The series of rhetorical and metrical treatises that precede Du Bellay's _Defense_ begins with _L'Art de dictier et de fere chancons, balades, virelais et rondeaulx_, written by the poet Eustache Deschamps in 1392, over half a century after the similar work of Antonio da Tempo in Italy.[311] Toward the close of the fifteenth century a work of the same nature, the _Fleur de Rhetorique_, by an author who refers to himself as L'Infortune, seems to have had some influence on later treatises. Three works of this sort fall within the first half of the sixteenth century: the _Grand et vrai Art de pleine Rhetorique_ of Pierre Fabri, published at Rouen in 1521; the _Rhetorique metrifiee_ of Gracien du Pont, published at Paris in 1539; and the _Art Poetique_ of Thomas Sibilet, published at Paris in 1548. The second part of Fabri's _Rhetorique_ deals with questions of versification--of rhyme, rhythm, and the complex metrical form of such poets as Cretin, Meschinot, and Molinet, in whom Pasquier found _prou de rime et equivoque, mais peu de raison_. As the _Rhetorique_ of Fabri is little more than an amplification of the similar work of L'Infortune, so the work of Gracien du Pont is little more than a reproduction of Fabri's. Gracien du Pont is still chiefly intent on _rime equivoquee_, _rime entrelacee_, _rime retrograde_, _rime concatenee_, and the various other mediaeval complexities of versification. Sibilet's _Art Poetique_ is more interesting than any of its predecessors. It was published a year before the _Defense_ of Du Bellay, and discusses many of the new _genres_ which the latter advocates. Sibilet treats of the sonnet, which had recently been borrowed from the Italians by Mellin de Saint-Gelais, the ode, which had just been employed by Pelletier, and the epigram, as practised by Marot. The eclogue is described as "Greek by invention, Latin by usurpation, and French by imitation." But one of the most interesting passages in Sibilet's book is that in which the French morality is compared with the classical drama. This passage exhibits perhaps the earliest trace of the influence of Italian ideas on French criticism; it will be discussed later in connection with the dramatic theories of this period.