MALHERBE, FRANÇOIS de. - Poet and grammarian, b. at Caen in 1555, d. at Paris on 16 Oct. 1628. His father and four of his brothers were Protestants; he remained a Catholic. Secretary to the Duke of Angoulême, he accompanied him to Provence; after the duke’s death he returned to Normandy and began to write verse of little value, such as *Les larmes de st-Pierre* (after the manner of Tansillo). In 1600 he presented at Aix an ode to Maria de’ Medici, *À la reine sur sa bienvenue en France*.
Recommended by Cardinal du Perron, he entered the court in 1605 as gentleman-in-waiting to Henry IV. He was protected by Maria de’ Medici during her regency and by Louis XIII. Malherbe’s importance lies in his reform of language and poetic technique. Through criticism of the poets of the *Pleiade* and his contemporaries, he established a new language, purged of neologisms and archaisms, free from idioms, whose characteristics are purity of expression, clarity, and syntactic order. As regards versification, he formulated precise rules, simplifying metre and preferring those of regular structure. Boileau, in the *Art poétique*, acknowledged the value of Malherbe’s innovations, which in reality paved the way for French classical poetry. As a poet, Malherbe is of lesser worth, lacking imagination and feeling. His verses, technically perfect, display ample rhythmic movement and a distinctive harmony, often too oratorical, sometimes strong and effective.