But, for all this, he is a remarkable critic, and in his critical _aperçus_ we can ourselves perceive germs, indications, suggestions, which might have resulted in the creation of a much larger body of actual criticism. Indeed these are (as M. Pellissier[173] and others have shown) actually responsible for much that is most characteristic, and for most of what is best, in the Classical school of the next century, which affected to despise him, as well as for other things which, if that school had followed them out, would have saved it from its most fatal mistakes and shortcomings. ----- Footnote 173: In ed. of Vauquelin (_sup. cit._), xxviii. _sq._ ----- The main critical _loci_ in Ronsard have been duly pointed out by his editor, M. Prosper Blanchemain. [Sidenote: _The_ Abrégé de l’Art Poétique.] They are the formal _Abrégé de l’Art Poétique_ of 1565; the prefatory matter to his not too well-starred epic, the _Franciade_, ten years later and onwards; and the remarkable _Caprice au Seigneur Simon Nicolas_—a poem written late, and not, it seems, published save posthumously. The “Abridgement”[174] answers to its name, for it only fills just twenty Elzevirian pages. It begins in a manner which shows (as so many other things do in Ronsard) the gaps which separated him from, as well as the ties which united him to, the usual thought of the Renaissance, and still more that of the seventeenth century. Although there are of course exceptions, the general drift of Italian criticism had been that poetry, like any other art or science, is a thing teachable and learnable. On no other ground could the “archæolatry,” which we have found almost universal, be maintained for a moment. Now Ronsard, though he dwells again and again on the necessity of study, begins with an apology for writing an Art of Poetry at all. He has had, he says modestly, some experience and practice, and he will do his best to give his correspondent[175] the benefit thereof. But poesy is _plus mental que traditif_, which we may translate “more native to the mind than communicable to it.” He accordingly converts (with an agreeable twist) the stock invocation to the Muses into a real prayer for this mental endowment, and with equal ingenuity freshens up the stale _clichés_ about the divinity of Ancient poets, and about the Muses refusing to lodge save in a virtuous and pious mind. Therefore, too, study of these former favourites of poetry is requisite. But from these generalities he plunges straight into extremely minute details. Greek, Latin, and French—it is probable that he does not mention Italian because his correspondent, Delbène, was of Italian extraction—are to be carefully studied as languages. The rules of French prosody—among which is here for the first time authoritatively included the alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes—are to be carefully observed, and _e_ is to be always elided before a vowel. It is perhaps worth noting that