Good or bad, complete or incomplete, this criticism is the very soul of the _Pléiade_. Its playwrights, such as Grévin[181] and Jean de la Taille,[182] followed Italian practice in prefixing argumentative discussions to their plays—reflecting on the mediæval drama, comparing, in modest or buoyant spirit, their own work to that of the ancients, and the like. [Sidenote: _Some minors._] A section of the school (as was almost unavoidable, despite the “No-Surrender” resistance which French as a language opposes to the proceeding) tried classical metres after the principles of Tolomei: and Jacques de la Taille, the brother of Jean, a poet and dramatist of fantastic but distinct ability, wrote a tractate[183] in defence of them. They made closer and closer approximations to the absolute Trinity of Unities: and though Du Bellay in his youthful fervour had committed himself to a not unwise antinomianism, they more and more showed themselves as the true ancestors of the neo-classic school, by framing and insisting on “rules.” The great men of letters who were more or less unattached, but well-willing irregulars of the school, such as Pasquier and Montaigne, bestow, in their different ways, increasing attention on literary criticism and literary history. And, just before and after the junction of the centuries, when the _Pléiade_ proper had set, and its influence was about to wane before the narrow and arbitrary classicism of Malherbe on the one hand, and the rococo-picaresque of the Spanish school on the other, there appeared two formal _Arts of Poetry_, the one the complete and final code of Pléiade Poetic, the other a rather hybrid and nondescript product, chequering Ronsardism with a good deal of Italian matter. ----- Footnote 181: In the Prefatory Discourse to his _Mort de César_ (1562). He extols Aristotle and Horace, but does not like Seneca. Footnote 182: In the prefatory matter of his _Saül le Furieux_, 1572. Jean assails the native drama, especially the Moralities, and thinks highly of Seneca. Footnote 183: _La Manière de faire des vers en Français comme en Grec et en Latin_, Paris, 1573. There is a useful abstract of this in Rücktaschel, _op. cit._, pp. 23-27. -----