BARTAS, GUILLAUME SALLUSTE du. — French poet, b. at Montfort near Auch in 1544, d. in Parigi in 1590. A non-intolerant Huguenot, he served Enrico di Navarra, the future Enrico IV, on several diplomatic missions.
In his principal work, La première semaine, whose subject is the creation of the world, moving almost entirely away from classical inspiration, he sought poetic originality in biblical lyricism, which he developed by following in the footsteps of those who in France had previously attempted scientific poetry, from Ronsard to Scève, La Boderie, and Peletier. In the Seconde semaine (1608), which remained incomplete and in which he deals more particularly with humanity, he clarifies and expands the scientific assertions of the Première. Animated by sincere religious enthusiasm, he subordinates poetry to the demonstration of divine truths, and science to morality. Generally pedantic and prolix (though it does not lack fine passages), grandiloquent and verbose, the work of du B., which received commentaries from Catholic and non-Catholic theologians, was soon forgotten in France, but in compensation it was popular in Protestant countries and admired by the major writers, from Milton to Byron and Goethe, who enthusiastically extolled II.
A recent edition appeared under the editorship of U. T. Holmes, The Work of G. de S. sieur du B. (The University of North Carolina Press 1935), who prefaced it with a critical study.