We may all the better pass directly from Malherbe to Vaugelas[306] because this is about the last place in this _History_ where we can give special attention to _merely_ verbal and grammatical criticism. [Sidenote: _Vaugelas._] In this Malherbe had at least the absolute, and almost admirable, courage of his opinions. On the one hand he transfers the prudery of the Ciceronians (_v. supra_, p. 12) to French, and will not allow even an analogue such as _accroît_ on the strength of _surcroît_. On the other he bars all the delightful Pléiade diminutives, likes not technical terms, is so horrified at any indelicate suggestion that his countrymen really need not have ridiculed our “sho[c]king,” and has a whole black list of “plebeian” expressions. Everything is to be “according to rule,” and the rule is to be drawn with as few exceptions as possible—and with as few inclusions. ----- Footnote 306: Those who wish for something more on this subject, without attacking Vaugelas for themselves, may be strongly recommended to the full and excellent article of M. Brunot in Petit de Julleville (vi. 674-690), one of the very best papers in the book. ----- It is no wonder that Regnier opened the full broadside of his magnificent poetical rhetoric against this system; and it is only a pity that nobody less fantastic than Mlle. de Gournay—Montaigne’s _fille d’alliance_, and almost the first as almost the oddest of blue-stockings—took up the parable more practically against it. But the set of the tide, as we have said, was with him. La Mothe le Vayer, a little later, in his _Considérations sur l’Eloquence Française de ce temps_ “transacts,” though he is on the whole on the side of liberty. And _enfin Vaugelas vint_, the Savoyard[307] who was to teach France French. His famous _Remarques_ did not appear till 1647, when he was fifty-two, and only three years before his death, but the book expresses work much older.[308] ----- Footnote 307: He is often called this, but not quite fairly, for he was born in Bresse. Footnote 308: For other grammarian-rhetoricians of 1610-1660 see M. Brunot as above. On the _Art Poétique_ of P. de Deimier (1610), compare also Rücktaschel _ubi sup._ -----