It was at about this period that Aristotle's _Poetics_ first influenced French criticism. In one of the concluding chapters of the _Defense_ Du Bellay remarks that "the virtues and vices of a poem have been diligently treated by the ancients, such as Aristotle and Horace, and after them by Hieronymus Vida."[327] Horace is mentioned and cited in numerous other places, and the influence of the general rhetorical portions of the _Ars Poetica_ is very marked throughout the _Defense_; there are also many traces of the influence of Vida. But there is no evidence whatsoever of any knowledge of Aristotle's _Poetics_. Of its name and importance Du Bellay had probably read in the writings of the Italians, but of its contents he knew little or nothing. There is indeed no well-established allusion to the _Poetics_ in France before this time. None of the French humanists seems to have known it. Its title is cited by Erasmus in a letter dated February 27, 1531, and it was published by him without any commentary at Basle in the same year, though Simon Grynaeus appears to have been the real editor of this work. An edition of the _Poetics_ was also published at Paris in 1541, but does not seem to have had any appreciable influence on the critical activity of France. Several years after the publication of the _Defense_, in the satirical poem, _Le Poete Courtisan_, written shortly after his return from Italy in 1555, Du Bellay shows a somewhat more definite knowledge of the contents of the _Poetics_:-- "Je ne veux point ici du maistre d'Alexandre [_i.e._ Aristotle], Touchant l'art poetic, les preceptes t'apprendre Tu n'apprendras de moy comment jouer il faut Les miseres des rois dessus un eschaffaut: Je ne t'enseigne l'art de l'humble comoedie Ni du Meonien la muse plus hardie: Bref je ne monstre ici d'un vers horacien Les vices et vertus du poeme ancien: Je ne depeins aussi le poete du Vide."[328] In 1555 Guillaume Morel, the disciple of Turnebus, published an edition of Aristotle's _Poetics_ at Paris. It is interesting to note, however, that the reference in the _Defense_ is the first allusion to the _Poetics_ to be found in the critical literature of France; by 1549 the Italian Renaissance, and Italian criticism, had come into France for good. In 1560, the year before the publication of Scaliger's _Poetics_, Aristotle's treatise had acquired such prominence that in a volume of selections from Aristotle's works, published at Paris in that year, _Aristotelis Sententiae_, the selections from the _Poetics_ are placed at the head of the volume.[329] In 1572 Jean de la Taille refers his readers to what "the great Aristotle in his _Poetics_, and after him Horace though not with the same subtlety, have said more amply and better than I."[330]