 Turning finally to Baumgarten’s aesthetics, it is notable that while Wolff himself had comparatively little to say about the philosophy of art (but see Beiser 2009; and Buchenau 2013), a number of thinkers in the Wolffian interest took a keen interest in the topic. The first to develop a theory of the arts, particularly poetry, was Johann Christoph Gottsched (1700–1766), who published his Versuch einer critischen Dichtkunst vor die Deutschen (Attempt at a Critical Poetry for the Germans) in 1730. Treating poetry scientifically, he set out a set of rules that were to guide the composition. Given his conception of what a poem was (a moral fable) and given as well his idea of what was involved in its composition (a set of rules), there was little room here for beauty and even less for sentiment and inspiration.