Although we have had, and shall have, to question the exact importance assigned by some to the _Cid_ quarrel, there can be no doubt that it had a very important influence, extending far beyond the chief parties concerned, and helping, very particularly, that popularisation of criticism which is undoubtedly the work of France in general, and of the French Academy in particular. [Sidenote: _La Mesnardière—Sarrasin—Scudéry._] In the years almost immediately succeeding it we have, for 1639, the _Discours de la Tragédie_ of the ingenious and ill-fated Sarrasin, for 1640 the formal _Art Poétique_ of La Mesnardière, a treatise specially dealing with tragedy, strongly, almost idolatrously, Aristotelian in tone, and characterised by a lively polemic against the Spanish and Italian influences which had been so powerful for a generation in France. Scudéry followed up the pamphlets which had actually given occasion to the _Cid_ dispute, almost at the same period, with the Preface to _Ibrahim_, as well as years afterwards in that to _Alaric_. Nay, it was at this very time (about 1640) that the world was at least threatened with the birth of the dullest critical treatise of the century, that of Hédelin, though a respite of seventeen years was actually granted. La Mesnardière had evidently made a careful study of the Italian critics. His very _format_—a handsome small quarto—reminds one of their favourite shape, and contrasts curiously with the tiny duodecimos of the sixteenth-century French critics. And he puts forth his whole strength in arguing for the Stagirite against the blasphemies of Castelvetro, whom, however, he declares that he honours _hors des intérêts d’Aristote_—an odd, but very characteristic, way of putting it. La Mesnardière, who follows out all the Aristotelian divisions, even to Music (with engraved airs), is equally odd and equally representative in identifying, or at least associating in his first Chapter, _Politesse_ with “Imagination.” Mere Understanding will make a Philosopher—the Poet must be polished up into an Imaginative condition. He does not neglect language and diction: and though he devotes himself to drama, illustrates copiously from non-dramatic poetry, and criticises his illustrations in the way which was becoming so common and is so important. But a specimen passage in a footnote[328] will explain, better than pages of discussion, the fatally parasitic character of most of his criticism. ----- Footnote 328: _Art Poét._, p. 233. “Si toutefois la Fable est telle que le Poëte n’ait pas lieu d’y recompenser la Vertu, il doit pour le moins faire en sorte que les Personnes vertueuses soient louées publiquement.” -----