The second, later, longer, and, as we have said, not quite authentic, Preface, addressed to the _Lecteur Aprentif_, is a discourse on the Heroic Poem in general; and as such is responsible for the specimens of the kind with which the next century was troubled in France, if not for those from the _Henriade_ downwards, which serve as even less cheerful ornaments to the French literature of the eighteenth. We have seen already how carefulness and trouble about this thing had been gathering and growing in Italy, and how it was, in Ronsard’s own days, causing the storm about the _Gerusalemme_. The “Maronolatry” which France shared with Italy led to it directly; and even the championship of Homer (as in Ronsard’s own case)—the attempt to establish two kings of the Epic Brentford—was certain to conduce to it. Ronsard himself, however, does not at first attempt the general question; indeed it is hardly possible to draw attention too often to the far greater abstinence from general and deductive consideration which at this time characterises the French critics, as compared with the Italians. He begins with a fresh attack (not quite in the best faith, if his own later remarks be pressed, as perhaps they need not be) on the Alexandrine; and, by a deflection more natural in the original than it appears in a summary, goes off to a panegyric of periphrasis, which again was only too docilely received by his successors of all schools for the next two centuries in France. His examples are taken from Virgil—indeed the earlier part of this Preface, at any rate, is as enthusiastically Virgilian as Scaliger himself could desire. Then he puts stress once more on the significant epithet, lays down _obiter_ the delightfully arbitrary dictum that, as the unity of drama is the revolution of a day, so the unity of at least a war-epic is the revolution of a year, dwells largely on his favourite distinction between the poet and the versifier, which he justifies (not too well) by insisting on artful variations of the narrative by speeches, dreams, prophecies, pictures,[179] auguries, fantastic visions, and appearances of gods and demons. All this time we have heard nothing of Homer, and indeed have read nearly half a score pages before his name occurs as furnishing Virgil with some of his facts and personages, just as he had drawn his own from older stories, “comme nous faisons des contes de Lancelot, de Tristan, de Gauvain, et d’Artus,” a passage to be noted. The dozen or so which remain are oddly occupied by a sort of jumble of notes and hints to the epic poet, reminding one of that valuable paper of advice which Sir John Hawkins sent to Captain Amyas Leigh, on “all points from the mounting of ordnance to the use of vitriol and limmons against the scurvy.” He must describe splendid palaces and grounds, trace heroes and heroines to gods and nymphs, dress them handsomely, wound them in the right places,[180] not invent too much, allow himself