ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests a number of ways in which Claude Binet used the work in the service of his glory as well as Vie de Ronsard's. It discusses two anecdotes Binet added to the 1597 edition of the Vie. The chapter analyses the rhetorical dimension of the Vie de Ronsard. The mercurial Binet systematically rewrites Ronsard's verse in his prose in ways which make it more rhetorical. According to Binet's account, a public reading of one of Ronsard's 'chaste et modeste' poems to Sonnets pour Helene had whetted the queen mother's appetite for more such verse. In the Vie de Ronsard, however, Binet would modestly admit his failure to pursue both forms of eloquence, legal and poetic, to the same high standards. Binet's theft of Ronsard's poetry to constitute the material of his biography is just one way in which he behaved like Ronsardian Mercury.
