While on the one hand the tendencies of the Pleiade may be described as exotic, going forth, as they did, to capture the gifts of classical and Italian literature, on the other hand they pleaded strenuously that thus only could French literature attain its highest possibilities. In the scholarship of the time, side by side with the humanism which revived and restored the culture of Greece and Rome, was another humanism which was essentially national. The historical origins of France were studied for the first time with something of a critical spirit by CLAUDE FAUCHET in his _Antiquites Gauloises et Francoises_ (1579-1601). His _Recueil de l'Origine de la Langue et Poesie Francoise_, in spite of its errors, was an effort towards French philology; and in calling attention to the trouveres and their works, Fauchet may be considered a remote master of the school of modern literary research. ESTIENNE PASQUIER (1529-1615), the jurist who maintained in a famous action the cause of the University against the Jesuits, in his _Recherches de la France_ treated with learning and vigour various important points in French history--civil and ecclesiastical--language, literary history, and the foundation of universities. HENRI ESTIENNE (1531-98), who entered to the full into the intoxication of classical humanism, was patriotic in his reverence for his native tongue. In a trilogy of little treatises (1565-79), written with much spirit, he maintained that of modern languages the French has the nearest affinity to the Greek, attempted to establish its superiority to Italian, and much more to Spanish, and mocked the contemporary fashion of Italianised French. The study of history is supported on the one hand by such erudite research as that of Fauchet and Pasquier; on the other hand it is supported by political philosophy and speculation. To philosophy, in the wider sense of the word, the sixteenth century made no large and coherent contribution; the Platonism, Pyrrhonism, Epicureanism, Stoicism of the Renaissance met and clashed together; the rival theologies of the Roman and Reformed Churches contended in a struggle for life. PIERRE DE LA RAMEE (1515-72) expressed the revolt of rationalism against the methods of the schoolmen and the authority of Aristotle; but he ordinarily wrote in Latin, and his _Dialectique_, the first philosophical work in the vulgar tongue, hardly falls within the province of literary history.