was to write verse themselves. The disinterested and philosophic treatment of æsthetic problems, wholly aside from all practical considerations, characterized much of the critical activity of the Italian Renaissance, but did not become general in France until the next century. For this reason, in the French and English sections of this essay, it will be necessary to deal with various rhetorical and metrical questions which in the Italian section could be largely disregarded. In these matters, as in the more general questions of criticism, it will be seen that sixteenth-century Italy furnished the source of all the accepted critical doctrines of western Europe. The comparative number of critical works in Italy and in France is also noteworthy. While those of the Italian Renaissance may be counted by the score, the literature of France during the sixteenth century, exclusive of a few purely rhetorical treatises, hardly offers more than a single dozen. It is evident, therefore, that the treatment of French criticism must be more limited in extent than that of Italian criticism, and somewhat different in character.

The literature of the sixteenth century in France is divided into two almost equal parts by Du Bellay's Défense et Illustration de la Langue française, published in 1549. In no other country of Europe is the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance so clearly marked as it is in France by this single book. With the invasion of Italy by the army of Charles VIII. in 1494, the influence of Italian art, of Italian learning, of Italian poetry,

But over

had received its first impetus in France. half a century was to elapse before the effects of this influence upon the creative literature of France was universally and powerfully felt. During this period the activity of Budæus, Erasmus, Dolet, and numerous other French and foreign humanists strengthened the cause and widened the influence of the New Learning. But it is only with the birth of the Pléiade that modern French literature may be said to have begun. In 1549 Du Bellay's Défense, the manifesto of the new school, appeared. Ronsard's Odes were published in the next year; and in 1552 Jodelle inaugurated French tragedy with his Cléopâtre, and first, as Ronsard said,

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'Françoisement chanta la grecque tragédie.”

The Défense therefore marks a distinct epoch in the critical as well as the creative literature of France. The critical works that preceded it, if they may be called critical in any real sense, did not attempt to do more than formulate the conventional notions of rhetorical and metrical structure common to the French poets of the later Middle Ages. The Pléiade itself, as will be more clearly understood later, was also chiefly concerned with linguistic and rhetorical reforms; and as late as 1580 Montaigne could say that there were more poets in France than judges and interpreters of poetry. The creative reforms of the Pléiade lay largely in the direction of the formation of a poetic language, the introduction of new genres, the creation of new 1 Essais, i. 36.

rhythms, and the imitation of classical literature. But with the imitation of classical literature there came the renewal of the ancient subjects of inspira tion; and from this there proceeded a high and dignified conception of the poet's office. Indeed, many of the more general critical ideas of the Pléiade spring from the desire to justify the function of poetry, and to magnify its importance. The new school and its epigones dominate the second half of the sixteenth century; and as the first half of the century was practically unproductive of critical literature, a history of French Renaissance criticism is hardly more than an account of the poetic theories of the Pléiade.

The series of rhetorical and metrical treatises that precede Du Bellay's Défense begins with L'Art de dictier et de fere chançons, balades, virelais et rondeaulx, written by the poet Eustache Deschamps in 1392, over half a century after the similar work of Antonio da Tempo in Italy. Toward the close of the fifteenth century a work of the same nature, the Fleur de Rhétorique, by an author who refers to himself as L'Infortuné, seems to have had some influence on later treatises. Three works of this sort fall within the first half of the sixteenth century: the Grand et vrai Art de pleine Rhétorique of Pierre Fabri, published at Rouen in 1521; the Rhétorique metrifiée of Gracien du Pont, published at Paris in 1539; and the Art Poétique of Thomas Sibilet, published at Paris in 1548. The second

1 On these early works, see Langlois, De Artibus Rhetoricæ Rhythmicæ, Parisiis, 1890.

part of Fabri's Rhétorique deals with questions of versification of rhyme, rhythm, and the complex metrical form of such poets as Crétin, Meschinot, and Molinet, in whom Pasquier found prou de rime et équivoque, mais peu de raison. As the Rhétorique of Fabri is little more than an amplification of the similar work of L'Infortuné, so the work of Gracien du Pont is little more than a reproduction of Fabri's. Gracien du Pont is still chiefly intent on rime équivoquée, rime entrelacée, rime retrograde, rime concatenée, and the various other mediæval complexities of versification. Sibilet's Art Poétique is more interesting than any of its predecessors. It was published a year before the Défense of Du Bellay, and discusses many of the new genres which the latter advocates. Sibilet treats of the sonnet, which had recently been borrowed from the Italians by Mellin de Saint-Gelais, the ode, which had just been employed by Pelletier, and the epigram, as practised by Marot. The eclogue is described as "Greek by invention, Latin by usurpation, and French by imitation." But one of the most interesting passages in Sibilet's book is that in which the French morality is compared with the classical drama. This passage exhibits perhaps the earliest trace of the influence of Italian ideas on French criticism; it will be discussed later in connection with the dramatic theories of this period.

It is about the middle of the sixteenth century, then, that the influence of Italian criticism is first visible. The literature of Italy was read with

avidity in France. Many educated young Frenchmen travelled in Italy, and several Italian men of letters visited France. Girolamo Muzio travelled in France in 1524, and again in 1530 with Giulio Camillo.1 Aretino mentions the fact that a Vincenzo Maggi was at the Court of France in 1548, but it has been doubted whether this was the author of the commentary on the Poetics.2 In 1549, after the completion of the two last parts of his Poetica, dedicated to the Bishop of Arras, Trissino made a tour about France. Nor must we forget the number of Italian scholars called to Paris by Francis I. The literary relations between the two countries do not concern us here; but it is no insignificant fact that the great literary reforms of the Pléiade should take place between 1548 and 1550, the very time when critical activity first received its great impetus in Italy. This Italian influence is just becoming apparent in Sibilet, for whom the poets between Jean le Maire de Belges and Clément Marot are the chief models, but who is not wholly averse to the moderate innovations derived by France from classical antiquity and the Italian Renaissance.

M. Brunetière, in a very suggestive chapter of his History of French Criticism, regards the Défense of Du Bellay, the Poetics of Scaliger, and the Art Poétique of Vauquelin de la Fresnaye as the most important critical works in France during

1 Tiraboschi, vii. 350. 2 Ibid. vii. 1465.

8 Morsolin, Trissino, p. 358. 4 Egger, Hellénisme, ch. vii.