It is not to be expected that so radical a break with the national traditions of France as was implied by Du Bellay's innovations would be left unheeded by the enemies of the Pleiade. The answer came soon, in an anonymous pamphlet, entitled _Le Quintil Horatian sur la Defense et Illustration de la Langue francoise_. Until a very few years ago, this treatise was ascribed to a disciple of Marot, Charles Fontaine. But in 1883 an autograph letter of Fontaine's was discovered, in which he strenuously denies the authorship of the _Quintil Horatian_; and more recent researches have shown pretty conclusively that the real author was a friend of Fontaine's, Barthelemy Aneau, head of the College of Lyons.[324] The _Quintil Horatian_ was first published in 1550, the year after the appearance of the _Defense_.[325] The author informs us that he had translated the whole of Horace's _Ars Poetica_ into French verse "over twenty years ago, before Pelletier or any one else," that is, between 1525 and 1530.[326] This translation was never published, but fragments of it are cited in the _Quintil Horatian_. The pamphlet itself takes up the arguments of Du Bellay step by step, and refutes them. The author finds fault with the constructions, the metaphors, and the neologisms of Du Bellay. Aneau's temperament was dogmatic and pedagogic; his judgment was not always good; and modern French critics cannot forgive him for attacking Du Bellay's use of such a word as _patrie_. But it is not entirely just to speak of the _Quintil Horatian_, in the words of a modern literary historian, as full of futile and valueless criticisms. The author's minute linguistic objections are often hypercritical, but his work represents a natural reaction against the Pleiade. His chief censure of the _Defense_ was directed against the introduction of classical and Italian words into the French language. "Est-ce la defense et illustration," he exclaims, "ou plus tost offense et denigration?" He charges the Pleiade with having contemned the classics of French poetry; the new school advocated the disuse of the complicated metrical forms merely because they were too difficult. The sonnet, the ode, and the elegy he dismisses as useless innovations. The object of poetry, according to Horace, is to gladden and please, while the elegy merely saddens and brings tears to the eyes. "Poetry," he says, "is like painting; and as painting is intended to fill us with delight, and not to sadden us, so the mournful elegy is one of the meanest forms of poetry." Aneau is unable to appreciate the high and sublime conception of the poet's office which the Pleiade first introduced into French literature; for him the poet is a mere versifier who amuses his audience. He represents the general reaction of the national spirit against the classical innovations of the Pleiade; and the _Quintil Horatian_ may therefore be called the last representative work of the older school of poetry.