Vers de société

Vers de société, a term for social or familiar poetry, which was originally borrowed from the French, and has now come to rank as an English expression.

The use of the phrase in English is first met with at the opening of the 19th century. It is to be observed that it has come to bear a meaning which is not wholly equivalent to that of the French original. It was said of the blind philosopher, Charles de Pougens (1755–1833), that his petits vers de société procured great success for him in the salons of Paris, and several of the rhymesters of the early 18th century were prominent for their adroitness in composing petits vers sur des sujets legers.

The prince of such graceful triflers was the Abbé de Chaulieu (1639–1720), of whom it was said that he made verses solely for the amusement of his friends, and without the smallest intention of seeing them in print. The best of his effusions have preserved a certain freshness because of the neatness with which they are turned, but it can scarcely be said that they have any pretension to be called poetry. They were inspired by incidents in the private life of the day, and were largely addressed to a few friends of exalted rank, who were hardly less witty than the author himself, such as the Duc de Nevers, the Marquis de Lassay, the Duchesse de Bouillon and the Marquis de La Fare.

In the collections of Chaulieu's works, which were very often reprinted, side by side with his own pieces will be found petits vers de société indited by these great friends of his, and often quite as well-turned as his own. To write such verses, indeed, was almost an accomplishment of good breeding. An enormous collection of them was brought together by Titon du Tillet (1676–1762), in his Parnasse français, where those who are curious on the subject may observe to satiety how ingenious and artificial and trifling the vers de société of the French 18th century could be.

The fashion for them followed upon the decline of an interest in rondeaux, ballades and villanelles, and Chaulieu himself had not a little to do with throwing those ingenuities out of fashion, his attack on Benserade, who went so far as to turn the whole of Ovid's Metamorphoses into rondeaux being, according to his editor of 1732, the first work which displayed the delicacy of the Abbé de Chaulieu's taste, and his talent for poetry. Of the writers of vers de société in France, J.-B. Rousseau had the most poetical faculty; he was, in fact, a poet, and he wrote a Billet à Chaulieu which is a gem of delicate and playful charm. But, as a rule, the efforts of the French versifiers in les petits genres were not of much poetic value.

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