After a prose address to the Reader, containing a rather touching reference to the flight of time and the change of public opinion since he had begun his work, to the cares of life, and the troubles of the realm, and the death of old friends—he begins with the proper invocation. [Sidenote: _Analysis of his_ Art Poétique.] Immediately after he gives, as has been justly observed, a warning note by an elaborate simile-description of Poesy as an ordered garden, with beds and paths and hedges, wherein if any rude boy should trample on the beds, desert the paths, and break down the espaliers, the gardener would assuredly make injurious observations to him, and drive him out—the Gardener being further identified as no less a person than the Divinity. This comparison would of itself show that Vauquelin aims at no arrogant originality; but he is yet more explicit. His four guides are _le fils de Nicomache_ (Aristotle, of course; but note how Ronsard’s fatal counsel of periphrasis has already sunk, never to be quite extracted, into the French mind!), the “harper of Calabria” (Horace), Vida, and Minturno.[187] But he hardly apologises for writing in French. Then, borrowing from Cleanthes, through Seneca, the old comparison of verse to “a trumpet which adds power to the voice,” he passes _non sine Dis_—with abundant indulgence in mythology—to the exaltation of Number and Harmony at large, and to theorising in the Imitation of Nature. He holds high the banner of the Ronsardian unification of Arts; and while insisting that even the ugly may be made interesting, if not beautiful, in the imitation of it, repeats the old cautions about inconsistent and too fantastic admixture of imagery. Among other followings of Ronsard we note the earnest advice to cultivate stately descriptions and abundant ornament. But he does not omit—though it must be allowed he does not observe it over strictly himself—the caution to keep the thread, “Si tu fais un Sonnet, ou si tu fais une Ode.” ----- Footnote 187: I agree with Mr Spingarn (p. 187) and disagree with M. Pellissier (p. xxxviii) in thinking that this reference to Minturno is quite serious. The French editor, indeed, speaks of Minturno rather oddly, coupling him with Vida as “les deux _poètes_ Italiens,” and saying that both “ne font que remâcher les préceptes des anciens,” which Vauquelin only says of Vida. This is of more than doubtful justice as to Minturno, and why call him a “poet”? He may have written in verse on other occasions, for aught I know, but his two _Poetics_ are as unquestionably in prose as Vida’s one is in verse. -----