Le Dernier Samouraï

Hélène (1578), a new Petrarchist cycle, which were written perhaps to compete with Desportes, the court favourite of Henri III, and Du Bartas, whose reputations threatened to eclipse his own. During his final illness, he wrote of his physical decline (Derniers vers, 1586) with unsentimental directness. Ronsard’s reputation, which he had nurtured so carefully, faded within decades. Malherbe reacted against his ornate language and Boileau would damn his ‘extravagant pedantry’, allowing him at most a ‘beau