No recondite research is needed to establish this general view
of the situation. It is well known how the poetic career of Chaucer,
the earliest of great English poets, was begun under French masters.
The greatest poem of mediaeval France, the _Roman de la Rose_,
was turned into English by his youthful pen, and the chief French
poet of the day, Eustace Deschamps, held out to him the hand of
fellowship in the enthusiastic _balade_, in which he apostrophised
"le grand translateur, noble Geoffroi Chaucer." Following Chaucer's
example, the great poets of Elizabeth's reign and of James the
First's reign most liberally and most literally assimilated the
verse of their French contemporaries, Ronsard, Du Bellay, and
Desportes.[42] Early in the seventeenth century, Frenchmen returned
the compliment by naturalising in French translations the prose
romances of Sir Philip Sidney and Robert Greene, the philosophical
essays of Bacon, and the ethical and theological writings of Bishop
Joseph Hall. From the accession of Charles the Second until that
of George the Third, the English drama framed itself on French
models, and Pope, who long filled the throne of a literary dictator
in England, acknowledged discipleship to Boileau.
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