All concur in showing Malherbe to us as, on the one hand, mainly a verbal critic, and on the other, as verbal critics usually, but by no means always or necessarily are, singularly unable to rise above the word, or its nearest neighbour, the mere sense. Both these things made him the natural enemy (though, for his earlier years at least, he was a more or less disloyal follower) of the Pléiade. Their abundant word-coinages and word-borrowings shocked him; he did not want, and could not feel,[297] the poetic _souffle_ which they managed to give by means, or in despite, of their vocabulary. Racan, a rather simple but absolutely honest creature, confesses that his master _n’aimait du tout les Grecs_, regarded Pindar especially as a maker of _galimatias_, liked Statius and Seneca best of the Latins,[298] and (it was generous) classed the Italians with the Greeks. On the other hand, in French, he had at least the merit of knowing exactly what he wanted, and exactly how to get it. He it was who first invented those rigid laws of rhyme, which even French classicism never quite adopted—the proscription of the different use of _a_ and _e_ in such rhymes as _ance_ and _ence_, _ent_ and _ant_; the rule against simples and compounds of them, and even words which commonly go together, out of verse, as _père_ and _mère_. He was equally rigid on the cæsura: and Racan is not to be suspected of catering for laughers, though Tallemant might be, when he tells us that, while actually in the death-struggle, Malherbe revived himself to tell his nurse that she had used a word _qui n'ètoit pas bien Français_. ----- Footnote 297: The French critics, however, have perhaps taken too literally his reported blasphemy, that he did not value a good poet above a good player at ninepins. Malherbe was a Norman—that is to say, a parcel-Englishman—and may well have had something of that English humour of disparaging his own matters which is so incomprehensible to the French. Footnote 298: The version in Tallemant adds that he _dis_liked Virgil. He also scoffed at the idea of “number” (rhythm) in prose. Footnote 299: Ed. Lalanne, iv. 249-473. There is an elaborate and standard monograph on this by M. Brunot, _La Doctrine de Malherbe_ (Paris, 1891); but, as in other cases, I am obliged to postpone the comment to the text. -----