Matthew’s prose manual, though it omits prosody, is otherwise connected even more obviously than the others with the teaching of _grammatica_. Not only is he known to have been _grammaticus_ at Orléans; his book is inclined throughout in the direction of such teaching,[7] and it contains specimen school exercises. The grammatical slant is most obvious in those on adjectives in _-alis_, _-osus_, _-atus_, _-ivus_, _-aris_.[8] The longer examples of descriptive verse may well be such successively revised themes as were seen earlier at Speier.[9] The use of Horace’s “Ars poetica” is so extensive, even for the time, as to suggest that Matthew’s book may have begun in his _prælectiones_ on that poem. Whatever degree of probability may be attached to these suggestions, there is no doubt of Matthew’s intention and preoccupation. His book seeks to further the writing of Latin descriptive verse. The idea behind it is that poetry is mainly description, which in turn proceeds mainly by dilation. Style, which is his only concern, is conceived as decoration. Though his lists of figures for this purpose (III) generally agree with those of the _Doctrinale_,[10] rhetoric is evident not only in the phrase _colores rhetorici_,[11] but as a constant preoccupation. That _poetica_ as style is identical with _rhetorica_ he assumes; that it is distinct as composition can hardly have entered his head, but composition in either field is beyond his scope. His sections on beginning (I. 3-16) refer not to introducing the subject, but to phrasing the first sentences. The faults then enumerated (I. 30-37) are of style. Description is expounded (I. 38-113) as appropriateness of phrase to condition, age, place, etc., and as the seeking of “attributes” in a person’s physical and mental habit, his deeds, his speech,[12] or in the cause, quality, and time of an event. Reference to subject, thought, or composition goes no further; the rest of the book is purely verbal. 2. Geoffroi de Vinsauf, _Poetria Nova_ (c. 1210)