It cannot be claimed that Dacier's Aristotle introduced any new critical theories into England. Actually it provides material for little more than an extended footnote on the history of criticism in the Augustan period. Dacier survived as an influence only so long as did a respect for the rules; and he is remembered today merely as one of the historically important interpreters--or misinterpreters--of the _Poetics_.[4] He was, however, the last Aristotelian formalist to affect English critical theory, for the course of such speculation in the next century was largely determined by other influences. None the less, his preface and his commentary are worth knowing because they express certain typically neo-classical ideas about poetry, especially dramatic poetry, which were acceptable to many men in England and France at the end of the seventeenth century. Dacier's immediate and rather special influence on English criticism may be observed in Thomas Rymer's proposal to introduce the chorus into English tragedy and in the admiration which the moralistic critics at the turn of the century felt for his theories. In the very year of its publication Rymer read with obvious approbation Dacier's _Poëtique d'Aristote_. In the preface to _A Short View of Tragedy_ (1692) he announced that "we begin to understand the Epick Poem by means of _Bossu_; and Tragedy by Monsieur _Dacier_."[5] That Rymer admired Dacier's strict formalism is plain, but he was especially moved by the French critic's argument that the chorus is _the_ essential part of true tragedy, since it is necessary both for _vraisemblance_ and for moral instruction.[6] He therefore boldly proposed that English tragic poets should henceforth use the chorus in the manner of the ancients, since it is "the root and original, and ... certainly always the most necessary part of Tragedy."[7] Moreover he praised (as had Dacier) the example of Racine, who had introduced the chorus into the plays that he had written for private performance, by the young ladies of St. Cyr--_Esther_ (1689) and _Athalie_ (1691). As is well known, he even went so far as to write the synopsis of what inevitably would have been an absurd Aeschylean tragedy on the defeat of the Armada.[8] Rymer's proposal provoked a public debate, which was begun by John Dennis, at that time an almost unknown young critic. Though _The Impartial Critick_ (1693) was directed against Rymer (who had given grave offence to Dryden and others by his attack on Shakespeare in the _Short View_), Dennis knew Dacier's ideas intimately, and his discussion of the chorus in the first and the fourth dialogues, is more directly a refutation of the French than of the English critic.[9] This lively treatise established whatever intimacy existed between young Dennis and the aging Dryden.[10]