelet (1623 ed., p. 1039) as saying, “le Ciel en cest hymne signifie le Monde et la sphère entière de l'Univers.” Cf. J. L. Stocks, De Caelo in Vol. ii (1922) of the Oxford translation, note on I, viii, 276a–18: “ ‘Heaven’ here stands of course for world .”

⁴⁷ Cf. Plato, Tim., 30D.

⁴⁸ Cf. Aristotle, De Caelo, II, ii, 285b8–11; the pseudo-Aristotelian De Mundo, ii, 391b19–24.

⁴⁹ De Caelo, II, iv, 287a27–30, vi, 288a22–25.

⁵⁰ Ibid., I, iii, 270b20–24; De Mundo, ii, 392a5–8; cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist., ii, 3.

⁵¹ Noted by Weber, p. 487.

⁵² Marullus, Hymni, II, ii, Coelo, v. 15: Indefessam terens orbitam (ed. Perosa, p. 120). Note, however, that Ronsard's language is also strikingly like that of De Mundo, ii, 391b17–19, where — eternelle, =orniere, and = sans nul repos. Marullus' indefessam may have been the source of Ronsard's hemistich (above): “D'un pied jamais recreu.”

⁵³ De Caelo, II, iv, 287a27–28; cf. above: “… qui sans cesse retourne / Au lieu duquel il part …”

⁵⁴ Heath, p. 47.

⁵⁵ Heath, pp. 47 and 97 ff. The ten bodies of the Philolaic system are, beginning with the outermost, the sphere of the fixed stars, the five planets, the sun, moon, earth, and counter-earth. Cf. below, Sec. vi, the circular movement accompanied by music of the sirens in the Platonic vision of Er, and the choral dance of the heavenly bodies under the leadership of the choragus, God.

⁵⁶ See above, Sec. i, the quotation from viii, 90–91, and Sec. ii, the one from viii, 143.

⁵⁷ Cf. ix, 25, vv. 195–199; 107–108, vv. 53–78.

⁵⁸ In addition to the passage quoted here, see vv. 36 and 55. Cf. Du Bartas, Premiere Sepmaine, i, v. 24 (ed. cit., ii, p. 195).

⁵⁹ Cf. the lyric version of these lines in xvii, 43; see also iv, 29, v. 1 and n. 2.

⁶⁰ Genesis i.6–8.

⁶¹ Indeed, he once affirmed a Hellenic version of this belief when he referred to the heavens (viii, 147, var.) as being made of glace espoissie; see below in the present section where the passage is quoted.

⁶² By Posidonius; see Diog. Laert., vii, 145; I owe this reference to the edition by P. P. Morphos of Les Dialogues de Guy de Brués, p. 296, which directs also to Pliny, Nat. Hist., II, vi, 29, civ, 223, and to Cicero, De Nat. Deor., II, xv, 39 f.

⁶³ Cf. Lapp, The Universe, p. 90, where the pious Hieromnime equates the sun with God: “Le soleil donc, c'est à dire l'Esprit de Dieu, s'estendant pour rendre la terre seiche & apparente, fit la separation des unes aux autres eaux.”

⁶⁴ Pp. 66–67, 70 of the edition of 1557; ed. Morphos, pp. 134, 136, and see the sources on pp. 295–296.

⁶⁵ Ronsard had very little to say about the ether as such. The word is used in its adjectival form, aetherez, etherez, etc., a number of times: in describing the stars (vii, 312, v. 7; x, 103, v. 40; xvii, 43, v. 137), and to characterize the sky (viii, 178, v. 335; ix, 107, v. 71) and the rays of the sun (ii, 23, v. 5; LL., iv, 145). On four of these occasions it is synonymous with fiery.

⁶⁶ Cf. xvii, 156, vv. 33–36.

⁶⁷ F. R. Johnson, Astronomical Thought in Renaissance England (Baltimore, Md., 1937), p. 56. Cf. below, n. 70, P. Thevenin's description of the outermost celestial sphere.

⁶⁸ Heath, p. 97; cf. Duhem, i, 13–14, where the expression is used (after Stobaeus, Eclogae physicae, i, 22) to describe this earliest version of the empyrean.

⁶⁹ Duhem, loc. cit.

⁷⁰ “Mais ceux,” says Hieromnime in Le Premier Curieux, “qui poussez d'une plus haute contemplation, ne se sont si tenamment arrestez aux matieres … ont estimé sur la neufiesme sphere, estre non seulement un ciel dixiesme, surnommé crystallin, mais encores un onziesme, appellé empyrée, comme vous diriez ignée; non proprement pour aucune qualité chaleureuse, mais à cause de l'indicible splendeur dont il est illustré, comme siege destiné pour l'eternelle demeure de Dieu, des Anges, & des Saincts bien-heureux.” Lapp, The Universe, pp. 10–11. Emphasis in text.—Thevenin begins with the outermost sphere as the first: “La premiere est le ciel Empyré, ou flambant, le siege & sejour des bien heureux, la seconde est le … priumum mobile. … Le troisiesme ciel est celuy qu'on appelle Cristalin, à cause de la semblance de l'eau.” L'Hymne de la Philosophie de P. de Ronsard, Commenté par Pantaleon Thevenin, p. 35.

⁷¹ “Cf. saint Augustin, Cité de Dieu, vii, ch. 30.” Note by P. Laumonier.

⁷² Aristotle, Eth. Nic, X, viii, 1178b21–22; cf. Plato, Tim., 51E; Farm., 134D.

⁷³ Pseudo-Aristotle, De Mundo, vi, 397b20–27; the verse is from the Iliad i.499, considerably modified; cf. Aristotle, De Caelo, I, iii, 270b7; II, i, 284a12; Plato, Laws, 902B.—Richelet's comment (p. 1045 of the 1623 ed.) on the second verse of this passage in Ronsard ascribes to Plato and the Platonists the belief in God's immanence “intra Mundum, qui gubernatoris exemplo, intra illud maneat, quod regat.” See above, Sec. ii.

⁷⁴ Cf. ix, 107, v. 71.

⁷⁵ Emphasis in text.

⁷⁶ A. Rey, La Science dans l'antiquité, ii. La Jeunesse de la science grecque, p. 416. Cf. Heath, p. 40.—“Empedocles followed Anaximenes in holding that the heaven is a crystal sphere and that the fixed stars are attached to it.” Heath, p. 87.

⁷⁷ Laumonier's note on this verse directs to Aratus, Phaenomena, 10 ff. An examination of the two contexts scarcely supports the parallel. The imagery of the forge is not present in this passage of Aratus, and the stars are simply , signs.

⁷⁸ Cf. above, n. 59.

⁷⁹ Cf. Du Bartas, Premiere Sepmaine, iv, v. 55 (ed. cit., ii, 307).

⁸⁰ “… de , fer. acier.” Littré, s. v. aimant, end.

⁸¹ Cf. xv, 309, v. 6: Tu [Pallas] fis trambler tout le ciel aimantin.

⁸² This second definition was suggested by Richelet in the 1623 edition, p. 1052.

⁸³ The sky.

⁸⁴ Cf. viii, 90, vv. 72–74, which are indebted to Iliad viii. 19 ff., but note that Ronsard has transformed the golden chain of Homer into one of steel. See also xvii, 80, var., where the chain, both aimantine and ferrie, belongs to Nature, who is almost identified with God.

⁸⁵ Plato, Rep., x, 616c (tr. B. Jowett).—The significance of this passage is well brought out in Duhem, i, 52–53; cf. Heath, pp. 67–68.

⁸⁶ The poem is addressed to Charles IX.

⁸⁷ On Pythagoras' belief in the sphericity of the earth see Heath, pp. 21 and 48.

⁸⁸ See above, Sec. iii.

⁸⁹ Op. cit., pp. 48–49; emphasis in text.

⁹⁰ Op. cit., p. 48.

⁹¹ viii, 68, vv. 445–450.

⁹² Laumonier's note on this verse is instructive: “Le nom grec est , que les Latins ont traduit par mundus, qui a le même sens: bien ordonné, élégant, harmonieux.”

⁹³ A possible reference to the ecliptic; cf. Du Bartas, Premiere Sepmaine, vi, vv. 899–900 (ed. cit., ii, 408–409):

⁹⁴ See above, Sec. i.

⁹⁵ This context is, of course, the immediate one, but it includes as well most of the Hymne du Ciel, and in particular the verses quoted above, at the beginning of Sec. iii.

⁹⁶ Théodore Reinach, “La Musique des sphères,” Rev. des Etudes grecques, xiii (1900), 432.

⁹⁷ For full expositions of the theory of the harmony of the spheres in antiquity see Duhem, ii, 8–17 and Heath, pp. 105–115.

⁹⁸ Heath, p. 108. Cf. Aristotle, De Caelo, II, ix, 290b12–291a9; at the end of this passage the Pythagoreans are named as postulating a harmony for the moving celestial bodies.

⁹⁹ Met., I, v, 986a2–3 (tr. W. D. Ross).

¹⁰⁰ J. L. Stocks, De Caelo, note to II, ix, 290b15.

¹⁰¹ That Ronsard was familiar in 1560 with Plato's contribution to the doctrine of the harmony of the spheres is clear from a passage in his preface to the Livre de Meslanges contenant six vingts chansons, quoted in extenso toward the end of this section, in which Plato is expressly named in connection with the theory.

¹⁰² The word , in its musical associations, orginally meant “a system of music, esp. the octave-system … never meant ‘harmony’ in the modern sense.” Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, 8^th ed., s. v. . As to the application of the octave-system to the celestial spheres, T. Reinach (art. cit., p. 433) refers to it as “cette singulière théorie de l'harmonie—c'est-à-dire de la gamme—des sphères …” [emphasis in texts]. The extraordinary fortune of the theory may have begun with Plato's description, attributed to the Pythagoreans (Rep., vii, 530D), of astronomy and harmony as sisters, and possibly even more with the present passage.

¹⁰³ Plato, Rep., 617B–C—The sirens are mentioned by Du Bartas, Seconde Sepmaine, Les Colonnes, vv. 12–14 and 691–696 (ed. cit., iii, 171 and 196).

¹⁰⁴ viii, 91, v. 91; it may be implied in vv. 59–60 of the Ode de la Paix, iii, 6.

¹⁰⁵ Aristotle, De Caelo, II, ix, 290b14–15; Pliny, Nat. Hist., ii, 3. Pontus de Tyard rejected the theory of the music of the spheres as absurd, “for they move in nonresistant space, and sound cannot occur without friction.” Lapp, The Universe, p. liii; cf. pp. 49–50. See also Weber, pp. 37–38, for the opinions of Tyard, Maurice Scève, and Guy Lefèvre de la Boderie, and p. 469 and n. 1 for a passage in Jean Lamaire relating the Muses to nine celestial spheres.

¹⁰⁶ See the note on these words by Professor Jacques Chailley of the Sorbonne in T. xviii of the critical edition of Ronsard, to be published probably in 1965.

¹⁰⁷ James Hutton has translated the beginning of this preface in his article on “Some English Poems in Praise of Music,” in English Miscellany, A Symposium of History, Literature, and the Arts, ii (1951), p. 4 of the offprint, and has pointed out the remarkable resemblances between this passage and Lorenzo's speech in the Merchant of Venice (v.i.55–88). Mr. Hutton warns against the supposition that Shakespeare imitated Ronsard and no doubt believes that the beginning of Ronsard's preface, like the verses in Shakespeare's play, “not only contain traditional topics, but that the arrangement is traditional, and one part implies the presence of the others—in short, that we have here to do with a coherent literary theme” that the two authors have taken bodily into preface and play respectively. For the numerous sources, intellectual values, and fortune of the theme of the Praise of Music in the classical and some of the modern European literatures, we refer the reader to this well-informed discussion.—For Ronsard's description of the “doux ravissement” occasioned by music on earth and in heaven, cf. ix, 53, vv. 443–458. The Hymne de Charles Cardinal de Lorraine in which this passage occurs was published in 1559, the year preceding the appearance of Ronsard's preface to the book of songs mentioned above.

¹⁰⁸ That the word musique was understood in this sense by the founders of the Académie de poésie et de musique, particularly by its moving spirit, Jean-Antoine de Baïf, is clear from the account given by F. A. Yates, The French Academies, pp. 33 ff. and 36 ff. See in particular Ch. iv, “Poetry and Music and the Encyclopaedia,” pp. 77 ff., for a discussion of Pontus de Tyard's earlier contributions to this aspect of musical humanism.

¹⁰⁹ That Ronsard has this doctrine in mind seems clear from the expression “ne se souvenant plus.”

¹¹⁰ Yates, The French Academies, p. 39.—Ronsard's phrase “qui si armonieusement … agitte tant ce grand univers,” may be compared with a verse written in 1584: D'accords meslez s'egaye l'Univers … (i, 176, v. 32, var.), a version of the harmony of the spheres that is the more noteworthy for having been written at a time when Ronsard was composing so many somber lines. In the present preface the poet also speaks of “la melodie de ce grand univers” (p. 17).

¹¹¹ Cf. the Hymne de la Mort, viii, 169, vv. 129–137, and see I. Silver, Ronsard and the Hellenic Renaissance in France, Vol. i: Ronsard and the Greek Epic, (St. Louis, Mo.: Washington Univ. Press, 1961), pp. 178–179.

¹¹² Should this perhaps be pouvoir, in parallel construction with recevoir?

¹¹³ Lapp, The Universe, p. 1. For the exact answer given by Anaxagoras see Diog. Laert., ii, 10: “To study [] sun and moon and heavens.”

¹¹⁴ R. D. Hicks, Diogenes Laertius with an English translation (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1959), ii, 6–7, Vol. i, 137.

¹¹⁵ See above, Sec. iii and n. 45; cf. Aristotle, Eth. Nicom., X, vi–viii, 1176a30–1179a32.

¹¹⁶ Quoted and discussed above, in Sec. i.

¹¹⁷ Works and Days, 259.

¹¹⁸ Hymne de la Justice, viii, 50–67, passim; there is a fuller discussion in Silver, Ronsard and the Greek Epic, pp. 336–340.

¹¹⁹ Cf. i, 64, v. 48, var.: Les Rois fils de Jupiter; v, 264, v. 77; vi, 57, v. 8 of the Elegie à Cassandre; xi, 6, v. 52; xii, 153, v. 125; xiii, 132, vv. 19–20, 164, vv. 87–190, 231, vv. 1–6; xv, 346, vv. 1–6; LL., iii, 197.

¹²⁰ In 1567 it received the permanent title: L'Excellence de l'esprit de l'homme.

¹²¹ “To the question, ‘By what kind of action do men most resemble the gods?’ he [Pythagoras] is said to have responded, ‘By attaining to truth’ … For it was as characteristic of the Greek genius to lay stress on the intellectual, as it was for the Hebraic to lay stress on the moral attributes of the godhead.” L. R. Farnell, The Higher Aspects of the Greek Religion (London, 1912), p. 145.

¹²² See above, Secs. ii and v, where the relevant passages are quoted in full. The reader will surely have noted the magnificent enjambement which occurs at the culminating point of the poetic movement and thought:

¹²³ vii, 331–333; cf. i, 162, for a briefer version of the same theme.

¹²⁴ ii, 89; cf. v, 166, for another passage on the victory of time over the pyramids.

¹²⁵ See I. Silver, “Ronsard's Ethical Thought,” in BHR, xxiv (1962), 117, where this passage is quoted and briefly discussed.

¹²⁶ Originally published in 1575, revised for the last time probably in 1585.

¹²⁹ Duhem, i, 15; cf. Heath, p. 49.

¹³⁰ Tim., 37–38, tr. B. Jowett. The last phrase of this translation reproduces rather vaguely the meaning intended by Plato in (38C). Cf. Duhem, i, 54, who translates more accurately: “afin que le temps fût créé.”

¹³¹ Physica, IV, xi, 220a24–26. Tr. R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaye, in Vol. ii (Oxford, 1930) of The Works of Aristotle Translated into English.

¹³² Ibid., IV, xiv, 223b21–23. Duhem's translation (i, 186) of the last phrase, , though less literal, is admirably clear: “… et le temps est, lui aussi, mesuré par ce même mouvement.”

¹³³ Duhem, loc. cit.

¹³⁴ See above, Sec. iv, where the verses in question are quoted.

¹³⁵ Du Bartas, caught in the dilemma resulting from his belief in the biblical account of creation and his conviction that time is the measure of movement of the heaven, finds a confused issue from the impasse in the following verses on the origin and end of the universe:

¹³⁶ Ed. Perosa, p. 120, v. 14. Cf. Ronsard, viii, 25, vv. 76–78, with Marullus, Aeternitati, vv. 15–17, ed. cit., p. 114.

¹³⁷ Georges Poulet, Etudes sur le temps humain (Edinburgh, 1949), pp. 15 f.

¹³⁸ Paul Mazon, Introduction à l'Iliade (Paris, 1948), p. 299.

¹³⁹ Eth. Nicom., IV, iii, 1124b6–9; cf. III, vi, 1115a32–35 and ix, 1117b7–15. I owe to my colleague, Professor John C. Lapp of Stanford University, the observation that this thought runs throughout “epideictic literature, ranging from Cicero and Seneca, through the rhetoricians.”

¹⁴⁰ Le Rationalisme dans la littérature française de la Renaissance (Paris, 1957²), p. 368.

¹⁴¹ Ed. of 1623, p. 961: “De l'Eternité, c'est à dire de Dieu, depend la nature …”—these are the first words of Richelet's commentary; p. 962 (on v. 6: De celle qui jamais pour [var. par] les ans ne se change): “De l'Eternité, c'est à dire, de Dieu …”; etc., etc. Cf. A.-M. Schmidt, La Poésie scientifique en France au seizième siècle (Paris, 1938), pp. 84 ff. and 92.

¹⁴² See above, Sec. i.

¹⁴³ Lapp, The Universe, p. 6; note that it is the godly Hieromnime who equates the infinite with the eternal God.—Laumonier, commenting on vv. 6–10, says, “Cette définition de l'Eternité convient aussi bien à Dieu …,” and Henri Chamard, Histoire de la Pléiade (Paris, 1939–40), ii, 199 ff., compares the most abstract passage of Ronsard's hymn (vv. 127–134) with Lamartine's Dieu.

¹⁴⁴ Richelet, ed. cit., p. 967, seems to have been the only one to have noticed the relevance to these verses of the passage in the Timaeus dealing with the past and future tenses of the verb “to be” and their inapplicability to Plato's eternal beings: “Parce que ces termes de futur & du passé concernent les choses creées, sont marques & symboles de generation … ce dit elegamment Platon au Timée [37E]: mais à l'Eternité il ne convient que l'estre & le temps present.”

¹⁴⁵ Ed. cit., p. 962.

¹⁴⁶ viii, 246, n. 3; see the notes, passim, for additional indications of Ronsard's great debt to Marullus in the composition of this hymn.

¹⁴⁷ Jovi Optimo Maximo, vv. 46–49, ed. Perosa, pp. 106 f.

¹⁴⁸ The debt largely vanished from these verses in the variant of 1584–87; it never disappeared from vv. 27–38 of Ronsard's hymn; see Laumonier's note on this passage.

¹⁴⁹ Aeternitati, vv. 18 and 28, ed. Perosa, p. 114.

¹⁵⁰ His awareness of the difficulty of the enterprise is expressed in vv. 11–12:

Busson, loc. cit., may be a little severe in characterizing the Hymne de l'Eternité as “l'un … de ceux où il a mis le moins de substance.”

¹⁵¹ Tim., 37–38 (tr. B. Jowett).

¹⁵² See, for example, v. 132, which introduces an incongruous spatial concept into the final synthesis of the nature of Eternity.