The _Examens_ are of still greater importance; for we have had plenty of inquiries in general into the qualities and requirements of Kinds, though few from persons like Corneille. [Sidenote: _The_ Examens.] The system of elaborate critical reviews—for that is what it comes to—of his past work, by a great poet who has taken pains to acquaint himself with critical method, and is almost too respectful of its utterances, is practically a new one. There is a certain flavour of it in Spenser and Ronsard, much more than a flavour in Tasso; but it was not till the seventeenth century, when the critic was abroad in earnest, that it could be done on such a scale as this. For Corneille, though he never issued any _Examens_ till 1660, applied them to all but his very latest plays. To the mere general reader they may be rendered distasteful by the elaborate and most pathetic pains which Corneille takes to adjust himself to the theories which his reason docilely accepted, but to which his faith was always secretly recalcitrant. To the student of him, and to the student of criticism, they must always have a great attraction. But for the latter, if he have but a little of the “rascally comparative” spirit, they have an attraction greater still. There is no doubt at all that they served as pattern, at a very brief interval, to the critical exercises of Dryden, and thereby opened a way which criticism is treading still. And there is more in them besides this accidental and extrinsic attraction. Corneille, though he really shows extraordinary impartiality as well as great acumen in his examinations, was by the mere force of nature driven to stick close to his actual work, to observe it narrowly, if only so as to put the best face on it. And, as we have seen, the great fault both of ancient and of mediæval criticism was the omission or the refusal to consider individual works of art minutely and exactly—the constant breaking off and escape to the type. The natural partiality of authors for their own work has not always been fortunate in its results. Here it was so.