With Vauquelin de la Fresnaye and De Laudun Daigaliers (1598) the history of French criticism during the sixteenth century is at an end. The critical activity of this period, as has already been remarked, is of a far more practical character than that of Italy. Literary criticism in France was created by the exigencies of a great literary movement; and throughout the century it never lost its connection with this movement, or failed to serve it in some practical way. The poetic criticism was carried on by poets, whose desire it was to further a cause, to defend their own works, or to justify their own views. The dramatic criticism was for the most part carried on by dramatists, sometimes even in the prefaces of their plays. In the sixteenth century, as ever since, the interrelation of the creative and the critical faculties in France was marked and definite. But there was, one might almost say, little critical theorizing in the French Renaissance. Excepting, of course, Scaliger, there was even nothing of the deification of Aristotle found in Italian criticism. To take notice of a minute but significant detail, there was no attempt to explain Aristotle's doctrine of _katharsis_, the source of infinite controversy in Italy. There was no detailed and consistent discussion of the theory of the epic poem. All these things may be found in seventeenth-century France; but their home was sixteenth-century Italy. FOOT-NOTES: [310] _Essais_, i. 36. [311] On these early works, see Langlois, _De Artibus Rhetoricae Rhythmicae_, Parisiis, 1890. [312] Tiraboschi, vii. 350. [313] _Ibid._ vii. 1465. [314] Morsolin, _Trissino_, p. 358. [315] Egger, _Hellenisme_, ch. vii. [316] Brunetiere, i. 43. [317] _Cf._ Horace, _Ars Poet._ 53 _sq._ [318] _Defense_, i. 7. [319] _Ibid._ ii. 2. [320] _Ibid._ ii. 4. [321] _Cf._ Vida, in Pope, i. 167. [322] Lanson, _op. cit._, p. 274. [323] _Cf._ T. Tasso, xxiii. 97. [324] H. Chamard, "Le Date et l'Auteur du Quintil Horatian," in the _Revue d'Histoire litteraire de la France_, 1898, v. 59 _sq._ [325] _Ibid._ v. 54 _sq._ [326] _Ibid._ v. 62; 63, n. 1. [327] _Defense_, ii. 9. [328] Du Bellay, p. 120. [329] Parisiis, apud Hieronymum de Marnaf, 1560. [330] Robert, appendix iii. [331] _Art Poet._ i. 63. [332] Pellissier, pp. 57-63. [333] Lemercier, _Etude sur Vauquelin_, 1887, p. 117, and Pellissier, p. 57. [334] Minturno, _Arte Poetica_, p. 73; _De Poeta_, p. 252. _Cf._ Vauquelin, Pellissier's introduction, p. xliv. CHAPTER II THE THEORY OF POETRY IN THE FRENCH RENAISSANCE