These reforms were, in the first place, largely linguistic. The Pleiade had attempted to widen the sphere of poetic expression in French literature by the introduction of words from the classics, from the Italian and even the Spanish, from the provincial dialects, from the old romances, and from the terminology of the mechanic arts. All these archaisms, neologisms, Latinisms, compound words, and dialectic and technical expressions, Malherbe set about to eradicate from the French language. His object was to purify French, and, as it were, to centralize it. The test he set up was actual usage, and even this was narrowed down to the usage of the court. Ronsard had censured the exclusive use of courtly speech in poetry, on the ground that the courtier cares more about fighting well than about speaking or writing well. But Malherbe's ideal was the ideal of French classicism--the ideal of Boileau, Racine, and Bossuet. French was to be no longer a hodgepodge or a patois, but the pure and perfect speech of the king and his court. Malherbe, while thus reacting against the Pleiade, made no pretensions of returning to the linguistic usages of Marot; his test was present usage, his model the living language.[423] At the same time his reforms in language, as in other things, represent a reaction against foreign innovations and a return to the pure French idiom. They were in the interest of the national traditions; and it is this national element which is his share in the body of neo-classical theory and practice. His reforms were all in the direction of that verbal and mechanical perfection, the love of which is innate in the French nature, and which forms the indigenous or racial element in French classicism. He eliminated from French verse hiatus, enjambement, inversions, false and imperfect rhymes, and licenses or cacophonies of all kinds. He gave it, as has been said, mechanical perfection,-- "Et reduisit la Muse aux regles du devoir."