Collège de la Trinité at Lyons, attacked him in his Quintil Horatian (Lyons, 1551), the authorship of which was commonly attributed to Charles Fontaine. Aneau pointed out the obvious inconsistency of inculcating imitation of the ancients and depreciating native poets in a work professing to be a defence of the French language. Du Bellay replied to his various assailants in a preface to the second edition (1550) of his sonnet sequence Olive, with which he also published two polemical poems, the Musagnaeomachie, and an ode addressed to Ronsard, Contre les envieux poètes. Olive, a collection of love-sonnets written in close imitation of Petrarch, first appeared in 1549. With it were printed thirteen odes entitled Vers lyriques. Olive has been supposed to be an anagram for the name of a Mlle Viole, but there is little evidence of real passion in the poems, and they may perhaps be regarded as a Petrarcan exercise, especially as, in the second edition, the dedication to his lady is exchanged for one to Marguerite de Valois, sister of Henry II. Du Bellay did not actually introduce the sonnet into French poetry, but he acclimatized it; and when the fashion of sonneteering became a mania he was one of the first to ridicule its excesses.
About this time du Bellay had a serious illness of two years’ duration, from which dates the beginning of his deafness. He had further anxieties in the guardianship of his nephew. The boy died in 1553, and Joachim, who had up to this time borne the title of sieur de Liré, became seigneur of Gonnor. In 1549 he had published a Recueil de poësies dedicated to the Princess Marguerite. This was followed in 1552 by a version of the fourth book of the Aeneid, with other translations and some occasional poems. In the next year he went to Rome as one of the secretaries of Cardinal du Bellay. To the beginning of his four and a half years’ residence in Italy belong the forty-seven sonnets of his Antiquités de Rome, which were rendered into English by Edmund Spenser (The Ruins of Rome, 1591). These sonnets were more personal and less imitative than the Olive sequence, and struck a note which was revived in later French literature by Volney and Chateaubriand. His stay in Rome was, however, a real exile. His duties were those of an intendant. He had to meet the cardinal’s creditors and to find money for the expenses of the household. Nevertheless he found many friends among Italian scholars, and formed a close friendship with another exiled poet whose circumstances were similar to his own, Olivier de Magny. Towards the end of his sojourn in Rome he fell violently in love with a Roman lady called Faustine, who appears in his poetry as Columba and Columbelle. This passion finds its clearest expression in the Latin poems. Faustine was guarded by an old and jealous husband, and du Bellay’s eventual conquest may have had something to do with his departure for Paris at the end of August 1557. In the next year he published the poems he had brought back with him from Rome, the Latin Poemata, the Antiquités de Rome, the Jeux rustiques, and the 191 sonnets of the Regrets, the greater number of which were written in Italy. The Regrets show that he had advanced far beyond the theories of the Deffence. The simplicity and tenderness specially characteristic of du Bellay appear in the sonnets telling of his unlucky passion for Faustine, and of his nostalgia for the banks of the Loire. Among them are some satirical sonnets describing Roman manners, and the later ones written after his return to Paris are often appeals for patronage. His intimate relations with Ronsard were not renewed; but he formed a close friendship with the scholar Jean de Morel, whose house was the centre of a learned society. In 1559 du Bellay published at Poitiers La Nouvelle Manière de faire son profit des lettres, a satirical epistle translated from the Latin of Adrien Turnèbe, and with it Le Poète courtisan, which introduced the formal satire into French poetry. These were published under the pseudonym of J. Quintil du Troussay, and the courtier-poet was generally supposed to be Melin de Saint-Gelais, with whom du Bellay had always, however, been on friendly terms.
A long and eloquent Discours au roi (detailing the duties of a prince, and translated from a Latin original written by Michel de l’Hôpital, now lost) was dedicated to Francis II. in 1559, and is said to have secured for the poet a tardy pension. In Paris he was still in the employ of the cardinal, who delegated to him the lay patronage which he still retained in the diocese. In the exercise of these functions Joachim quarrelled with Eustache du Bellay, bishop of Paris, who prejudiced his relations with the cardinal, less cordial since the publication of the outspoken Regrets. His chief patron, Marguerite de Valois, to whom he was sincerely attached, had gone to Savoy. Du Bellay’s health was weak; his deafness seriously hindered his official duties; and on the 1st of January 1560 he died. There is no evidence that he was in priest’s orders, but he was a clerk, and as such held various preferments. He had at one time been a canon of Notre Dame of Paris, and was accordingly buried in the cathedral. The statement that he was nominated archbishop of Bordeaux during the last year of life is unauthenticated by documentary evidence and is in itself extremely improbable.
Bibliography.—The best edition of the works of J. du Bellay is Œuvres françaises (2 vols., 1866–1867), edited with introduction and notes by C. Marty-Laveaux in his Pléiade française. His Œuvres choisies were published by L. Becq de Fouquières in 1876. The chief source of his biography is his own poetry, especially the Latin elegy addressed to Jean de Morel, “Elegia ad Janum Morellum Ebredunensem, Pyladem suum,” printed with a volume of Xenia (Paris, 1569). A study of his life and writings by H. Chamard, forming vol. viii. of the Travaux et mémoires de l’université de Lille (Lille, 1900), contains all the available information and corrects many common errors. See also Sainte-Beuve, Tableau de la poésie française au XVIᵉ siècle (1828); La Défense et illust. de la langue française (1905), with biographical and critical introduction by Léon Séché, who also wrote Joachim du Bellay, documents nouveaux et inédits (1880), and published in 1903 the first volume of a new edition of the Œuvres; Lettres de Joachim du Bellay (1884), edited by P. de Nolhac; G. Wyndham, Ronsard and La Pléiade (1906); H. Belloc, Avril (1905); A. Tilley, The Literature of the French Renaissance (2 vols., 1904).
DUBLIN, a county of Ireland in the province of Leinster, bounded N. by Co. Meath, E. by the Irish Sea, S. by Wicklow, and W. by Kildare and Meath. With the exception of Louth and Carlow, Dublin is the smallest county in Ireland, having an area of 218,873 acres, or about 342 sq. m. The northern portion is flat, and the soil good, particularly on the borders of Meath; but on the southern side the land rises into elevations of considerable height. The mountains are chiefly covered with heath, except where a subsidence in the ground affords a nucleus for the formation of bog, with which about 2000 acres are covered. There are also a few small tracts of bog in the northern part of the county. The mountain district is well adapted for timber. The northern coast of the county from Balbriggan to Howth has generally a sandy shore, and affords only the small harbours of Balbriggan and Skerries. In the promontory of Howth, the coast suddenly assumes a bolder aspect; and between the town of Howth and the rocky islet of Ireland’s Eye an unsuccessful artificial harbour was constructed. Kingstown harbour on the south side of Dublin Bay superseded this, and is by far the best in the county. Dalkey Island, about 22 acres in extent, lies about midway between Kingstown harbour and the beautiful bay of Killiney. North of Howth lies Lambay Island, about 600 acres in area. Shell fish, especially lobsters, are taken here in abundance. Small islets lie farther north off Skerries; the most interesting of which is that known as Inispatrick, reputed as the first landing-place of St Patrick, and having the ruins of a church said to be the saint’s first foundation, though it shares this reputation with other sites. Ireland’s Eye, off Howth, is a very picturesque rock with about 54 acres of grass land. It has afforded great room for geological disquisition. The chief river in the county is the Liffey, which rises in the Wicklow mountains about 12 m. S.W. of Dublin, and, after running about 50 m., empties itself into Dublin Bay. The course of the river is so tortuous that 40 m. may be traversed and only 10 gained in direction. The scenery along the banks of the Liffey is remarkably beautiful. The mountains which occupy the southern border of the county are the extremities of the great group belonging to the adjacent county Wicklow. The principal summits are the group containing Glendoo (1919 ft.) and Two Rock (1699 ft.) within the county, and the border group of Kippure, reaching in that summit a height of 2475 ft. The grandest features of these hills are the great natural ravines
