There is, perhaps, no more remarkable proof of the extraordinarily germinal character of Italian literature than the influence which it exercised on France in the department with which we here deal. [Sidenote: _The_ Rhetorics _of the Transition_.] It is needless to say that the subsequent story of French literature has shown how deep and wide is the critical vein in the French literary spirit. But up to the middle of the sixteenth century this vein was almost absolutely _irrepertum_—whether _sic melius situm_ or not. A few _Arts_ of Poetry and Rhetoric had indeed been introduced across the Channel long before we had any on this side, as we should expect in a language so much more advanced than English, and as we have partly seen in the preceding volume. The _Art de dittier_ of Eustache Deschamps, at the end of the fourteenth century, had been followed[157] throughout the fifteenth by others, some of them bearing the not uninteresting or unimportant title of “_Seconde Rhétorique_,” as distinguishing Poetics from the Art of Oratory. The chief of these,[158] almost exactly a century later than the treatise of Deschamps, used to be assigned to Henri de Croy, and is now (very likely with no more reason) handed over to Molinet. But they were almost entirely, if not entirely, occupied with the intricacies of the “forms” of _ballade_, &c., and included no criticism properly so called. Footnote 157: See Petit de Julleville, ii. 392, who quotes four between _c._ 1405 and _c._ 1475; and for a monograph E. Langlois, _De Artibus Rhetoricæ Rythmicæ_, Paris, 1890. To this may be added, as commentaries on this chapter, the corresponding division in Spingarn, _op. cit._, Part II., pp. 172-250; the extensive and valuable Introduction to M. Georges Pellissier’s edition of Vauquelin de la Fresnaye (Paris, 1885); and Herr Rücktaschel’s _Einige Arts Poétiques aus der Zeit Ronsards und Malherbes_ (Leipsic, 1889). ----- Footnote 158: _L’Art et Science de Rhétorique_, 1493, printed by Verard, and reprinted by Crapelet. Another, a little later, was printed about 1500, and reprinted in the Bibliothèque Elzévirienne, _Anciennes Poésies Françaises_, iii. 118. It is odd that M. Petit de Julleville, who does not give the volume and page of that very extensive collection, and misquotes its title, should speak of this as “in prose.” It is in verse: divided under short headings, sometimes of teaching, sometimes of example, as in this notable “Rondel équivoqué,” Avoir, Fait Avoir Avoir, Avoir Fait-Avoir, Fait, where each word is a line. The interpretation may be left as a treat for the reader. -----