The mediæval Latin word became in Italian
ballare, and in French baler. Thence the French
bal, and its diminutive ballet. Thence also the
word ballad, for the reason that may even yet be
seen on a winter's night in the Orkneys, when
country neighbours by the hearth join hands
in a great circle, and, by dance movement of
swaying to and fro together with varying
emphasis, express the change of incident and
emotion in the metrical tale, the ballad story,
that one person chants to the measure all are
marking.

But although a ballet is a little ball, in
respect of its brevity, it has been high exalted
among balls in respect of the artistic nature of
its dancing. In fact, the young lady who should
now, at a private ball, suddenly rear herself upon
her toes, advance kicking, extend one of her legs
at right angles to her body, and then stand on
the small of her partner's back, and, with outstretched
arm, smile at the assembled company,
would be regarded as a little too fast even for
the present age. Even upon the stage this mere
gymnastic exercise has much to answer for, to
those who would explain the present ruin of the
ballet. It belongs wholly, except in grotesque
parts, to the period of the ballet's decline. In
former days the better part of dancing, called the
poetry of motion, was allied to music of its own,
the prose of sound, and to the dumb show that
should compress all Demosthenes into a gesture.
A remote branch of the ballet family was
developed in Italy, under the name of Art
Comedy, out of the old Roman mimes; but in
that Art Comedy, the dumb show, or expression
through gesture and facial expression, went for
more than the dancing and the rhythm. The
family of entertainments afterwards so highly
distinguished, is more immediately descended
from a re-union of dance with speech and song,
which took place in Italy early in the sixteenth
century. And the ballet appeared thereafter as
the little ball, when it was an incident of the
great balls; for its place was not upon the public
stage, but as a splendid and costly incident of
private entertainments at a royal court or in the
palace of a luxurious noble. The principal
ballet-dancers were then kings and queens, and
princes and princesses, and the corps de ballet
was made up of grandees of the court. At the
court of Turin there was a man especially
famous for the planning of this sort of play; but
the French, who adopted it from Italy, gave it
the name and fame since current through
Europe, and by them also it was advanced to a
place of honour on the public stage.

Baltasarino, who was called Beaujoyeux, was
a Paganini of that sixteenth century, whom the
Marshal Brissac recommended to the service of
Queen Marie de Médicis. By him, under such
patronage, the Italian ballet was introduced into
Paris, where it was improved by Ottavio Rinuncini,
another Italian, under the patronage of the
same queen. The young ballet had also Cardinal
Richelieu for a tutor and guide. Richelieu
invented splendid effects, and engaged Louis the
Thirteenth himself as a dancer in one of the
ballets at St. Germains. The greater Louis the
Fourteenth was also an active ballet-dancer in
his youth. It is said that when thirty-two years
old he took seriously to heart a couple of lines
in Racine's Britannicus—where it is said that
Nero's singular merit was to dispute for prizes
unworthy of his hands, to give up himself as a
show to the Romans—and that King Louis never
again danced in the presence of his subjects.
What he may have done in his private chamber
when he was alone and could take off his wig,
there is no telling. In his later years, not even
his most confidential gentleman of the
bedchamber ever saw Louis the Fourteenth with
his wig off. When he went to bed, he retired
within the enclosure of its curtains with his wig
on, and the wig was then thrust out mysteriously
from between their folds. In the morning the
wig was as mysteriously returned, and, when the
curtains were drawn, the royal figure-head over
the royal night-dress corresponded to the stamp
on the French coinage. But "the grand
monarch" always loved the ballet, and spent
lavishly for its decoration as one of the chief
entertainments of his court. In his younger
days, Benserade was the chief writer of words
for the ballets.

The famous ballet-masters of his time were
Chicanneau, Noblet, St. André, and Magnus.
In the year sixteen 'sixty-nine Abbé Perrin, the
poet, and his composer, Cambert, got the privilege
for establishing a French opera, as an
academy of music. The French opera was then
actually established by the musician Lully and
the opera poet Philip Quinault, who decorated
his pieces to the utmost with dance and
pantomime; so that it was he who first made the
incidental ballet a recognised part of opera
performance. Quinault, the son of a baker, had
acquired in his youth the favour of Tristan the
Hermit, who gave him lodging and board at his
own table, and when he died, left Quinault a
good legacy, wherewith he bought the post of
valet de chambre to the king. Quinault's first
dramatic piece, The Rivals, had been presented
by his friend Tristan to the players as a work of
his own, and was to be paid for accordingly.
But, when the piece was found to be really the
work of a youth of eighteen, the players wished
to reduce by one-half their promise to pay, and
at last agreed to pay the author a proportion of
their takings; that is said to have been the
beginning in France of the custom of the
author's share in the success of his pieces. After
that first success, Quinault wrote one or two
pieces every year, but his best skill was shown
in the lyric plays he wrote for Lulli during
fourteen years after the establishment of the
French opera. Lulli paid him liberally, and
held to him closely. The king knighted and
pensioned him. He had produced in Armida
his best work, when the death of Lulli and
religious expectation of his own end caused him to
stop short in his career, and he began a poem
entitled Heresy Destroyed, by saying that "he
had sung too much of sports and loves, and
must attune himself to a sublimer strain;