From this analysis it will be seen that the _Defense_ is really a philological polemic, belonging to the same class as the long series of Italian discussions on the vulgar tongue which begins with Dante, and which includes the works of Bembo, Castiglione, Varchi, and others. It is, as a French critic has said, a combined pamphlet, defence, and _ars poetica_;[322] but it is only an _ars poetica_ in so far as it advises the French poet to employ certain poetic forms, and treats of rhythm and rhyme in a concluding chapter or two. But curiously enough, the source and inspiration of Du Bellay's work have never been pointed out. The actual model of the _Defense_ was without doubt Dante's _De Vulgari Eloquio_, which, in the Italian version of Trissino, had been given to the world for the first time in 1529, exactly twenty years before the _Defense_. The two works, allowing for the difference in time and circumstance, resemble each other closely in spirit and purpose as well as in contents and design. Du Bellay's work, like Dante's, is divided into two books, each of which is again divided into about the same number of chapters. The first book of both works deals with language in general, and the relations of the vulgar tongue to the ancient and modern languages; the second book of both works deals with the particular practices of the vulgar tongue concerning which each author is arguing. Both works begin with a somewhat similar theory of the origin of language; both works close with a discussion of the versification of the vernacular. The purpose of both books is the justification of the vulgar tongue, and the consideration of the means by which it can attain perfection; the title of _De Vulgari Eloquio_ might be applied with equal force to either treatise. The _Defense_, by this justification of the French language on rational if not entirely cogent and consistent grounds, prepared the way for critical activity in France; and it is no insignificant fact that the first critical work of modern France should have been based on the first critical work of modern Italy. Thirty years later, Henri Estienne, in his _Precellence du Langage francois_, could assert that French is the best language of ancient or modern times, just as Salviati in 1564 had claimed that preeminent position for Italian.[323]