The Sarrasin and Scudéry documents are complementary as well as complimentary of this and of each other. For Sarrasin’s _Discours_[329] is devoted to Scudéry’s _Amour Tyrannique_, which is so perfect that Aristotle would have put it in the _Poetics_, instead of or beside the _Œdipus_, if he had only known it. And La Mesnardière is just going (see dates given) to write “divinely” on that art of poetry which those great men, Ronsard and Du Bellay, did not know, and therefore recommended the study of Romances.[330] Finally, “Armand” [Richelieu, of course] is _le Dieu tutélaire des lettres_. As for the great Georges de Scudéry himself, his Prefaces to _Ibrahim_ and _Alaric_ are quite worthy of the “Commander of the Fort of Notre Dame de La Garde and Kept-Captain to the King,” whose portrait guards the entrance of the stately folio of _Alaric_. That is to say, they are an odd mixture of bombast (he leads off that to this book with a list of critics and poets, all of whom he has read), crotchet, and real wits. Both are worth comparing with Davenant’s to _Gondibert_ (_v. infra_, p. 367), which came between them.[331] ----- Footnote 329: In his _Œuvres_ (Paris, 1694), pp. 301-344. Footnote 330: This is very interesting in connection with Sarrasin’s appearance in Chapelain’s dialogue and his own other work (_v. supra_, p. 260). Footnote 331: Scudéry thinks Four things necessary to Epic—the authority of History, the observance of received Religion, the exercise of Poetic Licence in Fiction, and the provision of Great Events. He is not uninteresting for his connection with his sister’s prose Romances in which he had some, if not much, share, and which he never forgets. Also, he clings to the Pléiade technicalities to some extent—kindly, however, explaining such words as _Hune_, _Quille_ (which, he says rather quaintly, is _un bois courbé qui est au plus bas d’un vaisseau_), and _Calfater_. The _Ibrahim_ preface, thirteen years earlier, exhibits the same obliging explanation of technicalities, and the same virtuous adherence to The Rules. “Provided,” he says, “that an Architect takes his measures right, he is assured of the beauty of his building,” which would seem to dissuade any one from advancing beyond the packing-case style of architecture. And he is sure that a Romance, like an Epic, should never go beyond one year in time. -----