acquiescence and tradition having ceased, of there being writers who are determined to attack some kinds of writing and encourage others with their very best will and power; and, secondly, the generous and uncompromising championship of the vernacular, which is the greatest glory of the Pléiade, and which, followed in other countries, gave us the great modern literatures. Du Bellay has the credit of bringing criticism, if we may so speak, nearer to her true object than almost any Italian critic of his own century had done, though he does not himself either practise or prescribe the best way of getting at that object. The criticism of his colleague, or master, Ronsard, is, as we have seen, injured by its small bulk, by its rather fragmentary character, by the fact that the most considerable piece of it has passed through another hand, and that we have only that hand’s own testimony for the faithfulness of the rehandling, and by not a little decided inconsistency. But it has the same militant, practical spirit as Du Bellay’s in quality, and more of it in proportional quantity. Moreover, it is extremely _germinal_. Those[287] who contend that the classical French criticism of the seventeenth century was only the Pléiade criticism of the sixteenth, denying its masters, omitting some, if not always the worst, parts of their creed, narrowed in range, and perfected in apparent system, have a great deal to say for themselves. Nor can there be reasonable doubt that, though Du Bellay was the first to speak critically, the teaching was the teaching of Ronsard throughout. Of this teaching, the injunction to enrich the language by archaism, and dialect, and word-coining (even by reading the forgotten romances of Arthur), was the very best part, and the first to be discarded by the ingratitude of the rebellious disciples, Malherbe and those about him. The worst part, which was not discarded but retained, was the adoption of the Italian doctrines about the hybrid kind of “Heroic” or “Long” Poem. But in most points the criticism of Ronsard justifies itself by a real adherence, conscious or unconscious, to the practical ideals of the French. ----- Footnote 287: M. Pellissier and others have taken this line. -----