The greatest of these, Ronsard, has given expression to his views on the poetic art in his Abrégé de l'Art Poétique françois (1565), and later in the two prefaces of his epic of the Franciade. The chief interest of the Abrégé in the present discussion is that it expounds and emphasizes the high notion of the poet's office introduced into French poetry by the Pléiade. Before the advent of the new school, mere skill in the complicated forms of verse was regarded as the test of poetry. The poet was simply a rimeur; and the term "poète," with all that it implies, first came into use with the Pléiade. The distinction between the versifier and the poet, as pointed out by Aristotle and insisted upon by the Italians, became with the Pléiade almost vital. Binet, the disciple and biographer of Ronsard, says of his master that "he was the mortal enemy of versifiers, whose conceptions are all debased, and who think they have wrought a masterpiece when they have transposed something from prose into verse."[337] Ronsard's own account of the dignity and high function of poetry must needs be cited at length:—
"Above all things you will hold the Muses in reverence, yea, in singular veneration, and you will never let them serve in matters that are dishonest, or mere jests, or injudicious libels; but you will hold them dear and sacred, as the daughters of Jupiter, that is, God, who by His holy grace has through them first made known to ignorant people the excellencies of His majesty. For poetry in early times was only an allegorical theology, in order to make stupid men, by pleasant and wondrously colored fables, know the secrets they could not comprehend, were the truth too openly made known to them.... Now, since the Muses do not care to lodge in a soul unless it is good, holy, and virtuous, you should try to be of a good disposition, not wicked, scowling, and cross, but animated by a gentle spirit; and you should not let anything enter your mind that is not superhuman and divine. You should have, in the first place, conceptions that are high, grand, beautiful, and not trailing upon the ground; for the principal part of poetry consists of invention, which comes as much from a beautiful nature as from the reading of good and ancient authors. If you undertake any great work, you will show yourself devout and fearing God, commencing it either with His name or by any other which represents some effects of His majesty, after the manner of the Greek poets ... for the Muses, Apollo, Mercury, Pallas, and other similar deities, merely represent the powers of God, to which the first men gave several names for the diverse effects of His incomprehensible majesty."[338]
In this eloquent passage the conception of the poet as an essentially moral being,—a doctrine first enunciated by Strabo, and repeated by Minturno and others,—and Boccaccio's notion of poetry as originally an allegorical theology, are both introduced into French criticism. Elsewhere Ronsard repeats the mediæval concept that poets
"d'un voile divers
Par fables ont caché le vray sens de leurs vers."[339]
It will be seen also that for Ronsard, poetry is essentially a matter of inspiration; and in the poem just quoted, the Discours à Jacques Grévin, he follows the Platonic conception of divine inspiration or madness. A few years later Montaigne said of poetry that "it is an easier matter to frame it than to know it; being base and humble, it may be judged by the precepts and art of it, but the good and lofty, the supreme and divine, are beyond rules and above reason. It hath no community with our judgment, but ransacketh and ravisheth the same."[340]
In his various critical works Ronsard shows considerable indebtedness to the Italian theorists, especially to Minturno. He does not attempt any formal definition of poetry, but its function is described as follows: "As the end of the orator is to persuade, so that of the poet is to imitate, invent, and represent the things that are, that can be, or that the ancients regarded as true."[341] The concluding clause of this passage is intended to justify the modern use of the ancient mythology; but the whole passage seems primarily to follow Scaliger[342] and Minturno.[343] It is to be observed that verse is not mentioned in this definition as an essential requirement of poetry. It was indeed a favorite contention of his, and one for which he was indebted to the Italians, that all who write in verse are not poets. Lucan and Silius Italicus have robed history with the raiment of verse; but according to Ronsard they would have done better in many ways to have written in prose. The poet, unlike the historian, deals with the verisimilar and the probable; and while he cannot be responsible for falsehoods which are in opposition to the truth of things, any more than the historian can, he is not interested to know whether or not the details of his poems are actual historical facts. Verisimilitude, and not fact, is therefore the test of poetry.
In Vauquelin de la Fresnaye may be found most of the Aristotelian distinctions in regard to imitation, harmony, rhythm, and poetic theory in general; but these distinctions he derived, as has already been said, not directly from Aristotle, but in all probability from Minturno. Poetry is defined as an art of imitation:—
"C'est un art d'imiter, un art de contrefaire
Que toute poësie, ainsi que de pourtraire."[344]
Verse is described as a heaven-sent instrument, the language of the gods; and its value in poetry consists in clarifying and making the design compact.[345] But it is not an essential of poetry; Aristotle permits us to poetize in prose; and the romances of Heliodorus and Montemayor are examples of this poetic prose.[346] The object of poetry is that it shall cause delight, and unless it succeeds in this it is entirely futile:—
"C'est le but, c'est la fin des vers que resjouir:
Les Muses autrement ne les veulent ouir."