But this comparative independence in some points was—probably from the want of that real historical horizontality of view which, of all the sixteenth-century critics, Cinthio, Castelvetro, and Patrizzi alone seem in various degrees to have attained—accompanied by a singular servility and conventionality in others. “Why, O Prince of Poets!” one feels inclined to say, “with all reverence to your grey and laurelled head—why should we trouble ourselves about _peintures insérées contre le dos d’une muraille, et des harnois, et principalement des boucliers_ because one very great poet found them useful to produce historical effects nearly three thousand years ago, and another much lesser poet chose to imitate him slavishly some thousand years later? Why should we do it, even supposing the two poets to be on a level? Very likely Homer’s warriors _had_ painted or graven bucklers. We have not. Arthur’s knights had not—at least the paintings (assuming them to be armorial) were quite different. Why should we have the ‘monstrous language of horses wounded to death’? Why this childish limitation in imitation? Handsome dresses are admirable things: but why must we be limited to lion-skins and panther-skins and bearskins for the material? If we have got to make a cauldron boil, let it double double, boil and bubble by all means: but suppose we _don’t_ want to boil it?” To all this we not only get no answer from Ronsard; but in his critical writing (not, as we have said, extensive nor always outwardly consistent, but thoroughly uniform in spirit) we find no trace of any such _aporia_ ever having presented itself to his mind. _They_ did these things and produced good effects: let _us_ do them that we may produce good. It seems a “good old rule” enough: yet perhaps it is “a simple plan” also in more senses than one.