MAROT.

(His version of the Psalms.)

I shall relate some curious things concerning his

version of the fifty psalms of David. Florimond de Remond affirms that Marot, after his return from Ferrara into France, was exhorted by Vatablus to turn the Psalms of David into French verse, and that, following his advice, he published a version of thirty Psalms, and dedicated it to Francis I. It was censured by the faculty of divinity at Paris, who moreover made some remonstrances and complaints of it to that monarch. “The king, who loved Marot for the fineness of his wit, made use of delays, and said, that he had approved the first draughts, and desired to see the rest. Upon which account the poet sent him this epigram:

Puis que voulez que je poursuive, ô sire,
L’œuvre royal du Psautier commencé,
Et que tout cœur aymant Dieu le desire,
D’y besongner me tiens pour dispensé:
S’en sente donc qui voudra offensé:
Car ceux à qui un tel bien ne peut plaire,
Doivent penser si jà ne l’ont pensé,
Qu’en vous plaisant, me plaist de leur deplaire.

Since you desire it, sire, I can’t refuse
To clothe in metre David’s royal muse.
Let those then, whom the work displeases, know,
If you’re my friend, I care not who’s my foe.

Nevertheless the publication, after many remonstrances made to the king, was forbidden. But

Des hommes plus la chose est desirée,
Quand plus elle est aux hommes prohibée,

We value most what is forbidden us.

They could not be printed so fast as they were sold off. They were not then set to music, as they are now, to be sung in churches; but every one gave them such a tune as he thought fit, and commonly that of a ballad. Each of the princes and courtiers took a psalm for themselves. King Henry II loved this psalm, “Ainsi qu’on oyt le cerf bruire,—like as

the hart doth breathe and bray and took it for his own in hunting. Madame de Valentinois, whom he loved, took this, “Du fond de ma pensée;—Lord, to thee I make my moan;” and made choice of it for herself. The queen chose the psalm, “Ne vueillez pas ô Sire,—Lord, in thy wrath reprove me not;” which she sang to a merry tune. Antony, king of Navarre, took the psalm, “Revange moi, prens ma querelle,—judge, and revenge my cause, O Lord;” which he sang to the tune of a dance of Poitou, and so did the rest. In the mean time Marot, fearing lest he should be sent to prison a second time, because he could not hold his tongue, fled to Geneva, where he continued his version as far as fifty psalms. Beza put the remaining hundred psalms into verse, and the psalms, which he rhymed in imitation of Marot’s, were received by all men with as much applause as ever any book had. Not only all the Lutherans, but Catholics also, took pleasure in singing them; because they were pleasant, easy to learn, and fit to be played upon the violin, and musical instruments. Calvin took care to put them in the hands of the best musicians in Christendom; and among the rest, he pitched upon Goudimel, and another called Bourgeois, to set them to music. After this, ten thousand copies of the Psalms in rhime, set to music, were dispersed every where. Then every one begun, even the Catholics, to carry them about, and sing them as spiritual songs, thinking there was no hurt in doing it. They were not yet, nor until some years after, a form of religious worship among the Calvinists; but afterwards they were appointed to be sung in their assemblies, being divided into small sections; which was done in the year 1553, to serve as a resting place, where they might take breath, after so long a devotion as theirs is; for the singing of Psalms at church, for the most part, lasts half a quarter of an hour. After they were bound up with the Calvinian and Geneva catechisms, the use of them was wholly forbidden, and the former prohibition renewed, with a severe penalty; so that to sing a Psalm, was to be a Lutheran.” The substance of this narrative of Florimond de Remond was turned into elegant Latin, by Famianus Strada, Strada de Bello Belg. dec. i. lib. iii. ⁸² who particularly observes, that Francis I often sang this translation of the Psalms.

We do not find, that, till the year 1553, the reformed, whether natives of France, or inhabitants, sang any other Psalms, than these fifty, excepting eight other Psalms, the translators of which are yet unknown; which eight Psalms, with the first thirty of Marot, were printed, in 1542, in Gothic, at Rome, by order of the Pope, by Theodore Drust, a German, his printer in ordinary, the fifteenth of February; as we read in the last leaf of the book, printed in 8vo., without name of place or printer. Jeremiah de Pours knew nothing of this edition, which, by the way, is the same with that of Strasburgh, 1545, except as to the number of Psalms. The other hundred, put into verse by Beza, appeared probably in 1553, since it was at that time, that being appended to the Catechism and Liturgy of Geneva, they excited the aversion of the Catholics, who, after the example of Francis I, on his death-bed, made no scruple to use the first fifty.

This aversion continued to the time of the Conference of Poissy, the event of which, being favourable to the Reformed, produced, the nineteenth of October 1561, the privilege of Charles IX, upon the approbation given by the Sorbonne, on the sixteenth, for the translation of the rest of the Huguenot Psalms; in consequence of which, the edition of Antony Vincent appeared at Lyons, in 1562; from which, several years after, other editions, in various forms, were

printed at Lyons, Rochelle, and elsewhere, all in virtue of this privilege, which ought to have been inserted in them at length, together with the approbation of the Sorbonne.—Art. Marot.