He then went to Venice, but before very long the pope Paul III. remonstrated with Francis I. on the severity with which the Protestants were treated, and they were allowed to return to Paris on condition of recanting their errors. Marot returned with the rest, and abjured his heresy at Lyons. In 1539 Francis gave him a house and grounds in the suburbs.
It was at this time that his famous translations of the Psalms appeared. The merit of these has been sometimes denied, it is, however, considerable, and the powerful influence which the book exercised on contemporaries is not denied by anyone. The great persons of the court chose different pieces, each as his or her favourite. They were sung in court and city, and they are said, with exaggeration doubtless, but still with a basis of truth, to have done more than anything else to advance the cause of the Reformation in France. Indeed, the vernacular prose translations of the Scriptures were in that country of little merit or power, and the form of poetry was still preferred to prose, even for the most incongruous subjects. At the same time Marot engaged in a curious literary quarrel characteristic of the time, with a bad poet named Sagon, who represented the reactionary Sorbonne. Half the verse-writers of France ranged themselves among the Marotiques or the Sagontiques, and a great deal of versified abuse was exchanged. The victory, as far as wit was concerned, naturally rested with Marot, but his biographers are probably not fanciful in supposing that a certain amount of odium was created against him by the squabble, and that, as in Dolet’s case, his subsequent misfortunes were not altogether unconnected with a too little governed tongue and pen.
The publication of the Psalms gave the Sorbonne a handle, and the book was condemned by that body. In 1543 it was evident that he could not rely on the protection of Francis. Marot accordingly fled to Geneva; but the stars were now decidedly against him. He had, like most of his friends, been at least as much of a freethinker as of a Protestant, and this was fatal to his reputation in the austere city of Calvin. He had again to fly, and made his way into Piedmont, and he died at Turin in the autumn of 1544.
In character Marot seems to have been a typical Frenchman of the old stamp, cheerful, good-humoured and amiable enough, but probably not very much disposed to elaborately moral life and conversation or to serious reflection. He has sometimes been charged with a want of independence of character; but it is fair to remember that in the middle ages men of letters naturally attached themselves as dependants to the great. Such scanty knowledge as we have of his relations with his equals is favourable to him. He certainly at one time quarrelled with Dolet, or at least wrote a violent epigram against him, for which there is no known cause. But, as Dolet quarrelled with almost every friend he ever had, and in two or three cases played them the shabbiest of tricks, the presumption is not against Marot in this matter. With other poets like Mellin de Saint Gelais and Brodeau, with prose writers like Rabelais and Bonaventure Desperiers, he was always on excellent terms. And whatever may have been his personal weaknesses, his importance in the history of French literature is very great, and was long rather under than over-valued. Coming immediately before a great literary reform—that of the Pléiade—Marot suffered the drawbacks of his position; he was both eclipsed and decried by the partakers in that reform. In the reaction against the Pléiade he recovered honour; but its restoration to virtual favour, a perfectly just restoration, again unjustly depressed him. Yet Marot is in no sense one of those writers of transition who are rightly obscured by those who come after them. He himself was a reformer, and a reformer on perfectly independent lines, and he carried his own reform as far as it would go. His early work was couched in the rhétoriqueur style, the distinguishing characteristics of which are elaborate metre and rhyme, allegoric matter and pedantic language. In his second stage he entirely emancipated himself from this, and became one of the easiest, least affected and most vernacular poets of France. In these points indeed he has, with the exception of La Fontaine, no rival, and the lighter verse-writers ever since have taken one or the other or both as model. In his third period he lost a little of this flowing grace and ease, but acquired something in stateliness, while he certainly lost nothing in wit. Marot is the first poet who strikes readers of French as being distinctively modern. He is not so great a poet as Villon nor as some of his successors of the Pléiade, but he is much less antiquated than the first (whose works, as well as the Roman de la rose, it may be well to mention that he edited) and not so elaborately artificial as the second. Indeed if there be a fault to find with Marot, it is undoubtedly that in his gallant and successful effort to break up, supple, and liquefy the stiff forms and stiffer language of the 15th century, he made his poetry almost too vernacular and pedestrian. He has passion, and picturesqueness, but rarely; in his hands, and while the style Marotique was supreme, French poetry ran some risk of finding itself unequal to anything but graceful vers de société. But it is only fair to remember that for a century and more its best achievements, with rare exceptions, had been vers de société which were not graceful.
The most important early editions of Marot’s Œuvres are those published at Lyons in 1538 and 1544. In the second of these the arrangement of his poems which has been accepted in later issues was first adopted. In 1596 an enlarged edition was edited by François Mizière. Others of later date are those of N. Lenglet du Fresnoy (the Hague, 1731) and P. Jannet (1868–1872; new ed., 1873–1876), on the whole the best, but there is a very good selection with a still better introduction by Charles d’Héricault, the joint editor of the Jannet edition in the larger Collection Garnier (no date). An elaborate edition by G. Guiffrey remained incomplete, only vols. ii. and iii. (1875–1881) having been issued. For information about Marot himself see Notices biographiques des trois Marot, edited from the MS. of Guillaume Colletet by G. Guiffrey (1871); H. Morley, Clément Marot, a study of Marot as a reformer; O. Douen, Clément Marot et le psautier huguenot; the section concerning him in G. Saintsburys The Early Renaissance (1901); and A. Tilley, Literature of the French Renaissance, vol. i., ch. iv. (1904). (G. Sa.)
MAROT, DANIEL (seventeenth century), French architect,
furniture designer and engraver, and pupil of Jean le Pautre
(q.v.), was the son of Jean Marot (1620–1679), who was also an
architect and engraver. He was a Huguenot, and was compelled
by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 to settle in
Holland. His earlier work is characteristic of the second period
of Louis XIV., but eventually it became tinged with Dutch
influence, and in the end the English style which is loosely
called “Queen Anne” owed much to his manner. In Holland
he was taken almost immediately into the service of the Stadtholder,
who, when he shortly afterwards became William III.
of England, appointed him one of his architects and master
of the works. Comparatively little is known of his architectural
achievements, and his name cannot be attached to any English
building, although we know from his own engraving that he
designed the great hall of audience for the States-General at
the Hague. He also decorated many Dutch country-houses.
In England his activities appear to have been concentrated
upon the adornment of Hampton Court Palace. Among his plans
for gardens is one inscribed: “Parterre d’Amton-court inventé
par D. Marot.” Much of the furniture—especially the mirrors,
guéridons and beds—at Hampton Court bears unmistakable
traces of his authorship; the tall and monumental beds, with
their plumes of ostrich feathers, their elaborate valances and
chantournes in crimson velvet or other rich stuffs agree very
closely with his published designs. As befits an artist of the
time of Louis XIV. splendour and elaboration are the outstanding
characteristics of Marot’s style, and he appears even
to have been responsible for some of the curious and rather
barbaric silver furniture which was introduced into England
from France in the latter part of the 17th century. At Windsor
Castle there is a silver table, attributed to him, supported by
caryatid legs and gadrooned feet, with a foot-rail supporting
the pine-apple which is so familiar a motive in work of this
type. The slab is engraved with the arms of William III.
and with the British national emblems with crowns and cherubs.
Unquestionably it is an exceedingly fine example of its type.
During his life in France Marot made many designs for André
Charles Boulle (q.v.), more especially for long case and bracket
clocks. The bracket clocks were intended to be mounted in
chased and gilded bronze, and with their garlands and masquerons
and elegant dials are far superior artistically to those of
the “grandfather” variety. It is impossible to examine the
designs for Marot’s long clocks without suspecting that Chippendale
derived from them some at least of the inspiration which
made him a master of that kind of furniture. Marot’s range
was extraordinarily wide. He designed practically every detail
in the internal ornamentation of the house—carved chimney-pieces,
ceilings, panels for walls, girandoles and wall brackets,
and even tea urns and cream jugs—he was indeed a prolific
